The archangel Azrael enforces the divine command that all living things must return to God in death. The very word islm implies submission to Gods will, and yet Muslim saints, prophets, and sorcerers used charisma, magic squares, and their bare hands to defy Azrael and extend their lives on Earth. Their efforts reveal tension between the necessity of submitting to Gods will and the human yearning to transcend death.
With particular attention to the writings of Muy al-Dn Ibn Arab (d. 1240), Dunja Rai explores the time-honored rites and practices of defying death in Muslim cultures and societies. Ibn Arab, one of the most influential Sufi scholars, poets, and philosophers, claimed among his many spiritual accomplishments the subjugation of Azrael himself. His pursuit of mastery over death was rooted in his extensive knowledge of angelology, prophetic traditions, and thanatology, and his works preserve striking accounts of his encounters with the angel of death. Drawing on these texts, Rai delivers an in-depth study of Islamic angelology that challenges our understanding of the status and functions of angels, human (dis)obedience to God, and (im)mortality in Islam and Akbarian Sufism.
An original and pioneering work, Azrael contributes new insights into how Muslims have imagined angels, death, and immortality. It will appeal to scholars of Sufism, Islamic studies, comparative religion, and medieval philosophy, as well as general readers interested in spirituality, esotericism, or the teachings of Ibn Arab.
