تَأْوِيل — Interpretation as "Returning"
تَأْوِيل is the maṣdar of Form II from the root أ-و-ل, whose Form I verb آلَ / يَؤُولُ means to return to something. Interpretation, in Arabic, is literally a returning.
The Derivational Family
| Form | Verb | Maṣdar | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | آلَ / يَؤُولُ | أَوْل / مَآل | To return (to) |
| II | أَوَّلَ / يُؤَوِّلُ | تَأْوِيل | To return something → to explain, interpret it |
أَوَّل — first — belongs to the same root. What is first is what things return to.
The Arabic Definition
تَفْسِيرُ مَا يَؤُولُ إِلَيْهِ الشَّيْء
"The explanation of that to which a thing returns."
Why 'Returning' Means 'Explaining'
Take a concept A and produce an explanation of it. What is that explanation doing? It is bringing the meaning back to A. An explanation is precisely the thing that returns you to the original's meaning — which is how the root of returning became the root of interpreting.
Check Machine Translation Against Your Grammar
Asked to render تَفْسِيرُ مَا يَؤُولُ إِلَيْهِ الشَّيْء, Google Translate produced "interpreting what leads to creation" — which the teacher rejected on the spot: there is no خَلْق anywhere in the phrase. The correct sense is "interpretation of what it leads/returns to." A useful live reminder that machine translation of technical Arabic must be checked against the grammar you already know.
Examples from the Quran
وَيُعَلِّمُكَ مِن تَأْوِيلِ الْأَحَادِيثِ — "…and He will teach you from the interpretation of narrations." (Yūsuf 12:6)
The phrase تَأْوِيل الأَحَادِيث is the subject of a range of tafsīr opinions:
| # | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 1 | Interpretation of dreams — the majority reading |
| 2 | The knowledge of explaining knowledge — taking difficult matters and making them clear |
| 3 | الحِكْمَة — wisdom, and the ability to explain wisdom to people |
| 4 | Narrations of previous generations and the previous books |
| 5 | The proofs of tawḥīd |
| 6 | The previous scriptures and the sunan of those before |
Why the Majority Reading Prevails
Most mufassirūn combine the first reading with the phrase's larger sense: Allah will choose you for prophethood and teach you from this special knowledge — the interpretation of dreams. The sūrah's own narrative confirms it: Yūsuf عليه السلام later interprets the dreams of his fellow prisoners and then the dream of the king. Just as every prophet was given a particular gift as his speciality, this was the speciality of Yūsuf عليه السلام.
Note also the مِن in مِن تَأْوِيلِ الْأَحَادِيثِ — it is تَبعِيضِيَّة, some of; see [[min-tabidiyya]]. And on the word أَحَادِيث itself, see [[root-hadatha]].
Session References
- Surah Yusuf Session 8: تَأْوِيل derived from آلَ يَؤُولُ; the Arabic definition تَفْسِيرُ مَا يَؤُولُ إِلَيْهِ الشَّيْء; why returning and explaining share a root; the six tafsīr opinions on تَأْوِيل الأَحَادِيث.