  We present a general scheme for the study of frustration in quantum systems.
We introduce a universal measure of frustration for arbitrary quantum systems
and we relate it to a class of entanglement monotones via an exact inequality.
If all the (pure) ground states of a given Hamiltonian saturate the inequality,
then the system is said to be inequality saturating. We introduce sufficient
conditions for a quantum spin system to be inequality saturating and confirm
them with extensive numerical tests. These conditions provide a generalization
to the quantum domain of the Toulouse criteria for classical frustration-free
systems. The models satisfying these conditions can be reasonably identified as
geometrically unfrustrated and subject to frustration of purely quantum origin.
Our results therefore establish a unified framework for studying the
intertwining of geometric and quantum contributions to frustration.
