Zabaniyah
The Zabaniyah (Arabic: الزبانية, romanized: zabāniyya) is the name of a group of angels in Islam who are tasked to torture the sinners in hell.
[Quran 4][7] As angels, the Zabaniyah are, despite their gruesome appearance and actions, ultimately subordinate to God,[8]: 82 and thus their punishments are considered in Islamic theology as just.
[17] Based on a Hadith transmitted by Umar, the second Rashidun caliph,[18] Al-Muzani and Ibn Kathir has stated that the belief to the existence of the angels who guarding hell as a part of the second article of Six Pillars of Faith in Islam.
[22] Both Ibn Rajab,[13] and Al-Qurtubi narrates in his exegesis on Surah 66:6 that the angels of hell were created from anger, and that tormenting creatures is to them like food for the children of Adam.
[23] A tradition from At-Tadhkirah, a book authored by Al-Qurtubi, recorded that one of Zabaniyah was named Daqä'il (Arabic: دقائل) accompanied the Angel of Death whenever he take the soul of a sinner.
[Notes 1][38] Another hadith which recorded by Sunan al-Tirmidhi and Aḥmad ibn Mūsá Ibn Mardawayh has reported that the number of nineteen also appeared when Muhammad being tested by group of that era contemporary Jewish Rabbi to prove if he is truly a prophet, by questioning how many guardians of hell there were, which Muhammad responded as nineteen.
[73] Muhammad al-Bukhari, in his commentary of his collection of Hadiths regarding afterlife (Barzakh), added that the Zabaniyah will also inflict punishments towards peoples who commit Riba or usury by pelting their mouth with rocks while forcing them to swim in river of blood.
Adam ibn Abd al-aziz describes the zabaniya as angels of death who, according to the Quran (4:97, 32:11), conduct the souls of sinners and question them in the grave.
[24][25] Ka'b al-Ahbar has narrated a long and detailed tradition of Non-canonical regarding the Zabaniyah role during the judgment day, where they were tasked to gather and suppress all the sinners, both Muslims and non-Muslims.
[Notes 11] Both modern,[83] and classical scholars has interpreted the verse of Al-Muddaththir 69:30 about how the group of Zabaniyah throwing the sinners into Jahannam.
[2] In the more expanded details from Tafsir Ibn Kathir, it was explained the Zabaniyah will shackle the inmates, cursing them, pouring boiled water on top of their head, while at the same time force-feeding then with fruits of Zaqqum tree.
However, al-Sa'di further explained more vividly as the Zabaniyah also will shoving the hot chains to the inmates rectums until it emerged from their mouth; while modern scholars such as Muhammad ibn Shalih ash-Shawi, and Muhammad Sulaiman Al-Ashqar [ar] has traced the exegesis about the torture by shoving of chains into the inmate's rectum was traced from exegesis by Sufyan al-Thawri.
[77] Meanwhile, for the non-Muslim, Ka'b has described the Zabaniyah shackle and drag them more severely than Muslim sinners into hell while burning them as they walked in, then punish them for eternity.
[91] As part of Isma'ili eschatology, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi identified the zabaniya with the seven planets, who administer the upper barzakhs, indicating that there is a kind of hell within the celestrial spheres.
[96] In favor of this theory is, that the poetress convert al-Khansa mentions zabaniya in one of her poems as supernatural creatures similar to Sa'aali (a type of jinn).
[98] As for the number nineteen, independent researcher Gürdal Aksoy suspects it refers to the sum of the seven planets and twelve signs of the zodiac,[99] as found in Mandaen literature, which, while suggestive, is ultimately inconclusive.
[101] In a similar vein, Angelika Neuwirth sees the Qur'an's reference to nineteen as an "ostentatiously enigmatic element",[102] whereas Alan Jones suggests that "initially the meaning of 'nineteen' would have been vague.
