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. Regarding the origin and nature of Iblis, there are two different viewpoints.

In the first version, before Iblis was cast down from heaven, he used to be a leading angel called ʿAzāzīl, appointed by God to obliterate the preceding inhabitants of the Earth (usually jinn), who became disobedient and destructive, to replace them with humans. After Iblis objected to God's decision to create Adam as a successor to the previous generation of sentient life, he was punished by being relegated and cast down to Earth as a shayṭān (devil). In the alternative account, Iblis has not been an angel 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. In this account, Iblis, being a jinn, refused to obey when Adam was created, leading to his downfall.

In the Islamic tradition, Iblis is often identified with ash-Shayṭān ("the Devil"), often known by the epithet ar-Rajim (Arabic: ٱلرَّجِيْم, 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 the Devil but "the truest monotheist" (Tawḥīd-i Iblīs), because he would worship only the Creator, and not his creations, while preserving the term shayṭān exclusively for evil forces.