diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index fc6c0d55f7..daa13e5bae 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ option(FAISS_OPT_LEVEL "" "generic")
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_GPU "Enable support for GPU indexes." ON)
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_CUVS "Enable cuVS for GPU indexes." OFF)
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_ROCM "Enable ROCm for GPU indexes." OFF)
+option(FAISS_ENABLE_MKL "Enable MKL." ON)
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_PYTHON "Build Python extension." ON)
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_C_API "Build C API." OFF)
 option(FAISS_ENABLE_EXTRAS "Build extras like benchmarks and demos" ON)
diff --git a/faiss/CMakeLists.txt b/faiss/CMakeLists.txt
index 6e9eb883a7..d8bf74acc9 100644
--- a/faiss/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/faiss/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -372,7 +372,9 @@ target_link_libraries(faiss_avx512 PRIVATE OpenMP::OpenMP_CXX)
 target_link_libraries(faiss_avx512_spr PRIVATE OpenMP::OpenMP_CXX)
 target_link_libraries(faiss_sve PRIVATE OpenMP::OpenMP_CXX)
 
-find_package(MKL)
+if(FAISS_ENABLE_MKL)
+  find_package(MKL)
+endif()
 if(MKL_FOUND)
   target_link_libraries(faiss PRIVATE ${MKL_LIBRARIES})
   target_link_libraries(faiss_avx2 PRIVATE ${MKL_LIBRARIES})