وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِن سُلَٰلَةٍ مِّن طِينٍ
These verses belong to a field treated several times across this series, and the same limit was drawn each time. I set that limit here too, at the outset:
At Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/67: "the dictionary senses of the words nuṭfa and ʿalaqa are given by the lexicographers. I do not enter into equating these one-to-one with the terms of modern embryology; the work of the verse is to give a description of stages, and the proof lies in these stages not being in human hands."
At al-Zumar 39/6: "at Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/67 the same staged formation was told in six steps, and the methodological limit was drawn there: one does not enter into equating these expressions one-to-one with the terms of modern embryology. I keep the same limit here."
At al-Sajda 32/7-9 the same field was treated; in al-ʿAlaq a section with five grounds was written on the word ʿalaq and the embryological claim was rejected; and in the al-Qiyāma, al-Ṭāriq, al-Mursalāt, al-Najm, Yāsīn and Nūḥ sections the same position was kept.
I keep the same limit here and do not repeat its grounds. In brief: the dictionary sense of the words is given and not cut short; but this is not presented as the claim of the verse and is not turned into a proof of miracle. What will be treated in these verses is the meanings of the words and the ordering of the verbs — not a table of development.
And one further entry, as it was written in al-Mursalāt: the argument of the verse sets out from something the one addressed knows. Birth, miscarriage, bone and flesh were things everyone saw. A proof cannot be built with something the one addressed does not know; for this reason dressing the verse in modern knowledge does not strengthen the argument but weakens it.
The root was worked out at al-Sajda 32/8 (thumma jaʿala naslahū min sulālatin min māʾin mahīn). I do not repeat it here. The summary given there:
The concrete sense of the root: to draw a thing slowly out of its sheath, stripping it clear. Salla'l-sayfa — he drew the sword from its scabbard. Sulāla — the extract drawn out of a thing. Salīl — lineage, offspring.
| al-Sajda 32/8 | al-Muʾminūn 23/12 | |
|---|---|---|
| The extract of what | min sulālatin min māʾin mahīn — the extract of a despised fluid | min sulālatin min ṭīn — the extract of clay |
| Of whom | naslahū — the human being's offspring | al-insān — the human being |
| Where it stands | The second step of the creation | The beginning of the creation |
The difference is worth recording: in al-Sajda sulāla reports the source of the offspring, here the source of the human being. And read together the two verses complete each other: al-Sajda had said first that the beginning was from clay (badaʾa khalqa'l-insāni min ṭīn) and then that the offspring came from a fluid; al-Muʾminūn joins the two in a single construction — sulālatin min ṭīn.
طِين — clay: the mixture of earth and water. The word was treated at al-Sajda 32/7 and at al-Ṣāffāt 37/11 (min ṭīnin lāzib — sticky clay).
And the twofold repetition of the particle min must be recorded: min sulālatin min ṭīn. There are two steps: clay → the extract drawn from clay → the human being. The verse, that is, does not say "from clay" directly; it places an operation in between.
I record this as an observation about the word order, and its ground is the second min: an operation is set between the material and the product.