Discover the meaning of the term Mithqal (مثقال) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readThe dinar: ten carats, so in al-’Alamkiri’s Fatwas; the carat: five barley-grains, so in at-Tabyin. The dinar gold, dirhams silver. In the Qouniya, mithqal kasra (four weight-ounces). Known thereby mithqal thirty-six red grains; some glosses of Kanz ad-Daqa’iq: mithqal twenty carats, carat one grain: the Qouniya’s author meant carat a grain four-fifths. In as-Sihah: mithqal a dirham three dirham-quarters; the dirham six daniq, daniq two carats, carat two tassoudj, tassoudj two grains, grain a sixth of dirham’s tenth, a forty-eighth of dirham.
With mim kasra at root: a weight-measure, whatever the thing, little or much; hence His word: « an ant’s weight of good ».
What is weighed by; the thing’s mithqal: its balance; also what is weighed, a gold piece estimated twenty carats, worth four and half mahdjadj by the dinar’s weight.
Of the thing: its balance against its like; in the noble Quran: « Allah wrongs not an ant’s weight; and if a good deed, He multiplies it and gives from Him a great reward » (an-Nisa 40). In scales: a weight of a dirham three dirham-quarters; plural mathaqil. The legal: the dinar, a dirham three dirham-quarters, said an-Nadjafi.