As for taʾwīl in the technical usage of the Qur’an commentators and the early generations of jurists and ḥadith scholars, what they mean by it is simply tafsir (explanation and clarification). Thus Ibn Jarīr and others open their discussions with the phrase, “The statement concerning the taʾwīl of the Exalted One’s words, ‘such-and-such,’” meaning: its tafsir. Likewise, Imām Aḥmad says in his treatise al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah (1), “regarding what you have interpreted from the Qur’an with a taʾwīl other than its proper taʾwīl.” He therefore invalidated those taʾwīls they had advanced—the interpretations they intended, which in his view constituted their taʾwīl. This sense of taʾwīl pertains to grasping the meaning (2) and fixing it in the mind, whereas the former sense concerns the concrete realization of the matter in external reality.

The Muʿtazilites, Jahmiyyah, and other schools of speculative theology, on the other hand, use taʾwīl to mean diverting a wording from its apparent, literal sense to a figurative sense that departs from that surface meaning (3). This is the usage that has become widespread among later scholars of uṣūl and fiqh; hence their maxims: “Taʾwīl runs counter to the default sense,” and “Taʾwīl requires evidence.”

It is this type of taʾwīl that has prompted authors on both sides to write treatises either defending or refuting it. Some, such as Abū Bakr Ibn Fūrak (5), Ibn Mahdī al-Ṭabarī (6), and others, produced works offering taʾwīl of the verses (4) and narrations dealing with the divine attributes, while others opposed them and composed treatises that set out to invalidate those