Was Iblis an Angel or a Jinn?
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In Quran 2:34, 7:11, 15:28–31, 17:61, 20:116 and 38:71–74, Allah commands the angels to prostrate to Adam, “and they prostrated, except Iblis” — a grammatical exception that places Iblis among the angels addressed. Yet Quran 18:50 states flatly: “he was of the jinn, and he departed from the command of his Lord.” The problem compounds: Quran 66:6 says angels “do not disobey Allah in what He commands them,” so an angel Iblis could not have rebelled, while a jinn Iblis was never commanded in the verses that only address angels.
Common Muslim Responses
The classical answer makes the exception in 2:34 a “disconnected exception” (istithna munqati) — Iblis was a jinn present among the angels and included in the command by association. Some traditions (via Ibn Abbas) say he was an angel-class being from a tribe called jinn.
Counter-Rebuttal
Critics observe that the disconnected-exception reading must be invoked in all seven retellings, and that the Ibn Abbas tradition simply restates the contradiction as biography. The simplest source-critical explanation is that the Quran inherits two distinct late-antique traditions — the Christian fallen-angel narrative (cf. the Cave of Treasures) and an Arabian jinn demonology — without fully reconciling them.