Adam and Eve

In the Old Testament, the first man and woman. The familiar story of their creation, sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden is told in the first chapters of Genesis and forms the basis for Milton Paradise Lost.

Muslim beliefs add to the Bible story the tradition that--

God sent Gabriel, Michael, and Israfel one after the other to fetch, seven handfuls of earth from different depths and of different colors for the creation of Adam (thereby accounting for the varying colors of mankind) but they returned empty-handed because Earth foresaw that the creature to be made from her would rebel against God and draw down his curse on her, whereupon Azrael was sent. He executed the commission. and for that reason was appointed to separate the souls from the bodies and hence became the Angel of Death.

The earth he had taken was carried into Arabia to a place between Mecca and Tayef, where it was kneaded by the angels, fashioned into human form by God, and left to dry for either forty days or forty years. It is also said that while the clay was being endowed with life and a soul, when the breath breathed by God into the nostrils had reached as far as the navel, the only half-living Adam tried to rise up and got an ugly fall for his pains.