Discover the meaning of the term Al-sbb (سبب) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 4 min readIn language: a name for that by which one reaches the intended end; in religious law: that which is a way of arriving at the ruling (hukm) without being its efficient cause.
That by which one reaches the intended end, and that which influences a thing's existence. In religious law: what is a way of arriving at the ruling without being its efficient cause. The sabab is then of two kinds: a pure means (sabab mahd), and a means in one respect that is not so in another. The pure means of a thing is that to which it reduces, the thing not being its final cause (illa gha'iyya), so that the means is regarded only as a pure means, like ownership of the person (raqaba): it is a pure means for ownership of the benefit ('uta).
'He made for him the means (asbab)': procured them for him. To call a man sababa: to abuse him much. Al-sibab: reviling. In the noble hadith: 'Abusing the Muslim is wickedness, and fighting him is disbelief.' Ibrahim al-Harbi said: reviling (sibab) is graver than censure (sabb): it is to say of a man what is in him and what is not, meaning thereby to degrade him. Al-sabb: one who reviles much; plural subub. The woman's veil (khimar). The turban. The fine garment. The rope. Al-sabab: the rope; plural asbab. Anything by which one reaches something else. Hence God's saying: 'We gave him of everything a means (sabab), and he pursued a means' (al-Kahf, 84-85), that is, God gave him of everything knowledge and a way of access, and he pursued one of those means. The 'means of the heavens': their ascents and sides. In the Quran: 'Pharaoh said: O Haman, build me a tower that I may reach the means, the means of the heavens, and look upon the God of Moses' (Ghafir, 36-37): that I may reach the means and ways that occur in heaven, and through them come to know what Moses claims. Qatada said: the asbab are the heaven's gates. Abu 'Ubayda said: the Arabs say of a devout man: 'so-and-so ascended by the asbab.'
That which brings about harm in the body by way of an intermediary.
Among the usulis: that to which the ruling (hukm) is related, in that the ruling attaches to it either as what indicates it or otherwise; it has also been said: that for the sake of which the ruling appears, whether a condition, a proof, or a cause (illa).
In language: a name for that by which one reaches the intended end.
In the principles of fiqh: that whose absence entails absence and whose existence entails existence. (Atfayyish). Some Shafi'is have loosely applied the term sabab to the shart (condition).