is that literal and figurative usage are properties of expressions. In any event, this classification is a convention introduced after the first three generations had passed. None of the Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, or the renowned imams of learning—such as Mālik, al-Thawrī, al-Awzā‘ī, Abū Hanīfah, and al-Shāfi‘ī—spoke in these terms. Nor did the leading scholars of language and grammar, such as al-Khalīl, Sībawayh, Abū ‘Amr ibn al-‘Alā’, and others like them.
[The first person known to have used the term “majāz” was Abū ‘Ubaydah Ma‘mar ibn al-Muthannā in his book. However, by majāz he did not mean figurative usage as distinct from literal usage] (*). Rather, by the majāz of a verse he meant an expression conveying the verse’s meaning. Accordingly, any legal theorist—such as Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī and others like him—who says, “Literal usage is distinguished from figurative usage through various methods, including an explicit statement by the scholars of language: ‘This is literal, and this is figurative,’” has spoken without knowledge. He has assumed that the scholars of language said this, whereas none of them, nor any of the early generations of the Muslim community and their scholars, said it. This is merely a later convention, most likely originating with the Mu‘tazilah and other speculative theologians like them. It is not found in the discourse of any of the early scholars of jurisprudence, legal theory, Quranic exegesis, hadith, or related disciplines.
Al-Shāfi‘ī, the first to devote a separate treatment to legal theory, did not make this classification or use the terms “literal” and “figurative.” Likewise, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan has well-known discussions in al-Jāmi‘ al-Kabīr and elsewhere concerning questions that hinge on Arabic usage, yet he did not use the terms “literal” and “figurative.” Likewise, regarding the other imams, there is no record of