Writing about Jahannam.
In Islam, the place of punishment for unbelievers and other evildoers in the afterlife, or hell, is an "integral part of Islamic theology", and has "occupied an important place in the Muslim imagination". It is often called by the proper name Jahannam.
The importance of Hell in Islamic doctrine is that it is an essential element of the Day of Judgment, which is one of the six articles of faith (belief in God, angels, books, prophets, the Day of Resurrection and providence) "by which the Muslim faith is traditionally defined."
Punishment and suffering in Hell, in mainstream Islam, is physical, psychological and spiritual, and varies according to the sins of the condemned person. Its excruciating pain and horror described in the Qu'ran often parallels the pleasure and delights of paradise (Jannah). It is commonly believed by Muslims that confinement to hell is temporary for Muslims but not for others, and Muslim scholars disagree over whether Hell itself will last for eternity (the mainstream view), or whether God's mercy will lead to it eventually being eliminated.
The common belief among Muslims holds that Jahannam coexists with the temporal world, just as Jannah (the Islamic paradise), does, (rather than being created after Judgment Day). Hell is described physically in different ways by different sources of Islamic literature. It is enormous in size, and located below Paradise. It has seven levels (each one more severe than the one above it), (the Quran specifically refers to "seven gates"); but it is also said to be a huge pit over which the bridge of As-Sirāt crosses and the resurrected walk; to have mountains, rivers, valleys and "even oceans" filled with disgusting fluids; and also to be able to walk (controlled by reins), and ask questions, much like a sentient being.
In the Old Testament "Gehinnom" or Gei-ben-Hinnom, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom is an accursed Valley in Jerusalem where allegedly child sacrifices had taken place. In the gospels, Jesus talks about "Gehenna" (Greek rendering) as a place "where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched". (Mark 9:48) In the apocryphal book of 4 Ezra, written around the 2nd century, Gehinnom appears as a transcendental place of punishment. This change comes to completion in the Babylonian Talmud, written around 500 CE.
Most of how Muslims picture and think about Jahannam comes from the Quran, according to scholar Einar Thomassen, who found nearly 500 references to Jahannam/hell (using a variety of names) in the Quran.
An example of Quranic verses about hell is:
Surely the day of decision is (a day) appointed:
The day on which the trumpet shall be blown so you shall come forth in hosts,
And the heaven shall be opened so that it shall be all openings,
And the mountains shall be moved off so that they shall remain a mere semblance.
Surely hell lies in wait,
A place of resort for the inordinate,
Living therein for ages.
They shall not taste therein cool nor drink
But boiling and intensely cold water,
Requital corresponding.
Surely they feared not the account,
And called Our communications a lie, giving the lie (to the truth).
And We have recorded everything in a book,
So taste! For We will not add to you aught but chastisement (Q.78:17-30)
Among the different terms and phrases mentioned above that refer to hell in the Quran, Al-nar (the fire) is used 125 times, jahannam 77 times, jaheem (blazing flames) 26 times, (23 times by another count).
The description of Jahannam as a place of blazing fire appears in almost every verse in the Quran describing hell. One collection of descriptions of hell found in the Quran include "rather specific indications of the tortures of the Fire": flames that crackle and roar; fierce, boiling waters, scorching wind, and black smoke, roaring and boiling as if it would burst with rage.
Hell is described as being located below Paradise, having seven gates and "for every gate there shall be a specific party" of sinners (Q.15:43-44). The Quran also mentions wrongdoers having "degrees (or ranks) according to their deeds", (which some scholars believe refers to the "specific parties" at each of the gates); and of there being "seven heavens ˹in layers˺, and likewise for the earth" (Q.65:12), (though this doesn't indicate that the seven layers of earth are hell). The one mention of levels of hell is that hypocrites will be found in its very bottom.
Among those specifically mentioned in the Quran as being punished in hell are "most typically", (according to Thomassen), unbelievers (al-kafirun). These include people that lived during Mohammad's days, the Mushrikun (enemies of Mohammad who worshiped idols) (Q.10:24) and the "losers" (enemies of Mohammad who died in war against Mohammad) (Q.21:70), as well as broad categories of sinners: apostate Muslims (Q.3:86-87), "hypocritical Muslims" (Munafiq, i.e. those who pretend to submit to God while actually not believing) (Q.4:140), the self-content (“those who do not expect to meet Us [God], being pleased and content with this worldly life, and who are heedless of Our signs ...") (Q.10:7-8, 17:18) those who commit the eternal sin of shirk (Q.4:48,116), and those who do not believe in certain key doctrines of Islam: those who deny the divine origin of the Quran Q.74:16-26), or the coming of Judgement Day (Q.25:11-14).
In addition are those who have committed serious criminal offenses against other human beings: the murder of a believer (Q.4:93, 3:21), usury (Q.2:275), devouring the property of an orphan (Q.4:10), slander (Q.104), particularly of a chaste woman (Q.24:23).
Some prominent people mentioned in hadith and the Quran as suffering in hell or destined to suffer there are: Fir'awn (viz., the pharaoh of The Exodus, mentioned in Surah Yunus, specifically Q:10:90-92), the wives of Nuh (aka Noah) and Lut (aka Lot mentioned in Surah At-Tahrim, specifically Q:66-10), and Abu Lahab and his wife (who were contemporaries and enemies of Muhammad and mentioned in Surah Al-Masadd, specifically Q:111).
Punishments in hell described in the Quran tend to revolve around "skin sensation and digestion". Its wretched inhabitants sigh and wail, their scorched skins are constantly exchanged for new ones so that they can taste the torment anew, drink festering water and though death appears on all sides they cannot die. They are linked together in chains of 70 cubits, wearing pitch for clothing and fire on their faces have boiling water that will be poured over their heads, melting their insides as well as their skins, and hooks of iron to drag them back should they try to escape, their remorseful admissions of wrongdoing and pleading for forgiveness are in vain.
Hell's resemblance to a prison is strong. Inmates have chains around their necks (Q.13.5, 34:33, 36:8, 78:4, etc.), are "tethered" by hooks of iron (Q.22:21), and are guarded by "merciless angels" (Q.66.6). (These angels and their subordinates were later called Zabaniyah, term from another Quranic verse 96:18.)
Inmates of hell will be thirsty and hungry "constantly". Their fluids will include boiling water (Q.6:70), melted brass, and/or be bitterly cold, "unclean, full of pus". In addition to fire (Q.2:174) there are three different unique sources of food in hell:
Ḍari, a dry desert plant that is full of thorns and fails to relieve hunger or sustain a person (Q88:6);
ghislin, which is only mentioned once (in Q69:36, which states that it is the only nourishment in hell);
heads of devils hanging from the tree of zaqqum (Arabic: زقوم), that "springs out of the bottom of Hell". (These are mentioned three[67] or four times: Q.17:60 (as the "cursed tree"), Q.37:62-68, Q.44:43, Q.56:52.)
Psychological torments are humiliation (Q.3:178), and listening to "sighs and sobs". (Q.11:106).
There are at least a couple of indications that physical rather than "spiritual or psychological" punishment predominates in jahannam according to scholars Smith and Haddad. For example, the Quran notes that inmates of jahannam will be denied the pleasure of "gazing on the face of God", but nowhere does it state "that this loss contributed to the agony" the inmates experience. When the Quran describes the regret the inmates express for the deeds that put them in hell, it is "for the consequences" of the deeds "rather than for the actual commission of them".
There are many traditions on the location of paradise and hell, but not all of them "are easily pictured or indeed mutually reconcilable". For example, some describe hell as in the lowest earth, while one scholar (Al-Majlisī) describes hell as "surrounding" the earth. Islamic scholars speculated on where the entrance to hell might be located. Some thought the sea was the top level, or that the sulphourus well in Hadramawt (in present-day Yemen), allegedly haunted by the souls of the wicked, was the entrance to the underworld. Others considered the entrance in the valley of Hinnom (surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem). In a Persian work, the entry to hell is located in a gorge called Wadi Jahannam (in present-day Afghanistan).
Seven levels:
Einar Thomassen writes that the seven levels of hell mentioned in hadith "came to be associated" with the seven names used in the Quran to refer to hell, with a category of inmates assigned to each level.
Jahannam was reserved for Muslims who had committed grave sins.
al-Laza (the blaze) for the Jews
al-Hutama (the consuming fire) for the Christians
al-Sa'ir for the Sabians
al-Saqar (the scorching fire) for the Zoroastrians
al-jahim (the hot place) for the idolaters
al-Hawiya (the abyss) for the hypocrites.
"Various similar models exist with a slightly differing order of names", according to Christian Lange, and he and A. F. Klein give similar lists of levels. Al-Laza and al-Saqar are switched in Lange's list, and there is no accompanying type of unbelievers for each level. In A. F. Klein's list, it is the names of the levels that's not included, and instead of a level for Zoroastrians there is one for "witches and fortunetellers".
Another description of the layers of hell comes from "models such as that recorded by al-Thalabi (died 427/1035)" corresponding to "the seven earths of medieval Islamic cosmology"; the place of hell before the Day of Resurrection. Sources Miguel Asin Palacios and Patrick Hughes, Thomas Patrick Hughes describe these levels as:
Adim (surface), inhabited by mankind and jinn.
Basit (plain), the prison of winds, from where the winds come from.
Thaqil (region of distress), the antechamber of hell, in which dwell men with the mouth of a dog, the ears of a goat and the cloven hoof of an ox.
Batih (place of torrents or swamps), a valley through which flows a stream of boiling sulphur to torment the wicked. The dweller in this valley have no eyes and in place of feet, have wings.
Hayn (region of adversity), in which serpents of enormous size devour the infidels.
Masika/Sijjin (store or dungeon), the office where sins are recorded and where souls are tormented by scorpions of the size of mules.
As-Saqar (place of burning) and Athara (place of damp and great cold) the home of Iblis, who is chained, his hand fastened one in front of and the other behind him, except when set free by God to chastise his demons.
A large number of hadith about Muhammad's tour of hell during the miʿrāj, describe the various sinners and their torments. A summary of the uppermost level of hell, "reserved for deadly sins" and "subdivided into fourteen mansions, one close above the other, and each is a place of punishment for a different sin", was done by Asin Palacios:
The first mansion is an ocean of fire comprising seventy lesser seas, and on the shore of each sea stands a city of fire. In each city are seventy thousand dwellings; in each dwelling, seventy thousand coffins of fire, the tombs of men and women, who, stung by snakes and scorpions, shriek in anguish. These wretches, the Keeper enlightens Mahomet, were tyrants.
In the second mansion beings with blubber lips writhe under the red-hot forks of demons, while serpents enter their mouths and eat their bodies from within. These are faithless guardians, devoured now by serpents even as they once devoured the inheritances committed to their trust. Lower down usurers stagger about, weighed down by the reptiles in their bellies. Further, shameless women hang by the hair that they had exposed to the gaze of man. Still further down liars and slanderers hang by their tongues from red-hot hooks lacerating their faces with nails of copper. Those who neglected the rites of prayer and ablution are now monsters with the head of dogs and the bodies of swine and are the food of serpents. In the next mansion drunkards suffer the torture of raging thirst, which demons affect to quench with cups of a liquid fire that burns their entrails. Still lower, hired mourners and professional women singers hang head downwards and howl with pain as devils cut their tongues with burning shears. Adulterers are punished in a cone-shaped furnace... and their shrieks are drowned by the curses of their fellow damned at the stench of their putrid flesh. In the next mansion unfaithful wives hang by their breasts, their hands tied to their necks. Undutiful children are tortured in a fire by fiends with red-hot forks. Lower down, shackled in collars of fire, are those who failed to keep their word. Murderers are being knifed by demons in endless expiation of their crime. Lastly, in the fourteenth and lowest mansion of the first storey, are being crucified on burning pillars those who failed to keep the rule of prayer; as the flames devour them, their flesh is seen gradually to peel off their bones
Pit:
In addition to having levels, an important feature of Judgement Day is that hell is a huge pit over which the bridge of As-Sirāt crosses, and from which sinners fall making their arrival in hell Christian Lange writes "it made sense to picture [hell] as a vast subterranean funnel, spanned by the Bridge, which the resurrected pass on their way to paradise, with a brim (shafīr) and concentric circles leading down into a central pit at the bottom (qaʿr)."
But along with a pit and levels, hell also has mountains, rivers, valleys and "even oceans" filled with "fire, blood, and pus".
Along with being a pit and a series of levels, some scholars, like al-Ghazali and the thirteenth-century Muslim scholar Al-Qurtubi, describe hell as a gigantic sentient being, rather than a place. In Paradise and Hell-fire in Imam al Qurtubi, Qurtubi writes, "On the Day of Judgment, hell will be brought with seventy thousand reins. A single rein will be held by seventy thousand angels...". Based on verse 67:7 and verse 50:30, Jahannam inhales and has "breaths". Islamicity notes "the animalistic nature" of "The Fire" in Quranic verse 25:12: "When the Hellfire sees them from a distant place, they will hear its fury and roaring". According to verse 50:30, God will ask Jahannam if it is full and Jahannam will answer: "Are there any more (to come)?"
Sufism:
Many prominent Sufis preached "the centrality of the love of God" for which focus on eternal reward was a "distraction". Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya aka Rabia of Basra (died 801), is said to have proclaimed to passersby
"O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty".
Similarly, Bāyazīd Basṭāmī (d. 234/848) proclaimed the fire of "God's love" burns a thousand times more intensely than hellfire.
Others did not take literally the Quran's verses on Paradise and Hell as physical places where believers are rewarded with pleasure and sinners tortured with pain. According to ibn ʿArabī, Hell and Paradise are psychological states of the soul manifested after its separation from the body. He believed Hell and Paradise are only the distance or closeness from God, respectively, in the mind of resurrectant. The torments of Hell wrong-doers endure are actually their conception of their distance from God, created by their sinful indulgence in their earthly desires and the illusion of things other than God as existent. But distance from God is also only illusory, because everything other than God is an illusion, since "everything is a form of the degrees of the Divine Existence".
Other prominent Sufis had more conventional attitudes, such as al-Ghazali, who warned Muslims,
"your coming unto it (hellfire) is certain, while your salvation therefrom is no more than conjecture. … fill up your heart therefore with a dread of that destination."
The importance of Hell in Islamic doctrine is that it is an essential element of the Day of Judgment, which is one of the six articles of faith (belief in God, angels, books, prophets, the Day of Resurrection and providence) "by which the Muslim faith is traditionally defined."
Punishment and suffering in Hell, in mainstream Islam, is physical, psychological and spiritual, and varies according to the sins of the condemned person. Its excruciating pain and horror described in the Qu'ran often parallels the pleasure and delights of paradise (Jannah). It is commonly believed by Muslims that confinement to hell is temporary for Muslims but not for others, and Muslim scholars disagree over whether Hell itself will last for eternity (the mainstream view), or whether God's mercy will lead to it eventually being eliminated.
The common belief among Muslims holds that Jahannam coexists with the temporal world, just as Jannah (the Islamic paradise), does, (rather than being created after Judgment Day). Hell is described physically in different ways by different sources of Islamic literature. It is enormous in size, and located below Paradise. It has seven levels (each one more severe than the one above it), (the Quran specifically refers to "seven gates"); but it is also said to be a huge pit over which the bridge of As-Sirāt crosses and the resurrected walk; to have mountains, rivers, valleys and "even oceans" filled with disgusting fluids; and also to be able to walk (controlled by reins), and ask questions, much like a sentient being.
In the Old Testament "Gehinnom" or Gei-ben-Hinnom, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom is an accursed Valley in Jerusalem where allegedly child sacrifices had taken place. In the gospels, Jesus talks about "Gehenna" (Greek rendering) as a place "where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched". (Mark 9:48) In the apocryphal book of 4 Ezra, written around the 2nd century, Gehinnom appears as a transcendental place of punishment. This change comes to completion in the Babylonian Talmud, written around 500 CE.
Most of how Muslims picture and think about Jahannam comes from the Quran, according to scholar Einar Thomassen, who found nearly 500 references to Jahannam/hell (using a variety of names) in the Quran.
An example of Quranic verses about hell is:
Surely the day of decision is (a day) appointed:
The day on which the trumpet shall be blown so you shall come forth in hosts,
And the heaven shall be opened so that it shall be all openings,
And the mountains shall be moved off so that they shall remain a mere semblance.
Surely hell lies in wait,
A place of resort for the inordinate,
Living therein for ages.
They shall not taste therein cool nor drink
But boiling and intensely cold water,
Requital corresponding.
Surely they feared not the account,
And called Our communications a lie, giving the lie (to the truth).
And We have recorded everything in a book,
So taste! For We will not add to you aught but chastisement (Q.78:17-30)
[image/video - please log in to see this content]
Muhammad visits at the inmates of hell, tormented by Zabaniyya led by the guardians of hell also showing the tree Zaqqum with the heads of Shayateen. Miniature from "The David Collection Copenhagen"Among the different terms and phrases mentioned above that refer to hell in the Quran, Al-nar (the fire) is used 125 times, jahannam 77 times, jaheem (blazing flames) 26 times, (23 times by another count).
The description of Jahannam as a place of blazing fire appears in almost every verse in the Quran describing hell. One collection of descriptions of hell found in the Quran include "rather specific indications of the tortures of the Fire": flames that crackle and roar; fierce, boiling waters, scorching wind, and black smoke, roaring and boiling as if it would burst with rage.
Hell is described as being located below Paradise, having seven gates and "for every gate there shall be a specific party" of sinners (Q.15:43-44). The Quran also mentions wrongdoers having "degrees (or ranks) according to their deeds", (which some scholars believe refers to the "specific parties" at each of the gates); and of there being "seven heavens ˹in layers˺, and likewise for the earth" (Q.65:12), (though this doesn't indicate that the seven layers of earth are hell). The one mention of levels of hell is that hypocrites will be found in its very bottom.
Among those specifically mentioned in the Quran as being punished in hell are "most typically", (according to Thomassen), unbelievers (al-kafirun). These include people that lived during Mohammad's days, the Mushrikun (enemies of Mohammad who worshiped idols) (Q.10:24) and the "losers" (enemies of Mohammad who died in war against Mohammad) (Q.21:70), as well as broad categories of sinners: apostate Muslims (Q.3:86-87), "hypocritical Muslims" (Munafiq, i.e. those who pretend to submit to God while actually not believing) (Q.4:140), the self-content (“those who do not expect to meet Us [God], being pleased and content with this worldly life, and who are heedless of Our signs ...") (Q.10:7-8, 17:18) those who commit the eternal sin of shirk (Q.4:48,116), and those who do not believe in certain key doctrines of Islam: those who deny the divine origin of the Quran Q.74:16-26), or the coming of Judgement Day (Q.25:11-14).
In addition are those who have committed serious criminal offenses against other human beings: the murder of a believer (Q.4:93, 3:21), usury (Q.2:275), devouring the property of an orphan (Q.4:10), slander (Q.104), particularly of a chaste woman (Q.24:23).
Some prominent people mentioned in hadith and the Quran as suffering in hell or destined to suffer there are: Fir'awn (viz., the pharaoh of The Exodus, mentioned in Surah Yunus, specifically Q:10:90-92), the wives of Nuh (aka Noah) and Lut (aka Lot mentioned in Surah At-Tahrim, specifically Q:66-10), and Abu Lahab and his wife (who were contemporaries and enemies of Muhammad and mentioned in Surah Al-Masadd, specifically Q:111).
Punishments in hell described in the Quran tend to revolve around "skin sensation and digestion". Its wretched inhabitants sigh and wail, their scorched skins are constantly exchanged for new ones so that they can taste the torment anew, drink festering water and though death appears on all sides they cannot die. They are linked together in chains of 70 cubits, wearing pitch for clothing and fire on their faces have boiling water that will be poured over their heads, melting their insides as well as their skins, and hooks of iron to drag them back should they try to escape, their remorseful admissions of wrongdoing and pleading for forgiveness are in vain.
Hell's resemblance to a prison is strong. Inmates have chains around their necks (Q.13.5, 34:33, 36:8, 78:4, etc.), are "tethered" by hooks of iron (Q.22:21), and are guarded by "merciless angels" (Q.66.6). (These angels and their subordinates were later called Zabaniyah, term from another Quranic verse 96:18.)
Inmates of hell will be thirsty and hungry "constantly". Their fluids will include boiling water (Q.6:70), melted brass, and/or be bitterly cold, "unclean, full of pus". In addition to fire (Q.2:174) there are three different unique sources of food in hell:
Ḍari, a dry desert plant that is full of thorns and fails to relieve hunger or sustain a person (Q88:6);
ghislin, which is only mentioned once (in Q69:36, which states that it is the only nourishment in hell);
heads of devils hanging from the tree of zaqqum (Arabic: زقوم), that "springs out of the bottom of Hell". (These are mentioned three[67] or four times: Q.17:60 (as the "cursed tree"), Q.37:62-68, Q.44:43, Q.56:52.)
Psychological torments are humiliation (Q.3:178), and listening to "sighs and sobs". (Q.11:106).
There are at least a couple of indications that physical rather than "spiritual or psychological" punishment predominates in jahannam according to scholars Smith and Haddad. For example, the Quran notes that inmates of jahannam will be denied the pleasure of "gazing on the face of God", but nowhere does it state "that this loss contributed to the agony" the inmates experience. When the Quran describes the regret the inmates express for the deeds that put them in hell, it is "for the consequences" of the deeds "rather than for the actual commission of them".
There are many traditions on the location of paradise and hell, but not all of them "are easily pictured or indeed mutually reconcilable". For example, some describe hell as in the lowest earth, while one scholar (Al-Majlisī) describes hell as "surrounding" the earth. Islamic scholars speculated on where the entrance to hell might be located. Some thought the sea was the top level, or that the sulphourus well in Hadramawt (in present-day Yemen), allegedly haunted by the souls of the wicked, was the entrance to the underworld. Others considered the entrance in the valley of Hinnom (surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem). In a Persian work, the entry to hell is located in a gorge called Wadi Jahannam (in present-day Afghanistan).
Seven levels:
Einar Thomassen writes that the seven levels of hell mentioned in hadith "came to be associated" with the seven names used in the Quran to refer to hell, with a category of inmates assigned to each level.
Jahannam was reserved for Muslims who had committed grave sins.
al-Laza (the blaze) for the Jews
al-Hutama (the consuming fire) for the Christians
al-Sa'ir for the Sabians
al-Saqar (the scorching fire) for the Zoroastrians
al-jahim (the hot place) for the idolaters
al-Hawiya (the abyss) for the hypocrites.
"Various similar models exist with a slightly differing order of names", according to Christian Lange, and he and A. F. Klein give similar lists of levels. Al-Laza and al-Saqar are switched in Lange's list, and there is no accompanying type of unbelievers for each level. In A. F. Klein's list, it is the names of the levels that's not included, and instead of a level for Zoroastrians there is one for "witches and fortunetellers".
Another description of the layers of hell comes from "models such as that recorded by al-Thalabi (died 427/1035)" corresponding to "the seven earths of medieval Islamic cosmology"; the place of hell before the Day of Resurrection. Sources Miguel Asin Palacios and Patrick Hughes, Thomas Patrick Hughes describe these levels as:
Adim (surface), inhabited by mankind and jinn.
Basit (plain), the prison of winds, from where the winds come from.
Thaqil (region of distress), the antechamber of hell, in which dwell men with the mouth of a dog, the ears of a goat and the cloven hoof of an ox.
Batih (place of torrents or swamps), a valley through which flows a stream of boiling sulphur to torment the wicked. The dweller in this valley have no eyes and in place of feet, have wings.
Hayn (region of adversity), in which serpents of enormous size devour the infidels.
Masika/Sijjin (store or dungeon), the office where sins are recorded and where souls are tormented by scorpions of the size of mules.
As-Saqar (place of burning) and Athara (place of damp and great cold) the home of Iblis, who is chained, his hand fastened one in front of and the other behind him, except when set free by God to chastise his demons.
A large number of hadith about Muhammad's tour of hell during the miʿrāj, describe the various sinners and their torments. A summary of the uppermost level of hell, "reserved for deadly sins" and "subdivided into fourteen mansions, one close above the other, and each is a place of punishment for a different sin", was done by Asin Palacios:
The first mansion is an ocean of fire comprising seventy lesser seas, and on the shore of each sea stands a city of fire. In each city are seventy thousand dwellings; in each dwelling, seventy thousand coffins of fire, the tombs of men and women, who, stung by snakes and scorpions, shriek in anguish. These wretches, the Keeper enlightens Mahomet, were tyrants.
In the second mansion beings with blubber lips writhe under the red-hot forks of demons, while serpents enter their mouths and eat their bodies from within. These are faithless guardians, devoured now by serpents even as they once devoured the inheritances committed to their trust. Lower down usurers stagger about, weighed down by the reptiles in their bellies. Further, shameless women hang by the hair that they had exposed to the gaze of man. Still further down liars and slanderers hang by their tongues from red-hot hooks lacerating their faces with nails of copper. Those who neglected the rites of prayer and ablution are now monsters with the head of dogs and the bodies of swine and are the food of serpents. In the next mansion drunkards suffer the torture of raging thirst, which demons affect to quench with cups of a liquid fire that burns their entrails. Still lower, hired mourners and professional women singers hang head downwards and howl with pain as devils cut their tongues with burning shears. Adulterers are punished in a cone-shaped furnace... and their shrieks are drowned by the curses of their fellow damned at the stench of their putrid flesh. In the next mansion unfaithful wives hang by their breasts, their hands tied to their necks. Undutiful children are tortured in a fire by fiends with red-hot forks. Lower down, shackled in collars of fire, are those who failed to keep their word. Murderers are being knifed by demons in endless expiation of their crime. Lastly, in the fourteenth and lowest mansion of the first storey, are being crucified on burning pillars those who failed to keep the rule of prayer; as the flames devour them, their flesh is seen gradually to peel off their bones
Pit:
In addition to having levels, an important feature of Judgement Day is that hell is a huge pit over which the bridge of As-Sirāt crosses, and from which sinners fall making their arrival in hell Christian Lange writes "it made sense to picture [hell] as a vast subterranean funnel, spanned by the Bridge, which the resurrected pass on their way to paradise, with a brim (shafīr) and concentric circles leading down into a central pit at the bottom (qaʿr)."
But along with a pit and levels, hell also has mountains, rivers, valleys and "even oceans" filled with "fire, blood, and pus".
Along with being a pit and a series of levels, some scholars, like al-Ghazali and the thirteenth-century Muslim scholar Al-Qurtubi, describe hell as a gigantic sentient being, rather than a place. In Paradise and Hell-fire in Imam al Qurtubi, Qurtubi writes, "On the Day of Judgment, hell will be brought with seventy thousand reins. A single rein will be held by seventy thousand angels...". Based on verse 67:7 and verse 50:30, Jahannam inhales and has "breaths". Islamicity notes "the animalistic nature" of "The Fire" in Quranic verse 25:12: "When the Hellfire sees them from a distant place, they will hear its fury and roaring". According to verse 50:30, God will ask Jahannam if it is full and Jahannam will answer: "Are there any more (to come)?"
Sufism:
Many prominent Sufis preached "the centrality of the love of God" for which focus on eternal reward was a "distraction". Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya aka Rabia of Basra (died 801), is said to have proclaimed to passersby
"O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty".
Similarly, Bāyazīd Basṭāmī (d. 234/848) proclaimed the fire of "God's love" burns a thousand times more intensely than hellfire.
Others did not take literally the Quran's verses on Paradise and Hell as physical places where believers are rewarded with pleasure and sinners tortured with pain. According to ibn ʿArabī, Hell and Paradise are psychological states of the soul manifested after its separation from the body. He believed Hell and Paradise are only the distance or closeness from God, respectively, in the mind of resurrectant. The torments of Hell wrong-doers endure are actually their conception of their distance from God, created by their sinful indulgence in their earthly desires and the illusion of things other than God as existent. But distance from God is also only illusory, because everything other than God is an illusion, since "everything is a form of the degrees of the Divine Existence".
Other prominent Sufis had more conventional attitudes, such as al-Ghazali, who warned Muslims,
"your coming unto it (hellfire) is certain, while your salvation therefrom is no more than conjecture. … fill up your heart therefore with a dread of that destination."
