Root · 4 in the Quran · 49 in 13 texts of the library
جسدgathering together and thickening/hardening of a thing (root jsd)
الجيم والسين والدال يدل على تجمع الشيء أيضا واشتداده
Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-lugha · English rendering AI
The family of the root
Patterns computed · our dataThe words of ج س د that our sources attest: the root's letters in green, the added letters in gold.
19 words4 verbs1 verbal noun4 participles1 place or instrument1 intensive or elative4 other nouns3 plurals1 relative or abstract
- جَسَدthe body, with the limbs or members, or whole person, of a human being, and …
- أَجْساد—
- مُتَجَسِّدcorporeal; incarnate
- جَسَّدَmaterialize; embody
- مُجَسَّدembodied
The whole family8 groups, by pattern; tap a pattern to see what it does
Verbs4جَسِدَ · جَسَّدَ · أَجْسَدَ
The root as an action: the bare Form I, and the Forms made by adding letters before, inside or after the root.grammar →
Form I vowels: فَعِلَ (i; the imperfect from the Quranic Arabic Corpus)
Verbal nouns1إِجْسَاد
The action itself, named as a noun (maṣdar).grammar →
- إِجْسَادForm IV · Lane: inf. n.Lane
Participles4مُجَسَّد · جَاسِد · مُتَجَسِّد
The one who does it, and the one it is done to.grammar →
- مُجَسَّدembodiedautopassive, Form IVlibrary ×1LaneIbn Fāris
- جَاسِدblood sticking to a personLaneactive, Form ILaneIbn Fāris
- مُتَجَسِّدcorporeal; incarnateautoactive, Form Vlibrary ×2
- مُجْسَدpassive, Form IVLaneIbn Fāris
Place, time and instrument1مِجْسَد
Where or when it happens, and what it is done with: the m- nouns.grammar →
Intensives, qualities and the elative1جَسِيد
The quality carried far, held as a trait, or compared.grammar →
- جَسِيدquality (faʿīl)Lane
Other nouns4جَسَد · جَسِد · جِسَاد
Nouns on other patterns; their meaning is learned word by word.grammar →
Plurals3أَجْساد · مَجَاسِد · مُتَجَسِّدِين
Broken plurals rebuild the word on a new pattern; sound plurals add an ending.grammar →
- أَجْسادbroken plural of جَسَدlibrary ×3
- مَجَاسِدbroken plural of مِجْسَدLane
- مُتَجَسِّدِينsound plural of مُتَجَسِّدlibrary ×1
Relative and abstract1جَسَدِيّ
-iyy relates a thing to its source; -iyya makes an abstract noun.grammar →
- جَسَدِيّbodilyautorelative adjective (-iyy)library ×1
Reference
Why this shape?What each of the 14 patterns does
What each pattern does. The pattern gives a tendency, not a rule: many words have drifted into meanings of their own.
The pattern machinePour the root into a pattern; see whether the word exists
Choose a pattern; the root's letters pour into it. Then see whether the word exists in our sources. The machine makes shapes; only usage makes words.
Not in our sources. A possible shape, not a word we can show: the Quran, the library and Lane do not have it for this root.
Place noun with -a. The place noun with the feminine -a. Sometimes it is only a variant of mafʿal; often it names the place where a thing is found in abundance (maʾsada, 'a place full of lions'). So maktab is the place of writing, and maktaba, where writings are gathered: a library, a bookshop. Our summary AI
But: maktaba is not in our classical dictionaries for k-t-b: Lane and al-Jawharī give maktab ('a school'), none gives maktaba. Its sense of 'library, bookshop' fits the pattern of abundance, but that is our reading of the pattern, not a classical entry. Many mafʿala words are single items of usage (maqbara 'cemetery'), which the grammarians call heard, not formed by rule.
The grammarians on this pattern (4)
ما يكون مفعلة لازمة لها الهاء والفتحة … وذلك إذا أردت أن تكثر الشيء بالمكان، وذلك قولك: أرض مسبعة، ومأسدة
Chapter on what is mafʿala, with the -a and the a-vowel always: that is when you mean that a thing abounds in a place, as you say 'a land of many beasts of prey (masbaʿa), of many lions (maʾsada)' AI
Sībawayh (d. c. 180/796), al-Kitāb, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, 3rd ed. (Cairo: al-Khānjī, 1988), 4:94 · OpenITI line 21027–21028 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
و نحو المظنة و المقبرة فتحا و ضما ليس بقياس
and words like maẓinna and maqbara (with a or u) are not by rule AI
Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249), al-Shāfiya fī ʿilm al-taṣrīf, ed. Ḥasan Aḥmad al-ʿUthmān (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya, 1995), 1:30 · OpenITI line 223 ↗ · on this site · OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- “designate the place where the object signified by the noun from which they are formed, is found in large numbers or quantities” Wright, Grammar I, §247, p. 148 ↗ · on nouns of abundance, maf'ala · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
- “Nouns of time and place not unfrequently take the feminine form” Wright, Grammar I, §225, p. 128 ↗ · on maf'ala as a variant of maf'al · 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1896) · public domain
About thisWhat “attested” means here; the sources
Attested means found in our data: the Quranic Arabic Corpus (lemmas, verb Forms, participles, verbal nouns, plurals), the library's words (automatic analysis), Lane's Lexicon (his headwords, the Forms he numbers, the verbal nouns and plurals he names) and Ibn Fāris's entry. Nothing is generated for this list. Meanings are Lane's first gloss in his entry, or else the analyser's gloss (“auto”). Vowelling follows the corpus, then Lane, then the analyser; verbs are given in the regular perfect. Lane's Lexicon thins out after qāf, and a few of his entries cover several roots at once: those roots show no Lane. The patterns, written with ف ع ل, are computed by us.
The dictionaries
English: AI translation AIal-Khalīl · 170Al-jasad (الجسد) is [used] for a human being;
al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn. The first Arabic dictionary, arranged by permutations of the root letters.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Jawharī · 393Al-jasad (الجسد): the body.
al-Jawharī (d. c. 393/1003), al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Admits only usage he judged sound.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowIbn Fāris · 395The letters jīm, sīn, and dāl indicate the gathering of a thing, and also its hardening/solidifying.
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), Maqāyīs al-Lugha. Seeks each root's original sense (aṣl).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowal-Rāghib · 502Al-jasad (الجسد) is like...
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī (d. c. 502/1108), al-Mufradāt. Quranic vocabulary, from core sense to Quranic usage.
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLisān · 711Al-jasad (الجسد): the body (jism) of a human being;
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311), Lisān al-ʿArab. The great compendium of the earlier dictionaries (entry shortened).
AI AI translation of the Arabic belowLane · 1876English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
E. W. Lane (d. 1876), An Arabic-English Lexicon. English, synthesising the classical dictionaries.
Lane, Arabic-English Lexiconread Lane's entry online ↗
Technical definitions2 · Ibn ʿArabī’s Iṣṭilāḥ, al-Jurjānī’s Taʿrīfāt
الجسد
كل روح ظهر فى جسم نارى او نورى.
Al-jasad (الجسد): every spirit that has manifested in a fiery or luminous body. AI
الجسد
كل روح تمثل بتصرف الخيال المنفصل، وظهر في جسم ناري، كالجن، أو نوري كالأرواح الملكية والإنسانية، حيث تعطي قوتهم الذاتية الخلع واللبس، فلا يحصرهم حبس البرازخ.
Al-jasad (الجسد): every spirit that has taken visible form through the activity of the detached/separate imagination (al-khayāl al-munfaṣil), manifesting in a fiery body — such as the jinn — or a luminous body — such as the angelic and human spirits — since their intrinsic power grants them [the capacity for] divestiture and investiture [of form], so that the confinement of the isthmuses (barāzikh) does not restrict them. AI
The same letters, turned
The same three letters in all six orders. Choose one.
ج س د
الجيم والسين والدال يدل على تجمع الشيء أيضا واشتداده
j-s-d indicates the gathering together of a thing, also, and its hardening. AI
an entry in Ibn Fārislater sources onlyin none of them
Do these six share one core meaning?
Reference
About thisal-Khalīl, Ibn Jinnī, Ibn Fāris; the counts across the dictionary
al-Khalīl (d. c. 170/786), Kitāb al-ʿAyn, as transmitted by al-Layth: a two-letter word “turns in two ways”, a three-letter word “in six ways” (masdūsa), four letters in 24, five in 120; “its used forms are written down and its unused ones dropped” (line 975 ↗). The dictionary is built on this: each chapter takes a set of letters and names which orders are used (mustaʿmal) and which unused (muhmal). The ring shows that verdict, from the chapter heading as edited (documented in the text; how much of the book is al-Khalīl's own is disputed).
A reported total. al-Suyūṭī transmits, from Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī, that al-Khalīl put the possible forms, used and unused, of two to five letters at 12,305,412 (al-Muzhir, line 1347 ↗). It is reported, not found in the ʿAyn. It equals exactly the arrangements of 2 to 5 different letters out of 28 (756 + 19,656 + 491,400 + 11,793,600); the breakdown printed beside it is corrupt, and al-Zubaydī's count, given next, differs (6,659,400).
Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002), al-Khaṣāʾiṣ, names the greater derivation (al-ishtiqāq al-akbar): bind a three-letter root and its six orders to one meaning, and bring stray members back “by the subtlety of the craft and interpretation” (line 7536 ↗). He says himself that it does not hold for every root (line 167 ↗; line 7603 ↗).
Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) gives each root its own aṣl and treats a rearranged word as maqlūb, “turned round”, and so not a root of its own: “j-b-dh is not a root, because it is a single word, turned round” (Maqāyīs, line 6147 ↗). The ring sets his aṣl for each order side by side; whether they meet is the question.
Neighbours on the ring differ by one swap of two letters.
The critique. A source quoted by al-Suyūṭī calls the greater derivation Ibn Jinnī's innovation, “not relied on in the language” (al-Muzhir, line 6159 ↗).
The other axis. The root's letters also go into patterns that keep their order and change the frame: the patterns (awzān) and the verb Forms I–X.
Across Ibn Fāris's dictionary. Of the 2,300 possible sets of three different sound letters (no hamza, w or y), 1,021 have at least one order as an entry. How many of their six orders are entries:
- 1 of 6319
- 2 of 6218
- 3 of 6164
- 4 of 6155
- 5 of 6107
- 6 of 658
- 1 of 6148
- 2 of 6108
- 3 of 6157
- 4 of 6179
- 5 of 6111
- 6 of 643
Of the orders al-Khalīl calls used, 2,097 are entries in Ibn Fāris and 267 are not; 17 that he calls unused are entries in Ibn Fāris.
Attested here means found in our digital texts (Ibn Fāris, Lisān al-ʿArab, Lane, the Quranic Arabic Corpus), with w and y kept apart and hamza spellings merged; it is our data, not a classical verdict. English beside the Arabic is AI translation. Sources and grades: docs/research/root-permutations.md.
Letters & sound
- جjīmmiddle of the tongue · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
- سsīntongue-tip, by the front teeth · voiceless, continuantSīb. · I. Jinnī
- دdāltongue-tip, roots of the teeth · voiced, stopSīb. · I. Jinnī
How each letter is made, in brief, from Sībawayh's and Ibn Jinnī's own sentences (linked); their words are under Reference.
Sharing two of its three letters (computed; kinship of form, not of meaning)
Reference
How it is madeSībawayh and Ibn Jinnī · phonetics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ج
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26553 ↗
ومن وسط اللسان بينه وبين وسط الحنك الأعلى، مخرج الجيم والشين والياء
From the middle of the tongue, between it and the middle of the upper palate, is the place of the jīm, the shīn and the yāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 974 ↗
س
ومما بين طرف اللسان وفويق الثنايا مخرج الزاي، والسين، والصاد
From between the tip of the tongue and just above the front teeth is the place of the zāy, the sīn and the ṣād. Sībawayh, line 26560 ↗
ومما بين الثنايا وطرف اللسان، مخرج الصاد والزاي والسين
From between the front teeth and the tip of the tongue is the place of the ṣād, the zāy and the sīn. Ibn Jinnī, line 983 ↗
د
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا مخرج الطاء، والدال، والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Sībawayh, line 26559 ↗
ومما بين طرف اللسان وأصول الثنايا، مخرج الطاء والدال والتاء
From between the tip of the tongue and the roots of the front teeth is the place of the ṭāʾ, the dāl and the tāʾ. Ibn Jinnī, line 982 ↗
Sībawayh, al-Kitāb (ed. Hārūn) and Ibn Jinnī, Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb; OpenITI digital texts (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full credits on each letter's page.
In the Breath of the All-MercifulIbn ʿArabī · metaphysics
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ج
Level of existence: الفلك الأطلس فلك البروج · the Atlas (starless) sphere, the sphere of the zodiacal signs
Divine Name: الغني · al-Ghanī, the Independent
Lunar mansion: الطرف · al-Ṭarf
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62085Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582س
Level of existence: ما ظهر في الماء · what appears in water
Divine Name: المحيي · al-Muḥyī, the Life-Giver
Lunar mansion: النعائم · al-Naʿāʾim
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 62110Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 9 line 2572 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
السين والشين فطبعهما الحرارة واليبوسة
Sīn and shīn: their nature is heat and dryness.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2581د
Level of existence: السماء الدنيا · the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā)
Divine Name: المبين · the Clarifier (al-Mubīn)
Lunar mansion: الأكليل · al-Iklīl
Futūḥāt ch. 198, line 64682Spheres of its simples (ch. 2): 10 line 2573 ↗
Nature (ch. 2)
المرتبة العشرية فحروفها حارة يابسة
The tenfold rank: its letters are hot and dry.
Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, line 2582Meaning by vowelal-Dabbāgh · a visionary claim about a primordial “Syriac”, not historical Syriac
English throughout: AI translation of the Arabic AI
ج
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي نبوة أو ولاية إذا كان قبلها أو بعدها ما يدل على ذلك، وإلا فهي للخير الذي لا يزول أبدا.
It is prophethood or sainthood (walāya) if something before or after it indicates that. Otherwise it is for the good that never ceases.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي الخير الذي يؤكل أو ينتفع الناس منه.
It is the good that is eaten, or from which people derive benefit.
With kasra ـِ
فهي الخير القليل الذي في الذات من نور الإيمان.
It is the small good within the self from the light of faith.
س
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء المليح الذي من طبعه الرقة.
It is an indication of the comely thing whose nature is delicacy.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى الشيء القبيح الخشن، أو إشارة إلى سواد حسا ومعنى.
It is an indication of the ugly, rough thing, or of blackness, sensible and figurative.
With kasra ـِ
وبالكسر إشارة إلى الشيء الطابع وتكون الإشارة منه.
With kasra it is an indication of the impressing/stamping thing, and the indication proceeds from it.
د
With fatḥa ـَ
فهي إشارة إلى خارج عن الذات.
It is an indication of something external to the self.
With ḍamma ـُ
فهي إشارة إلى ما هو قليل أو قبيح ومعه غضب فيهما.
It is an indication of what is small or ugly, accompanied by anger in both cases.
With kasra ـِ
فهي إشارة إلى ما في الذات أو إلى ما هو داخل عليها أو إلى ما هو قريب منها.
It is an indication of what is in the self, or what is entering upon it, or what is near to it.
Two-letter nucleus4 roots in Ibn Fāris’s chapterج س
Ibn Fāris groups his roots under two-letter chapters (“the X and the Y and what makes them three”). These are the roots of this root's chapter with the core sense he gives each. Setting them side by side is our juxtaposition; he does not himself draw a shared meaning. His chapter heading, line 5613 ↗
- جسمالجيم والسين والميم يدل على تجمع الشيء فالجسم كل شخص مدرك كذاQ 2 · L5614
- جسأالجيم والسين والهمزة يدل على صلابة وشدةL5616
- جسدالجيم والسين والدال يدل على تجمع الشيء أيضا واشتدادهQ 4 · L5617
- جسرالجيم والسين والراء يدل على قوة وجرأة فالجسرة الناقة القوية ويقال هي الجريئة على السير وصلب جسر أي قويL5624
In the sister scriptsHebrew ג ס/ש דSyriac ܓ ܣ/ܫ ܕ
| Arabic | ج س د |
| Hebrew | ג ס/ש ד |
| Syriac | ܓ ܣ/ܫ ܕ |
| Ancient South Arabian (musnad) | 𐩴 𐩯/𐩦 𐩵 |
| Phoenician | 𐤂 𐤎/𐤔 𐤃 |
Letter for letter, by the regular sound correspondences of the Semitic languages (Arabic keeps several sounds the others merged). This shows how the root would be spelled; whether a related word exists is a separate question, answered in the Semitic lens. Where an Arabic sibilant (s, sh) continues two older sounds, both spellings are shown.
Lenses
AIClassical lexiconIbn Fāris grounds the root in 'gathering and hardening' (تجمع الشيء واشتداده), giving as core instance جسد الإنسان (the human body) alongside جسد الدم, blood that has dried and congealed;plausible
The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.
Ibn Fāris grounds the root in 'gathering and hardening' (تجمع الشيء واشتداده), giving as core instance جسد الإنسان (the human body) alongside جسد الدم, blood that has dried and congealed; he also notes the anomaly جساد for saffron and the garment-sense مُجسَّد, a cloth dyed thick enough to stand up. Lane, drawing the later Qāmūs/Kullīyāt tradition forward, keeps the verb جَسِدَ narrowly to blood 'sticking' or 'drying', and مُجسَد to a garment made to adhere to the body via heavy dye. Across the excerpts available, the noun جسد for 'body' is presupposed rather than independently derived — it appears to be the base noun from which the verbal sense (of blood clotting like a body's substance) is drawn, not the reverse. No al-Khalīl, al-Jawharī, al-Rāghib or Ibn Manẓūr text was supplied for this root, so the chain here rests on Ibn Fāris and Lane alone.
Draws on: Ibn Fāris · Lane
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, root ج‑س‑د
- Lane, Lexicon, root ج‑س‑د
Letters & soundIn the letter-tables supplied, ج (with fatḥa) signifies prophethood or sainthood when context indicates it, otherwise unceasing good, and is elsewhere given as the Atlas sphere (al-falak al-aṭlas), the starless outermost heaven;speculative
What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.
In the letter-tables supplied, ج (with fatḥa) signifies prophethood or sainthood when context indicates it, otherwise unceasing good, and is elsewhere given as the Atlas sphere (al-falak al-aṭlas), the starless outermost heaven; س (with fatḥa) signifies the comely thing whose nature is delicacy, and elsewhere 'what appears in water'; د (with fatḥa) signifies something external to the self, and elsewhere the lowest heaven (al-samāʾ al-dunyā). Read serially in جسد, this would place the outermost/most encompassing letter first and the lowest/most external letter last, framing the body as a descent from the highest sphere down to what is external to the self — a suggestive shape for a word meaning 'body,' but this is speculative sound-symbolism, not established linguistics, and mainstream philology treats such letter-meaning correspondences as at most heuristic.
Draws on: dabbagh_fatha · akbari198
Root structureIbn Fāris places ج‑س‑د among siblings that share the ج‑س nucleus of 'gathering': جسم (any perceptible body), جسأ (hardness, solidity), and جسر (strength, boldness) — a family converging on solidity and cohesion of substance.uncertain
The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).
Ibn Fāris places ج‑س‑د among siblings that share the ج‑س nucleus of 'gathering': جسم (any perceptible body), جسأ (hardness, solidity), and جسر (strength, boldness) — a family converging on solidity and cohesion of substance. Among the letter-permutations, سجد ('prostration') is overwhelmingly the most attested (92 occurrences against جسد's 4), while جدس, سدج, دجس and دسج are largely or wholly unattested. The near-total phonetic identity of جسد (body) and سجد (bowing the body down) is a juxtaposition worth noting — the body as that which is gathered/hardened, and the same three radicals rearranged as the act of bringing the body down — but Ibn Fāris draws no etymological link between them, and this should not be asserted as derivation.
Draws on: maqayis-nucleus · permutations
- Ibn Fāris, Maqāyīs al-Lugha, nucleus جس
Semitic kin & loanwordsNo confident Semitic cognate for جسد specifically is available.uncertain
Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.
No confident Semitic cognate for جسد specifically is available. Related Arabic جسم has been compared to Syriac گushma-type body-terms in some general Semitic wordlists, but the excerpts here give no basis for extending that to جسد itself, whose attested sense-core (dried/congealed blood) looks like an Arabic-internal semantic development rather than an inherited Common Semitic body-word. It should not be treated as a loanword; it is better described as unclear/uncertain in its external affiliations.
Draws on: comparative
Quranic exegesisThe word occurs in the accounts of the Golden Calf (7:148, 20:88), where the calf fashioned by the Sāmirī is a جسد, a lifeless molded form that produces a lowing sound (khuwār) — exegetes such as al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī stress that جسد here denotes a body devoid of spirit (rūḥ), an effigy or cast form, which is precisely what makes the people's worship of it a manifest error: they venerate mere matter without life.well attested
How the classical exegetes read the word in the Quran.
The word occurs in the accounts of the Golden Calf (7:148, 20:88), where the calf fashioned by the Sāmirī is a جسد, a lifeless molded form that produces a lowing sound (khuwār) — exegetes such as al-Ṭabarī and al-Zamakhsharī stress that جسد here denotes a body devoid of spirit (rūḥ), an effigy or cast form, which is precisely what makes the people's worship of it a manifest error: they venerate mere matter without life. Elsewhere (21:8, 38:34) جسد is used of the prophets (who were not mere bodies not needing food) and of Solomon's throne (a cast/molded body), reinforcing the sense of 'a material, formed body' as opposed to a living, willing agent. Al-Rāghib situates جسد as the physical frame considered in its solidity and mass, distinct from جسم in emphasizing hardened, molded matter.
Philosophy & kalāmIn later kalām discussions of bodily resurrection (al-maʿād al-jasadānī), جسد is used technically to denote the resurrected material body as opposed to a purely spiritual (rūḥānī) return, marking the debate between those (mutakallimūn, most Ashʿarites) who affirm bodily resurrection and philosophers (following Avicenna) who reinterpret the afterlife in more spiritual terms.plausible
The word as a technical term in falsafa and theology.
In later kalām discussions of bodily resurrection (al-maʿād al-jasadānī), جسد is used technically to denote the resurrected material body as opposed to a purely spiritual (rūḥānī) return, marking the debate between those (mutakallimūn, most Ashʿarites) who affirm bodily resurrection and philosophers (following Avicenna) who reinterpret the afterlife in more spiritual terms. The term thus carries a doctrinal weight beyond ordinary 'body' (jism), specifically flagging the question of matter's reconstitution after death.
Draws on: kalam-usage
Akbarian readingIbn ʿArabī in Faṣṣ Ādam pairs جسد آدم — 'the manifest form' (ṣūratuhū al-ẓāhira) — with rūḥ Ādam, 'his inward form' (ṣūratuhū al-bāṭina), presenting the body as the outward configuration through which the human reality (nashʾa) becomes visible, correlative to but distinct from the spirit as its inward configuration.well attested
The word in Ibn ʿArabī's text and terminology.
Ibn ʿArabī in Faṣṣ Ādam pairs جسد آدم — 'the manifest form' (ṣūratuhū al-ẓāhira) — with rūḥ Ādam, 'his inward form' (ṣūratuhū al-bāṭina), presenting the body as the outward configuration through which the human reality (nashʾa) becomes visible, correlative to but distinct from the spirit as its inward configuration. The jasad is thus not opposed to the human being but is the exterior face of the single human nashʾa whose interior face is rūḥ; the two together constitute the human as microcosm.
Draws on: fass-adam-excerpt
- Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, Faṣṣ Ādam
Reference