In this paper, we initiate a systematic study of entanglements of division fields from a group theoretic perspective. For a positive integer n and a subgroup G\subseteq GL_2(\mathbb {Z}/n\mathbb {Z}) with surjective determinant, we provide a definition for G to represent an (a,b)-entanglement and give additional criteria for G to represent an explained or unexplained (a,b)-entanglement. Using these new definitions, we determine the tuples ((p,q),T), with p