Discover the meaning of the term Al-ʿql (عقل) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 4 min readIt is the deletion of the fifth mobile letter of the foot mafa'ilun, which is the lam, leaving mafa'lun; the foot is then called ma'qul (prosody).
A substance abstracted from matter in itself, joined to it in its act; it is the rational soul that everyone points to in saying: I. It has been said: the aql is a spiritual substance God Most High created, attached to the human body. It has been said: the aql is a light in the heart by which the true and the false are known. It has been said: the aql is a substance abstracted from matter, attached to the body by way of governance.
That by which the realities of things are grasped; it has been said its seat is the head, and it has been said its seat is the heart.
Taken from the camel's 'iqal (hobble): possessors of intellect are thereby prevented from swerving from the even path. The correct view is that it is an abstract substance grasping perishable realities by means of intermediaries and the sensibles by direct observation.
In prosody: the deletion of the fifth mobile letter; the foot in which that deletion occurs is called ma'qul.
The philologists said: the aql is prevention, and man's intellect was so named because it restrains its holder from falling into perils, that is, it confines him. Al-Azhari said Ibn al-A'rabi held: the aql is steadiness in affairs. Others said: the aql is the discernment by which man is distinguished from other animals. Al-ma'qul is the intellect; one says 'he has no ma'qul', meaning no intellect; and al-ma'qul also: what your heart grasps. The aql is that by which one thinks and conceives things according to their reality, as God Most High says: 'after they understood it ('aqaluhu).'
The man 'aqqala': he grasped things according to their reality. The boy: he understood and discerned. The shadow: it contracted and shrank at noon. The camel: he drew its knee to its shoulder and bound the two with the hobble ('iqal) so it remains kneeling. Someone against his need: to withhold it from him. The slain: to pay his blood-price. 'Aqqala so-and-so's blood': to forgo retribution for blood-money. 'Aqqala about so-and-so': to pay his bloodwit for him when it is owed by him and he pays it on his behalf. The medicine by its belly: to hold it after probing it; that medicine is 'uqul. The woman by her hair: to comb it; the combing one is 'aqila. Someone to the mountain: to resort to it and fortify himself.
It is the faculty disposed to receive knowledge.
The material (hayulani) intellect: the pure readiness for apprehending the intelligibles; it is a pure faculty free of act, as in children; it is only ascribed to him by way of habit (malaka); knowledge of necessary truths, and the soul's readiness thereby to acquire theories in act: that the theories become stored in the rational faculty through repeated acquisition, so that a habit of summoning them at will arises without the toil of new acquisition. What is meant: that the theories he has apprehended be present to him so as never to escape him.
With damma: the blood-money (diya), that is, the property that is the substitute for the life.