ʿālam al-mithāl

عالم المثالʿālam al-mithāl

Preferred translation
imaginal world
Technical sense
an intermediate rank of existence, free of matter but keeping its quantitative and positional effects
Distinguish from
  • khayāl (imagination) — khayāl is a faculty of the soul; ʿālam al-mithāl is a rank of reality.
  • ʿālam al-ʿaql (world of intellect) — the intellectual world stands above it and is free of matter's effects as well.

General Technical Meaning

ʿĀlam al-mithāl is an intermediate, spiritual and luminous realm of measurable forms: it resembles bodily substances in being perceptible and measurable and immaterial intellects in being luminous, while being neither a material body nor a pure intellect.

Reader note. This entry concerns the intermediate immaterial realm. It does not identify that realm with the imaginative faculty or with the Platonic Forms.

In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works

Risālat al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt

imaginal world — use in context

The dream discussion connects the soul's return to its imaginal world with apprehension of imaginal connections underlying the sensible world.

Limits of this account

It does not collapse the soul's own imaginal world into the separate world of images without qualification.

Nihāyat al-Ḥikmah

imaginal world — definition and use

The world of images is defined as an intermediate ontological rank, free of matter but not of its quantitative and qualitative effects.

Limits of this account

It does not identify this realm with the imaginative faculty or with an imaginary world.

Read in context

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

Canonical address: /glossary/alam-al-mithal/