ḤAMĀLAH (حـمالة). Compensation for manslaughter or murder, called also diyah. [[DIYAH].]
ḤAMALATU ʾL-ʿARSH (حـمـلـة العرش). Lit. “Those who bear the throne.” Certain angels mentioned in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah xl. 7]: “Those who bear the throne (i.e. the Ḥamalatu ʾl-ʿArsh) and those around it (i.e. the Karūbīn) celebrate the praise of their Lord, and believe in Him, and ask pardon for those who believe.”
Al-Bag͟hawī, the commentator, says they are eight angels of the highest rank. They are so tall that their feet stand on the lowest strata of the earth and their heads reach the highest heavens, the universe does not reach up to their navels, and it is a journey of seven hundred years from their ears to their shoulders! (Al-Bag͟hawī, Bombay edition, vol. ii. p. 23.)
HĀMĀN (هـامـان). The prime minister of Pharaoh. Mentioned in the Qurʾān in three different chapters.
[Sūrah xxviii. 7]: “For sinners were Pharaoh and Hāmān.”
[Sūrah xxix. 38]: “Korah (Qārūn) and Pharaoh and Hāmān! with proofs of his mission did Moses come to them and they behaved proudly on the earth.”
“And Pharaoh said, ‘O Hāmān, build for me a tower that I may reach the avenues,
“ ‘The avenues of the heavens, and may mount to the God of Moses, for I verily deem him a liar.’ ”
Some European critics think that Muḥammad has here made Hāmān the favourite of Ahasuerus and the enemy of the Jews, the vizier of Pharaoh. The Rabbins make this vizier to have been Korah, Jethro, or Balaam. (Midr. Jalkut on Ex. ch. 1, Sect. 162–168.)