Discover the meaning of the term Nisba (نسبة) in Islamic vocabulary.
Contents :
Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readThe establishing of connection between two things.
The binding, complete, informative or performative, or incomplete, as the restrictive, that is, the annexing, and the qualifying. The perfect scholar, the ripened knower, Sheikh Nour ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman al-Jami, his secret sanctified, the High, meant nisba in Jamal al-’Arab Jamal ad-Din, Sheikh Ibn al-Hajib’s word: in al-Kafiya, compounds: every name composed of two words without nisba between them, the nisba understood from the apparent form of composition, that some fifteen not leave the compound. He faulted the Indian scholar for specifying nisba by the predicative nisba, annexing, qualifying and suspending between verb and object, excluding some fifteen of its parts, the coordinating nisba preceding composition; he said: specifying nisba by a way whence this nisba exits is harder than piercing a pearl, for the nisba in the said word is indeterminate under negation: explicit and textual in absorbing its individuals, intending some over others without weighter nor weighted. But it is objected to the ripened knower, his secret sanctified, that he too specifies the said nisba by the nisba understood from the apparent form of composition, though it is under negation: this specifying too spares not the difficulty of piercing the pearl.
A relation of what is in measure between two homogeneous magnitudes: referring a number to another, saying: its half, or its like.
The establishing of connection between two things. The renovator ach-Chah Wali Allah said in al-Qawl al-Jamil: the aim of all the sufi paths is attaining a psychic form named by them nisba.