I hope this is an appropriate question, as its more religious/mythological than historical. But I have seen several websites say that Azrael, the angel of death in Islam/Judaism, is supposed to have 4 heads, 4000 wings, and his body is composed entirely of tongues and eyes. What is the original/primary source for this? All of the websites just list a fairly recent book on angels and religion as the source, but I want to go read a translation of the original scripture/myth/codex/manuscript/whatever. Also if you know any other obscure primary sources with weird angels in them, feel free to recommend those as well. Thanks!
The book all the websites list is A Dictionary of Angels: Including the fallen Angels by Gustav Davidson. Should I get this?
This is a very deep rabbit hole and I can't get to the bottom of it…
Let's start with the obvious: Azrael is not mentioned by name in neither the bible nor the Quran. Surah 32:11 mentions “an angel of death” who has been identified with Azrael later on.
The idea of an angel having four heads is indeed biblical from the book of Ezechiel.
And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. (Ez1:5-6)
But how does Azrael get wings thousandfold?
All english sources for this that I could find refer to the Encyclopædia of religion and ethics by James Hastings. In the fourth volume (published 1908) there is an article about “Demons and Spirits (Muslim)” by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes. It can be found here. He writes on p.617:
But this description did not seem satisfying, and writers accordingly give him seventy thousand feet and four thousand wings, while his body is provided with as many eyes and tongues as there are men in the world.
Gaudefroy-Demombynes gives in his bibliography for the article a German book which is apparently his main source for this: M. Wolff: Muhammedanische Eschatologie. Leipzig:1872.
There is a digital copy available of this book here
There on p.20 f. M.Wolff writes (sorry for my bad translation!):
It is mentioned in the “Kitâb es-Sulûk” (the book of the journey to God and to perfection) by Muqâtil Ibn-Salmân, that the angel of death has a seat created by god out of light in the seventh—or as some say the fourth—heaven. He has seventy thousand feet and four thousand wings; his whole body is full of eyes* and tongues, and there does not exist a creature of God—which are human, birds and all breathing things—of which there is not in his body a tongue, a face, an eye and a hand.
I can't find any mention of this Kitâb es-Sulûk by Muqâtil Ibn-Salmân anywhere else, this may be some quite obscure arabic text.
There is a footnote (*) about the body “full of eyes” which mentions a jewish Haggadah (Abod. Sar. 20b) but with my really bad hebrew I think this might be reminiscing Ez1:18
And their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.
I can't find I way deeper in this rabbit hole … but I hope this is at least a point to search onwards from.