The Foundations of Applicability and Comparison in Allamah Tabatabaii's View

The principle of “applicability” is an interpretive principle extracted from the teachings of Holy Prophet’s household on which Allamah Tabatabaii has focused and subsequent Shi’a researchers have taken it into consideration in analyzing a group of interpretive hadiths. This principle has an important role in interpretive analysis of the hadiths which show the difficulty of Quranic verses and conforms most of them to (the sayings of) Shi’a Imams. The present paper seeks to extract the foundations of this principle in Allamah Tabatabaii’s view by reviewing his scattered explanations and method of using it. Universality and time-inclusion of the Quran, the existence of several semantic layers and levels in the Quran, scientific authority of Shi’a Imams, Shi’a Imams’ educational role, non-distortion of the Quran, the principality of generality of verse, in expression indication to applicability and its difference with interpretation, systematicness of this indication through dissection from the context and time of revelation are among his foundations in this regard.