Iblis

Iblis (Arabic: إِبْلِيسْ, romanized: Iblīs), alternatively known as Eblīs, is the leader of the devils (shayāṭīn) in Islam. According to the Quran, Iblis was thrown out of heaven, after he refused to prostrate himself before Adam. Islamic theology (kalām) regards Iblis as an example of attributes and actions which God punishes with hell (Nār). Regarding the origin and nature of Iblis, there are two different viewpoints. According to one, Iblis is an angel, and according to the other, he is the father of the jinn. Quranic exegesis (tafsīr) and the Stories of the Prophets (Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ) elaborate on Iblis' origin story in greater detail.

In the first version, before Iblis was cast down from heaven, he used to be an angel, created from fire, called ʿAzāzīl. God appointed him to obliterate the jinn who precedingly inhabited of the Earth until they became disobedient and destructive. Consequently God decided to replace them with humans. When God announces to create a successor to the jinn, the angels objected to that decision. When God taught Adam and showed the superiority of Adam compared to the angels in regards of knowledge, angels were ordered to prostrate themselves. All the angels obeyed except Iblis, who claims that the command was unjust and refuses to follow order. Whereupon, he was punished by being relegated from an angel (malāk) to a devil (shayṭān) and is expelled.

In the alternative account, Iblis was not one of the angels but the ancestor of the jinn. Created from the fires beneath the seventh earth, he worshipped God for thousands of years until he was elevated to the company of angels in the seventh heaven. This account draws a distinction between Iblis and the angels by their moral abilities, arguing that angels are incapable of disobedience, but Iblis was free to choose. Thus, only Iblis, being a jinni, was able to refuse to prostrate himself when Adam was created. Doing so, he was expelled from heaven and sent to earth, where he sired the jinn and devils.

In Islamic tradition, Iblis is identified with ash-Shayṭān ("the Devil"), often followed by the epithet ar-Rajim (Arabic: ٱلرَجِيم, lit. 'the Accursed'). Shayṭān is usually applied to Iblis in order to denote his role as the tempter, while Iblīs is his proper name. Some Muslim scholars uphold a more ambivalent role for Iblis, considering him not simply a devil but also "the truest monotheist" (Tawḥīd-i Iblīs), because he would only bow before the Creator and not his creations, while preserving the term shayṭān exclusively for evil forces. The idea that Iblis is not evil but a necessity for the world is also used in Muslim literature. Others have strongly rejected sympathies with Iblis, considering it a form of deception to lead people astray.