Mikail, the Michael of the biblical tradition, is charged in Islam with provision (rizq): the rain, the growth of plants, and the sustenance of living creatures. He is named once in the Quran, at 2:98, in a verse warning that God is an enemy to whoever is an enemy to His angels, to Jibril and to Mikail, a response, tradition holds, to those who claimed hostility to one angel while professing loyalty to God. Where Jibril governs revelation, the word that feeds the soul, Mikail governs the material sustenance of the world, and the two are frequently paired as the two greatest angels.
Later tradition places under his command hosts of subordinate angels who direct the natural forces, the winds, the clouds, the falling of the rain, by which God maintains creation. He is thus the angel of God's ongoing mercy in the physical order, the counterpart to Israfil's single final act and to the angel of death's taking of souls.