ʻAdhāb al-Qabr

ʻAdhāb al-qabr, “the punishment of the grave,” is the chastisement that befalls the wicked in the interval between death and the Day of Resurrection, in the state called the barzakh, the barrier that lies between this world and the next. With its counterpart, the bliss granted to the righteous in the grave, it forms part of the teaching of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ concerning the life of the barzakh, and belief in it is reckoned by the scholars among the matters of faith established by the Qurʼān and the abundant ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ. The punishment and the favour of the grave figure in the sīrah among the unseen realities of which the Prophet ﷺ gave knowledge, and seeking refuge from the torment of the grave was a part of his regular supplication.

The barzakh is the abode of the dead from the time of their death until their resurrection, in which the soul, separated from the body, knows reward or punishment, and the body in the grave partakes of the soul’s state in a manner known to God. The Qurʼān speaks of the barrier behind the dead until the Day they are raised, and of the people of Pharaoh exposed to the Fire morning and evening before the coming of the Hour, a verse that many of the scholars adduced as a proof of the punishment of the grave; and it speaks of God making firm the believers with the firm word in this life and in the next, which the Prophet ﷺ explained as the firmness given to the believer in the questioning of the grave.

The sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ sets forth the state of the grave in detail. When the dead is laid in the grave and his companions depart, two angels, named in the reports Munkar and Nakīr, come to him and seat him and question him of his Lord, his religion, and his Prophet ﷺ. The believer answers that his Lord is God, his religion Islam, and his Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, and there is opened for him a door to the Garden, and his grave is made spacious and filled with light; but the unbeliever and the hypocrite, unable to answer, are struck and the grave is straitened upon them, and there is opened for them a door to the Fire, so that they taste its torment until the Day of Resurrection. By these descriptions the Prophet ﷺ made known the reality of the questioning and the recompense of the grave.

The Prophet ﷺ spoke often of the punishment of the grave and sought refuge from it, and he taught his Companions to seek refuge from it in their prayers. It is related that he passed by two graves and said that their occupants were being punished, and not for a great matter—the one for tale-bearing and the other for not guarding himself from his urine—and that he placed upon the graves a branch, hoping it might lighten their torment while it remained moist. He taught that the grave is the first of the stages of the Hereafter, and that it is either a garden of the gardens of the Garden or a pit of the pits of the Fire; and ʻĀʼishah related that he never prayed a prayer thereafter without seeking refuge from the torment of the grave.

Among the causes of the punishment of the grave named in the sunnah are tale-bearing and slander, heedlessness in the matter of ritual purity, lying, and the neglect of the Qurʼān and the prayer; and among the things that protect from it are martyrdom in the way of God, the recitation of certain sūrahs, steadfastness upon faith, and the mercy of God. The Prophet ﷺ taught that the martyr is spared the trial of the grave, and that the believer firm in faith is given the firm word and answers the questioners and rests in his grave as in a garden. Thus, the teaching of the grave held out both a warning against the deeds that bring their torment and encouragement to the faith and the works that bring its peace.

The belief in the life of the barzakh and the punishment and bliss of the grave belonged to the unseen that the Prophet ﷺ proclaimed, and his Companions received it and transmitted it among the certainties of faith. Seeking refuge from the torment of the grave, from the torment of the Fire, from the trial of life and death, and from the trial of the False Messiah, was a supplication that the Prophet ﷺ taught and enjoined, and it remained a part of the devotion of the community after him. The reality of the grave’s recompense, hidden from the living, was among the matters of the Hereafter of which the Prophet ﷺ gave sure knowledge according to the Qurʼān and the sunnah.

In the sīrah tradition, ʻAdhāb al-qabr is remembered as the punishment of the grave that the Prophet ﷺ made known among the realities of the barzakh: the questioning of the two angels, the straitening of the grave upon the wicked and its widening for the believer, and the recompense that begins in the grave before the Day of Resurrection. Grounded in the Qurʼān and detailed in the sunnah, joined to the bliss of the grave for the faithful and to the Prophet’s ﷺ constant seeking of refuge from its torment, the belief in the punishment of the grave stands among the teachings of the unseen that the Prophet ﷺ delivered to his community and that framed their hope and their fear of the life to come.

## References

1 Qurʼān 6:93; 9:101; 14:27; 23:99–100; 40:45–46. 2 Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, “Kitāb al-janāʼiz,” bāb mā jāʼa fī ʻadhāb al-qabr, nos. 1369–1378. 3 Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, “Kitāb al-janna,” bāb ʻarḍ maqʻad al-mayyit min al-janna aw al-nār, nos. 2866–2872. 4 al-Bayhaqī, Ithbāt ʻadhāb al-qabr (Amman: Dār al-Furqān, 1985), 25–85. 5 Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Kitāb al-rūḥ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmiyya, 1975), 70–140. 6 al-Qurṭubī, al-Tadhkira fī aḥwāl al-mawtá wa-umūr al-ākhira (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth, 1980), 1:135–200. 7 A. J. Wensinck and [A. S. Tritton], “ʻAdhāb al-Ḳabr,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 1:186–87.