ABSTRACT
ANGELS ARE UNSEEN BEINGS of a luminous and spiritual substance that act as intermediaries between God and the visible world. Belief in their existence enters into the definition of faith itself: "The Messenger believes in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and the believers: Each one believes in God, His angels, His Books, and His Messengers" (II, 285; cf. II, 177, IV, 136). The word for angel, malak (pi. mala'ikah), whose root meaning is "messenger," occurs more than eighty times in the Quran and repeatedly in the Hadlth. The Islamic concepts of creation, revelation, prophecy, the events that occur in the world, worship, the spiritual life, death, resurrection, and the central position of man in the cosmos cannot be understood without reference to the angels. In philosophical and Sufi texts, angelology is often an essential component of both cosmology and spiritual psychology, since the angels enter into the definition of both the macrocosm and the microcosm.
