Discover the meaning of the term Al-mʿaad (معَاد) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 1 min readA verbal noun and a noun of place, meaning the return and the orientation of a thing towards what it was previously. In scholastic theology, it designates the return to existence after annihilation, or the return of the parts of the body to union after dispersion, and to life after death, as well as the return of souls to the bodies they had departed from; this is the bodily resurrection. As for the purely spiritual return, according to the view of philosophers, it means the return of souls to their previous state of detachment from bodily attachment and the use of organs, or their exoneration from the darkness with which they were afflicted.
The return (ma'ad), resurrection (ba'th), and gathering (hashr) have a single meaning, as was mentioned regarding the resurrection.