Mushkil al-Qur’an

Abstract

In this article, the emergence of Mushkil al-Qur’an as a concept and the process of narrowing in its meaning from the third century to the tenth century of hijra have been elaborated. In the early periods, this concept was associated with the apparent discrepancies between the verses, the ambiguity of meaning, the difficulties in the verses concerning the metaphors, the similitude, the grammer and the reading. But, then, only the verses that seemed to be contradictions between them became the subject of this concept. This narrowing of the concept brought with it many debates. These discussions have been analyzed in our article, and the main factors that have prepared the beginning of this discipline and the ways of eliminating the conflict between the verses have been studied. By focusing on the supposed reasons of the conflict between the verses, the wisdom and the provision of eliminating this conflict, a chronological bibliography of the works done up to this day is given.