over them, it will call out, “People of the Fire! What is it that you desire? What is it that you ask for?” They will then recall the clouds of the worldly life and the water that used to descend upon them, and they will say, “Our Lord, we ask for drink.” So it will rain down upon them fetters that merely add to their fetters, chains that add to their chains, and glowing embers that make the Fire blaze even more fiercely over them. (1)

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā said:
Bishr ibn al-Walīd al-Kindī narrated to us; Saʿīd ibn Zarbay narrated to us; from Ḥumayd ibn Hilāl; from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, who said:

ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd said to his companions, “Which people of the Fire will suffer the most severe torment?”
A man replied, “The hypocrites.”
He said, “You have spoken the truth. Do you know how they will be punished?”
The man said, “No.”
He said, “They will be placed in iron coffins that will be clamped shut upon them; then they will be cast into the lowest depth of the Fire, inside furnaces narrower than a spear-point, (2) a place called ‘the Pit of Sorrow.’ It will be sealed over certain people in accordance with their deeds for endless ages. (3)”

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā also said:
ʿAlī ibn Ḥasan related to me, from Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Madāʾinī; he said, Bakr ibn Khunays narrated to us, from Abū Salamah al-Thaqafī, from Wahb ibn Munabbih, who said:

“The people of the Fire who truly belong to it remain therein: they never rest, never sleep, and never die. They walk upon the Fire and sit within it; they drink from the pus of the inhabitants of the Fire and eat from the tree of zaqqūm that grows in the Fire. Their coverlets are Fire, their bedding is Fire, and their garments are of Fire and molten pitch; the Fire envelops their faces. All the people of the Fire are in chains held in the hands of the wardens, the collars fixed around their necks. The wardens drag them back and forth, while their pus flows into pits in the Fire—and that is their drink.”

Wahb then wept until he fell unconscious. Bakr ibn Khunays was likewise overcome by weeping; he rose, unable to speak. Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar too wept profusely.

These words come from Wahb ibn Munabbih al-Yamānī. He used to examine the writings of the earlier peoples and would transmit from the scriptures of the People of the Book, both the reliable and the unreliable. Even so, what he has said here is supported by verses of the Mighty Qur’an and by other hadiths. Allah the Exalted says:

“Indeed the criminals will remain forever in the punishment of Hell, (74)
It will not be lightened for them, and they will be plunged into despair therein. (75)
We did them no injustice, but it was they who were the wrongdoers. (76)
And they will cry out: ‘O Mālik, let your Lord finish us off!’ He will say: ‘You are to remain.’” (Q 43:74–77)

He, Most High, also says:
“If only the disbelievers could know the time when they will be unable to ward off the Fire from their faces nor from their backs, and they will not be helped. (39)
Rather, it will come upon them suddenly and stupefy them; they will be unable to repel it, nor will they be granted respite.” (Q 21:39–40)

And He says:
“As for those who disbelieve, for them is the Fire of Hell. No sentence of death will be decreed for them so that they may die, nor will its punishment be lightened for them; thus do We recompense every ingr ingrate. (36)
They will scream therein, ‘Our Lord! Bring us out so that we may do righteous deeds, other than what we used to do.’ ˗– ‘Did We not give you a life long enough for anyone who would take heed to take heed, and the warner had come to you? So taste; for the wrongdoers there is no helper.’” (Q 35:36–37)

The Almighty also says: “Those in the Fire will say to the keepers of Hell, ‘Call upon your Lord to relieve us of—just for a single day—of… ”