The Taker of Souls

Malak al-Mawt, the Angel of Death, is the being appointed to take the soul at the moment God has decreed for it. The Quran refers to him at 32:11, "Say: the angel of death who has been charged with you will take you", and elsewhere speaks of angels in the plural drawing out the souls of the dying, gently for the righteous and harshly for the wicked.

The proper name Azrael (Azra'il) does not appear in the Quran; it comes from later tradition, which ranks him among the four great archangels. Islamic eschatology describes his work in detail: he is accompanied by assisting angels, he does not act on his own initiative but only when the appointed term (ajal) arrives, and no soul can be taken before or delayed beyond its hour. The figure gives death a personal agent within God's order, not an enemy or an accident, but an appointed servant carrying out a decree, and much devotional and mystical literature dwells on the encounter with him as the decisive test of a life.