Aql bi al-Quwwah (Arabic: عقل بالقوة) is the first stage of the intellect's hierarchy in Islamic philosophy.
[3] Aql bi al-Quwwah is designating reason as that which could abstract the forms of entities with which it is finally identified.
[4] For Farabi, the potential intellect could become actual by receiving the form from matter.
According to Avicenna's understanding of intellectual abstraction, the potential Aql functions as possible intellect.
[10] The content of intellectual understanding can be found in the perceptual experience such that the truth of intelligible is casually grounded in all things through imagined forms.