Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts Editorial Board Hinrich Biesterfeldt Sebastian Günther Wadad Kadi VOLUME 119 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ihc Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions Edited by Christian Lange LEIDEN | BOSTON This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: Fālnāma (Book of Omens), Persia or Turkey, ca. 990/[1580]. Topkapı Palace Library, Istanbul, H. 1703, folio 21v. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Locating Hell in Islamic traditions / edited by Christian Lange. pages cm. — (Islamic history and civilization ; v. 119) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-30121-4 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-30136-8 (e-book) 1. Hell—Islam. 2. Islamic eschatology. 3. Islam—Doctrines—History. I. Lange, Christian. BP166.88.L63 2015 297.2’3—dc23 2015026095 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0929-2403 isbn 978-90-04-30121-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30136-8 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by the Editor and Authors. This work is published by Koninklijke Brill NV. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. 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Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Figures viii List of Abbreviations ix Notes on Contributors x 1 Introducing Hell in Islamic Studies 1 Christian Lange Part 1 Quranic Netherworlds 2 The barzakh and the Intermediate State of the Dead in the Quran 31 Tommaso Tesei 3 From Space to Place The Quranic Infernalization of the Jinn 56 Simon O’Meara 4 Revisiting Hell’s Angels in the Quran 74 Christian Lange Part 2 Hell in Early and Medieval Islam 5 Locating Hell in Early Renunciant Literature 103 Christopher Melchert 6 Fire in the Upper Heavens Locating Hell in Middle Period Narratives of Muḥammad’s Ascension 124 Frederick Colby 7 Hell in Popular Muslim Imagination The Anonymous Kitāb al-ʿAẓama 144 Wim Raven vi contents Part 3 Theological and Mystical Aspects 8 Is Hell Truly Everlasting? An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Universalism 165 Mohammad Hassan Khalil 9 Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and the Political Functions of Punishment in the Islamic Hell 175 Samuela Pagani 10 Withholding Judgment on Islamic Universalism Ibn al-Wazīr (d. 840/1436) on the Duration and Purpose of Hell-Fire 208 Jon Hoover Part 4 Varieties of Hell in Islamic Traditions 11 Ismaʿili-Shiʿi Visions of Hell From the “Spiritual” Torment of the Fāṭimids to the Ṭayyibī Rock of Sijjīn 241 Daniel De Smet 12 The Morisco Hell The Significance and Relevance of the Aljamiado Texts for Muslim Eschatology and Islamic Literature 268 Roberto Tottoli 13 Curse Signs The Artful Rhetoric of Hell in Safavid Iran 297 Christiane Gruber 14 Literature and Religious Controversy The Vision of Hell in Jamīl Ṣidqī al-Zahāwī’s Thawra fī l-jaḥīm 336 Richard van Leeuwen General Index 353 Acknowledgments All but two of the chapters in this book were originally presented as papers at a symposium entitled “Locating hell in Islamic traditions” (28–29 April 2012), hosted by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. I am grateful to the participants for their various contributions, and for the patience and collegiality they have shown me during the three years it has taken to see this volume through to publication. Kathy van Vliet, Teddi Dols and Pieter te Velde at Brill accompanied the editing and produc- tion process with admirable efficiency. Alex Mallett provided additional copy- editing on chapters 2, 7, 11, and 12, and expertly compiled the index. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript, whose comments I’ve been happy to include in the final version of this book. Both the symposium “Locating hell in Islamic traditions” and its published proceedings were funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, “The here and the hereafter in Islamic traditions” (no. 263308, 2011–15). Christian Lange Utrecht, August 2015 List of Figures 13.1 The punishment of sinners who did not pay the tithe 298 13.2 The inhabitants and angels of heaven, and the demons, hellfire, scorpions, and snakes 299 13.3 The young Shāh Ismāʿīl ascends to the throne 303 13.4 ʿAlī breaks the idols atop the Kaʿba as Muḥammad stands below 309 13.5 The Last Judgment, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 314 13.6 Sinners gathered for the Last Judgment, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 315 13.7 Sinners tortured in hell, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 319 13.8 Sinners tortured in hell, al-Varāmīnī 320 13.9 The imams and Fāṭima sitting in heaven during the Last Judgment, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 322 13.10 The angels Isrāfīl and Michael, ʿAlī and Muḥammad, interceding on behalf of sinners during the Last Judgment, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 326 13.11 Alī and Muḥammad, interceding on behalf of sinners during the Last Judgment, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (attributed) 327 List of Abbreviations ANT The apocryphal New Testament, tr. J.K. Elliott, Oxford 1993 BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BT The Babylonian Talmud, ed. and tr. I. Epstein et al., 36 vols, London 1935–52 EI2 The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. Gibb, H.A.R. et al., 12 vols, Leiden 1954–2004 EI3 The Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE, ed. Fleet, K., Kraemer, G. et al., Leiden 2007– EQ The Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān, ed. McAuliffe, J.D. et al., 5 vols, Leiden 2001–2006 GAS Sezgin, F.: Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vols. i–ix Leiden 1967–1984, vol. x–xv Frankfurt 2000–10 IJMES International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies IS Islamic Studies JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JQS Journal of Qurʾānic Studies JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam MW Muslim World OTP The Old Testament pseudepigrapha, ed. and tr. Charlesworth, J. et al., 2 vols, Garden City N.Y. 1983 SI Studia Islamica WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Notes on Contributors Frederick Colby is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Specializing in Arabic narratives on a central story in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, the night journey (isrāʾ) and ascension (miʿrāj), he is the author of Narrating Muhammad’s night journey: Tracing the development of the Ibn ʿAbbās Ascension discourse (Albany 2008). He also edited and translated a collection of early Sufi sayings about Muhammad’s ascension collected by Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī entitled The Subtleties of the Ascension (Louisville 2006). In addition, he co-edited (with Christiane Gruber) a collec- tion of interdisciplinary essays about Muhammad’s night journey and ascen- sion, The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-cultural encounters with the Islamic Miʿraj tales (Bloomington 2009). Currently, he is at work on a book focusing on dis- courses about the miʿrāj in western Islamdom during the middle periods. Christiane Gruber is Associate Professor of Islamic Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her primary fields of research are Islamic book arts, paintings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic ascension texts and images, about which she has written two books and edited (with Frederick Colby) a volume of articles. She also pursues research in Islamic manuscripts and codicology, having authored the online catalogue of Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress as well as edited the volume of articles, The Islamic manuscript tradition. Her third field of specialization is modern Islamic visual culture and post-revolutionary Iranian visual and material culture, about which she has written several arti- cles. She also has co-edited two volumes on Islamic and cross-cultural visual cultures. She is currently completing her next book entitled The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic texts and images. Jon Hoover is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden 2007) and several articles on Ibn Taymiyya and his foremost student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, discussing their theologies and their writings on Christianity. He is currently carrying out research on Ibn Taymiyya’s theology of God’s attributes and its reception. notes on contributors xi Mohammad Hassan Khalil is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Adjunct Professor of Law, and Director of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University, East Lansing. He is the author of Islam and the fate of others: The salvation question (New York 2012) and editor of Between heaven and hell: Islam, salvation, and the fate of others (New York 2013). Christian Lange is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Utrecht University. He is the author of Justice, punishment and the medieval Muslim imagination (Cambridge 2008), a study of notions of justice, both in this world and the next, in late- medieval Islam, as well as the co-editor of two volumes in medieval Islamic history.