Scholarship has often approached the classical Arabo-Islamic discourse of i’jaz al-Qur’an (a term that is often rendered ‘the miraculous inimitability of the Qur’an’) with a focus on its aesthetic, rhetorical, and literary dimensions. Contributions to i’jaz al-Qur’an discourse have frequently been read with an eye toward understanding the ways in which classical-era Muslim theologians conceived of the Qur’an’s beauty and rhetorical power. However, alongside these important defining characteristics of the i’jaz al-Qur’an tradition, there are additional currents that played meaningful roles in the development of this discourse. Taking into account these less-studied aspects of the texts can contribute to more nuanced understandings of i’jaz al-Qur’an and the way it is situated within Islamic thought. This paper explores the ways in which two interrelated issues figure into Abbasid-era texts on the language of the Qur’an. The first issue is the question of the Qur’an’s interpretability, that is, the extent to which the meanings of the Qur’an’s verses are available to human interpreters through the Arabic language. The second interrelated issue concerns the ways in which the Qur’an’s use of vocabulary and grammar relates to the established conventions of the Arabic language. This paper traces the ways in which these issues concerned some theologians who contributed to discourse on the Qur’an’s language and its interpretability, with a focus on the writings of Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), Hamd ibn Muhammad al-Khattabi (d. 388/998), and Abu Bakr al-Baqillani (d. 403/1013). In investigating Ibn Qutayba’s Ta’wil mushkil al-Qur’an and al-Khattabi’s Bayan i’jaz al-Qur’an, this paper discusses their structure, their approach to explicating particular ayat, and what they reveal about contemporaneous debate over Qur’anic language. It then traces the ways in which echoes of the concerns that animated Ibn Qutayba and al-Khattabi’s work appear in al-Baqillani’s Kitab I’jaz al-Qur’an. Shedding light on the ways in which the earlier texts reflect anxiety about the Qur’an’s interpretability and the availability of its meanings through language in turn allows for a reading of al-Baqillani’s work that is more grounded in i’jaz al-Qur’an discourse’s historical development. Tracing the development of concerns about interpretability and language use within i’jaz al-Qur’an discourse recasts the stakes of writings in this genre and helps situate i’jaz discourse more firmly in relation to other Arabo-Islamic discourses, most notably tafsir and apologetics. In these ways, this paper contributes to understandings of i’jaz al-Qur’an discourse in its historical development.