ʿIZRĀʾĪL (عزرائيل). The Angel of Death, or the Malaku ʾl-Maut, who comes to a man at the hour of death to carry his soul away from the body. See Qurʾān, [Sūrah xxxii. 11]: “The Angel of Death shall take you away, he who is given charge of you. Then unto your Lord shall ye return.”
Muḥammad is related to have said that when the Angel of Death approaches a believer he sits at his head and says, “O pure soul, come forth to God’s pardon and pleasure!” And then the soul comes out as gently as water from a bag. But, in the case of an infidel, the Angel of Death sits at his head and says, “O impure soul, come forth to the wrath of God!” And then the Angel of Death draws it out as a hot spit is drawn out of wet wool. (Mishkāt, book v. ch. iii.)
J.
JABALU MŪSĀ (جبل موسى). The Mount of Moses; Mount Sinai. It is called in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah ii. 60], at̤-T̤ūr, “The Mountain.”
AL-JABARĪYAH (الجبرية). Lit. “The Necessitarians.” A sect of Muḥammadans who deny free agency in man.
They take their denomination from Jabr, which signifies “necessity or compulsion;” because they hold man to be necessarily and inevitably constrained to act as he does by force of God’s eternal and immutable decree. This sect is distinguished into two species, some being more rigid and extreme in their opinion, who are thence called pure Jabarīyahs; and others, more moderate, who are therefore called middle Jabarīyahs. The former will not allow men to be said either to act, or to have any power at all, either operative or acquiring, asserting that man can do nothing, but produces all his actions by necessity, having neither power, nor will, nor choice, any more than an inanimate agent. They also declare that rewarding and punishing are also the effects of necessity; and the same they say of the imposing of commands. This was the doctrine of the Jahmīyahs, the followers of Jahm ibn Sufwān, who likewise held that Paradise and Hell will vanish, or be annihilated, after those who are destined thereto respectively shall have entered them, so that at last there will remain no existing being besides God, supposing those words of the Qurʾān which declare that the inhabitants of Paradise and of Hell shall remain therein for ever, to be hyperbolical only, and intended for corroboration, and not to denote an eternal duration in reality. The moderate Jabarīyahs are they who ascribe some power to man, but such a power as hath no influence on the action; for as to those who grant the power of man to have a certain influence on the action, which influence is called Acquisition, some will not admit them to be called Jabarīyahs, though others reckon those also to be called middle Jabarīyahs, and to contend for the middle opinion between absolute necessity and absolute liberty, who attribute to man acquisition, or concurrence, in producing the action, whereby he gaineth commendation or blame (yet without admitting it to have any influence on the action), and, therefore, make the Ashārians a branch of this sect. (Sale’s Koran, Introd.)
JABARŪT (جبروت). The possession of power, of omnipotence. One of the mystic stages of the Ṣūfī. [[SUFIISM].]
JABBĀR (جبار). Omnipotent; an absolute sovereign. Al-Jabbār, “The Absolute.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God.
[Sūrah lix. 23]: “The King, the Holy, the Peaceful, the Faithful, the Protector, the Mighty, the Absolute, the Great.”
JABĪL (جبيل). The Angel of the Mountains; mentioned in the Shīʿah work, Ḥayātu ʾl-Qulūb. (Merrick’s ed. p. 128.)