Ḥabīb

Ḥabīb appears within accounts of the Prophet Muḥammad’s Night Journey (Miʿrāj) as preserved in early Islamic narrative cycles. The tradition of an angel so described is attested to early commentators (summarized as reaching back to the 8th-century scholar Muqātil ibn Sulaymān) and was present in codified Mirāj narratives by the 9th–10th centuries CE; later Sufi exegesis incorporated the imagery into devotional commentary on unity and reconciliation (sources summarized from modern reference accounts, including the cited Wikipedia entry and linked data).

Classical accounts describe Ḥabīb as miraculously composed of both fire and ice (or snow) such that the fire does not melt the ice and the ice does not extinguish the fire. Later Sufi-influenced descriptions extend this motif to a host of similar angels described as half-fire and half-snow.

The primary characteristic attributed to Ḥabīb is the paradoxical coexistence of opposites (fire and ice) without mutual destruction; this is presented in the literature as a theological sign demonstrating God's power to create the impossible and harmonize estranged forces. In later Sufi-influenced writings the similar angelic host is said to continuously pray for the reconciliation and unity of believers, assigning them an intercessory or liturgical function in devotional discourse. The sources do not describe transactional interactions with humans or a catalogue of combative powers.