What does Tanasukh mean?

Islam > Glossary > Tanasukh

Discover the meaning of the term Tanasukh (تناسخ) in Islamic vocabulary.

Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM

📖 2 min read

Definition Tanasukh

Tanasukh according to Kitab at-Ta'rifat (Al-Jurjani)

It is the soul’s attaching to a body after parting another body, no time-interval between the two attachments, for the self-love between soul and body.

Tanasukh according to Mufradat (Ar-Raghib)

It is a soul’s arriving, after leaving a body, toward a fetus capable the soul.

Tanasukh according to Dustur al-'Ulama (Al-Ahmadnagari)

The soul’s attaching the body after parting another body, no time-interval between the attachments, for self-love between soul and body. Metempsychosis’ tenants say: only the perfect souls detached from bodies, whose perfections passed power to act, nothing of possible perfections remaining in power: become pure of corporeal attachments, released to the holy world. Imperfect souls, part perfections remaining in power, wander human bodies, passing body to body till reaching their limit in sciences and morals’ perfection: then remaining detached, purified of bodies’ attachment; this transfer called naskh. Said: sometimes descending from the human body toward an animal body suiting it in…

Tanasukh according to At-Tawqif (Al-Munawi)

The soul’s attaching the body after parting another body, no time-interval between the attachments. Tansakh of times and centuries: their succession and alternation, each abrogating what precedes’ ruling and establishing the ruling for itself, the following abrogating that establishing’s ruling, changing it to a specific ruling; hence heirs’ tansakh, inheritance dividing not the first deceased’s ruling but the second’s, so on.

Tanasukh according to At-Ta'rifat al-Fiqhiyya (Al-Barkati)

It is metempsychosis, coming.

Related terms: Tanasukh

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