Discover the meaning of the term Al-tjnys (تجنيس) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readIn rhetoric terminology, it is to make two terms homophonous, and its detail will be discussed in homonymy if Allah ta`ala wills, and it is among the phonetic adornments. And among mathematicians, tajnis is the conversion of a whole number into fractions belonging to a specified type of fraction. Its rule is that if a whole number is accompanied by a fraction, whether single, repeated, or added, the procedure is to multiply the whole number by the denominator of that specified fraction to obtain a sum, then add to this resulting sum the form and numerical value of the fraction to obtain a second sum greater than the first sum, and relate it to the denominator by saying that it is the amount of each of its individual units as a single part of that denominator. Thus, the conversion of five and one-third yields sixteen thirds, because if you multiply the five by the three which is the denominator of the third, you get fifteen, and if you add to this result the form of the third which is one, you get sixteen thirds, and base other cases upon this. Tajnis is sometimes called simplification. We have restricted the aforementioned operation with the condition that it applies when a whole number is accompanied by a fraction because the need in arithmetical operations to convert a whole number mostly arises only when it is accompanied by a fraction, whereas in terms of fewness and rarity, it may sometimes be necessary to convert a whole number even when it is not accompanied by a fraction, so understand this well.
The resemblance of two words in pronunciation.
Al-mudhari is that the two words differ only in a close letter, such as al-zari and al-bari (Al-Ta'rifat p. 54).