The reply is:

That is not the case. Those early scholars who said, “No one knows its interpretation except Allah,” were speaking in the language familiar to them. By the term ta'wīl, they did not mean its particular technical sense: diverting an expression from the meaning it indicates and naturally conveys to a different meaning. Restricting the designation ta'wīl to this sense is merely a convention adopted by a group of later jurists, theologians, and others. It was not the customary usage of the early generations—the Companions, the Successors, the four imams, and others.

This is especially so because those who assign this meaning to ta'wīl define it as construing an expression according to its less likely meaning on the basis of accompanying evidence. Yet these people say, “No created being knows this less likely meaning, and Allah did not intend the more likely meaning.”

Rather, in the usage of the early generations, ta'wīl meant what Allah intended by this word in passages such as His saying, Exalted is He:

“Do they await anything but its fulfillment? On the Day its fulfillment comes, those who had forgotten it before will say, ‘The messengers of our Lord certainly came with the truth.’”
[Al-A'rāf: 53]

And His saying, Exalted is He:

“That is better and best in outcome.”
[Al-Nisā': 59]

And Joseph's saying:

“O my father, this is the fulfillment of my earlier dream.”
[Yūsuf: 100]

And Jacob's saying to him:

“And teach you the interpretation of dreams.”
[Yūsuf: 6]

“The one of the two who had been saved, and who remembered after a time, said, ‘I will tell you its interpretation.’”
[Yūsuf: 45]

And Joseph's saying:

“No food will come to you as your provision without my telling you its interpretation before it comes to you.”
[Yūsuf: 37]

Thus, the fulfillment of prescriptive speech—commands and prohibitions—is the actual performance of what is commanded and abstention from what is forbidden. As Sufyān ibn 'Uyaynah said, “The Sunnah is the fulfillment of commands and prohibitions”; and “She said