miṣdāq (referent) — mafhūm is what is understood from wording; miṣdāq is that which indicates a thing's being true
taṣawwur (conception) — one content is mafhūm as understood from wording and taṣawwur as a mental form
General Technical Meaning
A mafhūm is what is understood from an utterance: the concept grasped from its wording. The same mental content is called taṣawwur insofar as it is a mental form, and mafhūm is standardly contrasted with miṣdāq.
In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works
In al-Mīzān's Muqaddimah, Ṭabāṭabāʾī uses mafhūm for the linguistic and customary content of an individual word or sentence—the content understood from Arabic wording. Qurʾānic ambiguity and exegetical divergence do not lie in that mafhūm but in the miṣdāq to which the verbal mafāhīm apply and in the conceptual and assertoric purport. This is the wording-side half of his mafhūm/miṣdāq distinction. It does not collapse mafhūm into taṣawwur; the passage neither contradicts nor independently establishes the general definition that the same mental content is called taṣawwur when considered as a mental form.
Source: al-Mīzān fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān
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