Al-ʿilm al-ilāhī

العلم الإلهيal-ʿilm al-ilāhī

Preferred translation
metaphysics
Also rendered contextually as
Highest Science
Technical sense
the science in which the hierarchy of beings and the higher-to-lower causal order are established

General Technical Meaning

Al-ʿilm al-ilāhī (‘Divine Science’), also called al-ʿilm al-aʿlā (‘Highest Science’), is first philosophy or metaphysics: the discipline concerned with being as such and the first principles on which particular sciences depend.

In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works

In al-Manāmāt, al-ʿilm al-ilāhī and al-ʿilm al-aʿlā name the same discipline: first philosophy or metaphysics, whose established premises the argument imports.

Source: Risālat al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt

Read in context

Open a passage in the edition where this term is linked.

Canonical address: /glossary/al-ilm-al-ilahi/