Discover the meaning of the term Al-ibaḥa (إباحة) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 3 min readIt is the permission to perform the act as the agent wishes.
'To make permissible'. In the Tawih, the famous difference between ibaha and takhyir (option): combination (jama') is impossible in takhyir but possible in ibaha; the difference in religious questions, however, is that performing one is not obligatory in ibaha, while it is in takhyir. When the obligation to perform one of the two in takhyir arises from prohibition (hazr), the permission having been established by an accident of command, as when one says: 'sell me one of your slaves', combination is impossible and one must confine oneself to the one commanded. When the origin is permission, and one becomes obligatory by command, as in the conditions of expiation, combination remains possible by virtue of the original permission: this is called takhyir in the manner of ibaha. Either it is a takhyir among several: combination is impossible there, and it is not ibaha because performing one is obligatory; or it is in the manner of ibaha: combination is possible. The words 'as when one says sell me one of your slaves' are explained: selling another's slave is forbidden and barred, permitted only through the accident of the mandate. Shaykh al-Islam said: the difference between taswiyya (equalizing) and ibaha is that in ibaha the addressee may suppose he is not permitted to perform the act, and in taswiyya that one of the two sides is more useful and preferable. Know that ibaha, in their saying 'ibaha is valid in expiations and compensations, not in alms and the tithe', means: that the holder of the expiation set before the poor or needy cooked food, a dawman or the like, of which they may eat their fill, without his saying 'I sold you this food' or 'I gave it to you'. Tamlik (transferring ownership): giving each poor man half a sa' of wheat or a sa' of barley. The rule: what was legislated under the name 'food' admits ibaha; what was legislated under the names 'giving' and 'delivering' requires tamlik.
Permission in the act and its omission: one says a man made his property permissible (abbaha malahu) when he permitted taking it or leaving it, making it indifferent either way.
It is the permission to perform the act as the agent wishes; so said al-Sayyid. In the Kashshaf al-Mustalahat: in language it is disclosure and declaration; it may also come in the sense of permission and nonrestriction.
Nonrestriction. Among the usulis: a ruling requiring option between doing and leaving. In the Majalla (art. 1045): the commons' shared capacity to acquire by taking and enclosure things that are permissible and not owned by anyone in origin, such as water.