The text of the Qurʾān has been a source of inspiration but at the same time a multi-layered text which allowed diverse communities of Muslims engage with it exercising their agencies within the contexts of their preferred traditions and interpretations. Among these, the Muʿtazila, Shiʿi Ismaili Muslims, Muslim philosophers and Sufis are quite prominent but not to the exclusion of other Sunni traditions. Almost all these communities have been practicing ‘taʾwīl’ to some degree. Differences have come from their unique traditions and the axiomatic postulates which have shaped their traditions. In this paper, I will look at the cases of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʿ, Ibn Sīnā, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, al-Muʾayyad fī al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī to offer a comparative critical assessment of some of the key principles in applying hermeneutical exegesis to the Qurʾān. This paper demonstrates that all these different Muslim traditions have applied allegorical or metaphoric interpretations of the Qurʾān in order to resolve what appeared to them as inconsistency and remain coherent in their understanding of the Muslim canonical scripture. I will briefly look at the key arguments offered by these for the necessity of resorting to taʾwīl and then I will review and assess the common grounds and differences among them.