Scholars have also disagreed over a Companion’s statement, “This verse was revealed concerning such-and-such”: should it be treated as a report attributed to the Prophet, as when he mentions the occasion for which it was revealed, or as the Companion’s own interpretation, which is not attributed to the Prophet? Al-Bukhārī includes it among reports attributed to the Prophet, whereas others do not. Most musnad collections, such as the Musnad of Ahmad and others, follow this latter convention. By contrast, when a Companion mentions an event immediately after which the verse was revealed, they all include such an account among reports attributed to the Prophet.

Once this is understood, one scholar’s statement, “It was revealed concerning such-and-such,” does not contradict another’s statement, “It was revealed concerning such-and-such,” provided that the wording encompasses both, as we explained concerning interpretation by example. If one mentions an occasion for which the verse was revealed and another mentions a different occasion, both accounts may be true: the verse may have been revealed after all those events, or it may have been revealed twice—once on one occasion and once on the other.

The two kinds of diversity in interpretation that we have mentioned—arising sometimes from the variety of names and attributes, and sometimes from mentioning particular types and subdivisions of what a term denotes, by way of illustration—account for most of the interpretations transmitted from the early generations of this Ummah that are thought to conflict.

Some disagreements transmitted from them concern wording that admits either of two meanings: either because a word has distinct meanings, such as (qaswarah), which can mean an archer or a lion, and ('as'asa), which can refer to the night’s coming on or its passing away