Belief in what happens after death is part of the faith. A Muslim believes in this world, and also in what follows it: the stage of the grave, the Resurrection, the Day of Judgment, and the final home, Paradise or the Hellfire. This page is about the first of those stages, the life between a person’s death and the Resurrection. It is called al-barzakh [the stage between this world and the Hereafter], and it gives this page its name.
What can be known about this stage comes from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and from the scholars who explained them. This page sets out the stage as it stands in the Explanation of Aqidah Wasitiyyah and the Explanation of the Three Fundamental Principles by Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-’Uthaymeen, in Tafsir as-Sa’di, and in the Abridged Tafsir of Ibn Kathir.
Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen places this stage in the whole journey of a person. Man, he writes, passes through five stages:
Man passes through five stages: the stage of nonexistence, then, the stage of pregnancy, then, the stage of this world, then the stage of Al-Barzakh (state inbetween the world and the Hereafter), then the Hereafter.
The fourth of these stages is the subject of this page. It begins at death and runs until the Hour, and everything in it belongs to the unseen.
That last point matters before anything else on this page. The state after death is not something the senses can reach or measure, and Ibn Uthaymeen states it plainly in his answer to those who deny what the grave holds:
That the state experienced after death (al-Barzakh) is from the affairs of the hidden and the unseen and cannot be reached by the senses. If it could be reached by the senses then the benefit in having eemaan in the hidden and the unseen would pass away, and the true Believers and the deniers would be the same in their affirmation of it.
So what follows does not rest on reasoning about what the grave must be like. It rests on what has been reported, in the words of the books themselves.
The Moment of Death
The stage begins at the moment of death, and the books describe that moment for the believer as a moment of glad tidings. Ibn Uthaymeen, in his explanation of the belief in the Last Day, quotes the verse in which Allah describes the angels taking the righteous:
“Those whose lives the Angels take while they are in a pious state saying (to them): ‘Salamun ‘Alaikum (peace be on you) enter you Paradise.’”
(Surah an-Nahl 16:32)
This is at the moment of death, he writes, and he continues with what is said to the believer’s soul as it leaves:
“It will be said to the soul of a believer, come out, O pure soul, to the forgiveness and pleasure of Allah.”
The soul does not leave unwilling. He explains:
It will become joyous for this glad tiding, and depart easily, even if the body is experiencing agonies, since the soul is cheerful and happy (to depart).
This page keeps to what the held books state about this moment. The questioning that follows it, in the grave, is the next part of the stage.
The Life of the Grave
After death, a person enters the stage known as the life of the grave. The name can mislead if it is taken narrowly, because the stage covers everyone who has died, wherever his body came to rest. Ibn Uthaymeen explains the wider sense of the word grave:
The grave refers to the place where a dead person is buried; what is intended is wider in sense; it includes the Barzakh - that is, the life between death, and the advent of the Hour, whether the dead person is buried or devoured by predatory animals on the land, or by fish in the sea, or he is destroyed by violent wind.
So the life of the grave is the life of al-barzakh itself: the life between death and the advent of the Hour [the Day of Resurrection]. It begins the moment a person dies and continues until he is raised. Two things are reported about it on every account: the questioning, and the condition in which a person waits. This page takes them in turn, briefly, because the full evidence for both stands on the Punishment of the Grave page, and it is not repeated here.
The Questioning in the Grave
The narrations describe two angels coming to the deceased in his grave and questioning him about his Lord, his religion, and his Prophet. The believer answers with firmness, because Allah grants him firmness. The hypocrite and the disbeliever cannot answer. The scholars explain that during this questioning the soul is returned to the body in a manner that suits the life of the grave; it is not a return to the life of this world, because this stage has its own realities and its own conditions.
That the dead are questioned is stated in the narration of A’ishah, may Allah be pleased with her. Ibn Kathir records her words in his explanation of the verse on Pharaoh’s people, and notes that Muslim recorded it as well. The Prophet ﷺ said:
“Verily you will be tested in the graves.”
A’ishah also said that after this, the Messenger of Allah used to seek refuge with Allah from the torment of the grave. The refuge the Prophet ﷺ taught, and the hadeeths [narrations from the Prophet ﷺ] that carry the questioning in full, are set out with their evidence on the page devoted to the grave itself: What Is the Punishment of the Grave?
The Condition of the Grave
As for the condition in which a person waits: if he was righteous, his grave is made spacious for him and he is in comfort and bliss. If he was wicked, the grave is a place of punishment and distress for him. Both the bliss and the punishment are affirmed in many authentic narrations, and both belong to the unseen that the believer accepts as it has been reported.
Two verses of the Qur’an frame this waiting. Behind the dying person who pleads to be sent back stands a barrier, al-barzakh, until the day he is raised (Surah al-Mu’minun 23:100), and Allah promises firmness to those who believe, in this world and in the Hereafter (Surah Ibrahim 14:27). Both verses are quoted and explained on What Is the Punishment of the Grave?, where this subject is treated in full; they are given here in summary so that the evidence stands in one place on the site.
Death and Sleep
One part of this stage can be approached through something every person experiences: sleep. Allah joins death and sleep in a single verse:
“Allah takes [people’s] souls at the time of their death, and [He takes the souls] of the living when they sleep. He keeps the souls of those for whom He has decreed death, and He sends the others back for an appointed term. Surely in that there are signs for people who reflect.”
(Surah az-Zumar 39:42)
As-Sa’di opens his explanation of the verse with who holds the soul in both states:
Here Allah tells us that it is He alone Who controls people’s affairs both when they are awake and when they are asleep, when they are alive and when they die.
He names sleep itself a death, the lesser death:
This is the lesser death. He takes the souls of living when they sleep.
And he draws out what the verse shows about the soul, and about where the souls of the dead are:
This verse indicates that the rooh or nafs (the soul) is an independent entity, the essence of which is different from that of the body; it is created and controlled by Allah, when He takes it and either keeps it or sends it back. The souls of the living and the dead meet and converse in al-barzakh, then Allah sends back the souls of the living and keeps the souls of the dead.
Ibn Uthaymeen makes the same connection from what a person experiences. A sleeper, he writes, may pass the night in bliss or in pain, while his body never leaves his bed:
As for what is experienced, then a person who is asleep may see in his dream that he is in a spacious and splendid place where he is in bliss, or that he is in a restricted and frightening place where he feels pain, and sometimes that which he sees may cause him to awaken. Yet despite this he remains upon his bed, in his room, in the same state that he was in before.
And he closes the point with the name Allah gives to sleep:
Then sleep is the brother of death, and therefore Allah, the Most High, calls it wafaat (‘passing away’)
So death and sleep stand together in the books: in sleep the soul is taken and returned, and in death it is taken and kept, until the appointed term that no one passes.
The Return to Allah
The stage does not end the story. The same verse pattern that carries a person into the grave carries him out of it again. Allah says:
“How can you disbelieve in Allah, when you were lifeless, then He gave you life, then He will cause you to die, then He will bring you back to life, then to Him you will return?”
(Surah al-Baqarah 2:28)
As-Sa’di walks through the stages inside the verse, and the grave stands in the middle of his walk:
then He will cause you to die when you reach the appointed time, and He will requite you in the grave, then He will bring you back to life at the time of the Resurrection, then to Him you will return and He will repay you in full?
Lifeless, then life, then death and the requital of the grave, then life again, then the return to Allah and the repayment in full. The barzakh is one stage in that walk, neither the first nor the last, and what a person meets in it is the beginning of what he is repaid.
Preparing for the Hereafter
The point of learning this stage is not knowledge alone. The verse on sleep ends by calling itself a sign for people who reflect, and reflection on death changes how a person lives the stage he is in now. This world is the third of the five stages, and it is the only one in which a person can act for the stages that follow it.
So the believer prepares. He holds to the faith he will be questioned about: his Lord, his religion, and his Prophet ﷺ. He asks Allah for firmness, in this life and at its end. And he treats his deeds as what he will meet, because the repayment named in the verses begins in the grave and is completed at the return.
What follows this stage, the Resurrection and what comes after it, is treated on the pages listed below. May Allah make our graves spacious for us, and grant us firmness when we are questioned.
References
- Explanation of Aqidah Wasitiyyah, Ibn Taymiyyah’s creed with Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-’Uthaymeen’s explanation, Vol. 2: printed p. 156 (the five stages of man); printed p. 166 (the grave in its wider sense); printed p. 179 (the moment of death, on Surah an-Nahl 16:32). This edition prints the divine name as “Allâh”; in the passages quoted on this page it is spelled “Allah”, by the site’s spelling decision.
- Explanation of the Three Fundamental Principles, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-’Uthaymeen: printed p. 178 (what the sleeper experiences, and sleep as the brother of death); printed p. 179 (the state after death is from the unseen). This book prints the divine name as “Allaah”; on this page it is spelled “Allah”, by the site’s spelling decision.
- Tafsir as-Sa’di, Shaykh ‘Abdur-Rahman ibn Nasir as-Sa’di, International Islamic Publishing House (IIPH), English Edition 1, 2018, translated by Nasiruddin al-Khattab. Vol. 1: on Surah al-Baqarah 2:28, printed p. 61. Vol. 8: on Surah az-Zumar 39:42, printed pp. 307-308.
- Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged), English translation, the ten-volume compilation held in the library (no publisher is named for this copy): on Surah Ghafir 40:46, combined file PDF pp. 4453-4454.
Further Reading
- What Is the Punishment of the Grave?: the punishment of the grave, its evidence and who is punished
- The Hereafter: the levels of people in the Hereafter, rank by rank
- Belief in the Last Day: the fifth pillar of faith and what it comprises
- Paradise & The Hereafter: Paradise and the Hellfire, and why belief in them matters
Verified on 2026-10-27 against the books listed above.