Discover the meaning of the term Al-lazm (لازم) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 3 min readWhat cannot be separated from the thing.
In usage: in the sense of obligatory.
The unseparable. In technical usage: the intelligible external to the thing whose separation from it is prevented; it is of two kinds: the necessity of existence and the necessity of quiddity. The necessity of existence is the necessity of the existing individual specific to the quiddity, as blackness for the African: it is the necessity of man's specific individual; meant by 'the specific existence' is the specific existence, so it is not intended that, were blackness necessary to man's existence in the external, every existing man would be black; it is not so. The necessity of quiddity is that necessary to it wherever it exists, as pairing for four: wherever the quiddity of four is realized, the pairing's separation from it is prevented. Then the necessity of quiddity is of two kinds: middle and non-middle. Then the middle is of two kinds: middle in the more specific sense and middle in the more general sense. As for the middle necessity in the more specific sense, it is that the conceiving of the necessitated entails its conceiving, as the two being the double of the one: from conceiving the two one grasps that it is the double of the one.
What cannot be separated from the thing. The middle necessary (lazim bayyin): that whose conception with the conception of its necessitated suffices the intellect in categorically judging the necessity between them, as equal division into halves for four: whoever conceives four and conceives division into equal halves judges, by mere conception of the two, that four divides into equal halves; and it may be said: the bayyin over the necessary whose conception entails grasping that the two is the double of the one. The first meaning is more general, for whenever the necessitated's conception suffices for the necessity, the necessary's conception with the necessitated's suffices. The second meaning is called: the middle necessary in the more specific sense; and not whenever conceptions suffice does one conception suffice; to this is said: the middle necessary in the more general sense. The non-middle necessary: that whose intellectual categorical judgment of the necessity between them requires a middle, as the equality of the three right angles of the triangle, for the mere conception of the triangle and the conception of the right angles' equality
What cannot be separated from the quiddity.
What cannot be separated from the thing (al-Ta'rifat, p. 199); of the verb: what is specific to the doer.
What cannot be separated from the thing; and in the jurists' usage it means the obligatory.