Discover the meaning of the term Al-idrak (إدراك) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readThe encompassing of a thing in its completeness.
It is the form's occurrence in the rational soul.
Picturing the thing's reality alone without judging it by negation or affirmation, and it is called tasawwur (conception); with judgment by one of the two it is called tasdiq (assent).
It may be explained by the soul's being affected by the form occurring from the thing (with waw and ha), which is a being-affected; or by the form occurring in the soul (with waw and ha), which is a disposition. Then the idrak is four: sense, which is the soul's perceiving by one of the five manifest senses; imaging (takhayyul), which is perceiving
In language: the masdar of 'adraka': the boy and the girl when they reach maturity. Idrak is also used in language and meant is catching up: one says 'I walked until I caught him,' and meant is maturity in beast and fruit, as it is used of seeing: one says 'I perceived him with my sight': meaning I saw him. The idrak in the root of language is a thing's reaching its time, and it is the picturing of the perceived's reality which he beholds thereby: he perceives.
The idrak denotes arrival and catching up; one says 'idraktu'
The picturing of the thing's reality with the perceiver such that he beholds it by that with which he perceives.
Without judgment: conception; with judgment: assent; and its categorical is that which admits no change (al-Ta'rifat, p. 13).