ulum

Ulum (Arabic: علوم) is the plural form of ilm, meaning knowledge or sciences. In classical Arabic and Islamic scholarship, ulum denotes organized branches or disciplines of knowledge rather than a single subject. The term is commonly encountered in the titles of Islamic sciences, where it functions as a generic label for a family of fields. Examples include Ulum al-Quran (the sciences of the Qur’an), Ulum al-Hadith (the sciences of hadith criticism and transmission), and Usul al-Fiqh (the principles of Islamic jurisprudence). Other related branches may be listed under Ulum, such as Ulum al-Tafsir (Qur’anic exegesis) and Ulum al-Lugha (linguistics and rhetoric); however, the precise scope and boundaries of these categories have varied by era and school.

In modern contexts, Ulum is used in academic and religious institutions to refer to a set of disciplines within Islam and related language studies. The term is also carried into South Asian linguistic and scholarly usage as Urdu uloom (علوم) or Uloom-e-Islamia, serving as a general designation for departments or curricula dealing with Islamic sciences and related subjects. The concept is linguistic rather than geographic; Ulum does not denote a single field or a place, but a family of disciplines organized around knowledge itself.