al-ʿAlaq 96:2

Khalaqa'l-insāna min ʿalaq "He created the human being from ʿalaq."

There are two old views about its root: أ ن س (familiarity, growing used to, forming closeness) or ن س ي (to forget). Both are defended in the classical sources.

On the first derivation the human being is "the one who grows used, who forms closeness" — the being who cannot live alone, who forms bonds. On the second he is "the one who forgets". The second derivation is the more strained grammatically, but in respect of sense it fits this sūra strangely well: the sūra is about to describe a human being who forgets what has been given him and supposes himself self-sufficient.

The word comes here with the definite article (al-insān). This conveys the genus: not a particular person but the being called human. The sūra is describing not a person but a kind.

The word that gives the sūra its name, and the place where the greatest care is required.

Root: ع ل ق. The central sense of the root is this: to hang on to something, to hold fast, to stick, to dangle from it. Its derivatives display this sense on every side:

• علق (ʿaliqa) — he held on, he caught on, he stayed suspended.
• علاقة (ʿalāqa) — bond, relation. English covers the same ground with attachment: one word for a physical fastening and for the tie between two parties — exactly this holding-on established between two things.
• تعلّق (taʿalluq) — to be attached to something, to be caught on it.
• علاّقة (ʿallāqa) — a hanger, the hook on which a thing is hung.
• علق (ʿalaq) — the leech. The creature that lives in water, sticks to the skin and does not let go. It takes its name from its sticking.
• علقة (ʿalaqa) — thick, clotted blood that has stuck together.
• علق (ʿilq) — something precious, the thing a person's heart is caught on.

As is plain, all of them turn about a single image: what hangs, what holds on, what sticks. This is why both the leech and the clot take the name — the leech sticks, and the clot, instead of flowing, gathers and sticks.

The word in the verse is a noun conveying plurality/genus (its singular is ʿalaqa) and comes indefinite: min ʿalaq — "from an ʿalaq", "from something of the kind ʿalaq". The indefiniteness here conveys diminution and unimportance: a thing not even named, not even defined.

The verse's function in the context must not be missed. The verse is there not to give a piece of biological information but to set up a contrast.

The preceding verse said "Read in the name of your Lord" — that is, it commanded the human being to the highest of works, knowledge and reading. Immediately afterwards this verse comes and states the human being's point of departure: something sticky, hanging, nameless.

The Qurʾān sets up this contrast elsewhere too. al-Ṭāriq 86/5-7: "Let the human being look at what he was created from." ʿAbasa 80/17-19: "Perish the human being, how ungrateful he is! From what thing did He create him? He created him from a drop (nuṭfa) and gave him measure." The pattern is always the same: the human being who makes himself great is reminded of the material he came from.

So the verse is saying: the being who is to read was once a thing that could do nothing but hold on. The diagnosis in the sixth verse of the sūra (the human being supposes himself self-sufficient) sits exactly on top of this verse. The first answer to be given to one who supposes himself self-sufficient is where he came from.

The same word occurs in the places where the Qurʾān enumerates the stages of creation:

• al-Muʾminūn 23/12-14: "We created the human being from an extract of clay. Then We made him a drop in a secure place. Then We made the drop an ʿalaqa, and We made the ʿalaqa a lump of chewed flesh (mudgha)…"
• al-Ḥajj 22/5: "We created you from dust, then from a drop, then from an ʿalaqa, then from a lump of flesh, formed and unformed…"
• The same sequence occurs in Ghāfir 40/67 and in al-Qiyāma 75/37-38.

In these verses ʿalaqa is the name of a stage. In Sūrat al-ʿAlaq there is no sequence of stages; the raw material of the human being is named in a single word. The context is different: there a process is being recounted, here a contrast is being set up.

This word has been much discussed over the last century, and most of the discussion has not gone soundly. Here one has to speak plainly.

The claim is this: ʿalaqa describes the phase in which the fertilised ovum attaches itself to the wall of the womb; the word's sense of "hanging / sticking" fits that attachment exactly; therefore the verse announced in advance a fact that can be seen under a microscope.

What has to be said about this claim:

1. The sense of the word really is "sticking / hanging". This is not a modern imputation; it is the root's original sense in Arabic, and the classical dictionaries record it together with pre-Islamic usages. To reduce this sense of the word would also be a distortion. The verse names the human being's material of origin "something that holds on"; this is the plain sense of the word.

2. But the overlap of a word's semantic field with a scientific description is not proof. "Sticking" is a wide notion. The leech sticks, the clot sticks, mud sticks. This width allows the word to fit many things — and the more things an expression fits, the less its fitting one particular thing proves.

3. What did the first addressees understand from this word? In all likelihood the leech and clotted blood. That is what was seen in cases of miscarriage, and that was the everyday counterpart of the word. To suppose that a text said something unintelligible to its first addressees runs against the logic of address itself.

4. A matter of method. To tie the truth of a verse to a current scientific description is to make that verse a partner in the fate of that description. Scientific descriptions change, become more detailed, are sometimes abandoned. If you nail a verse to today's embryology textbook, then when the textbook changes the question arises where you are to put the verse. This is to make the text fragile in the very act of wishing to defend it.

5. The verse's own purpose is not to give information. The context is plain: the sūra is reminding the human being who sees himself as self-sufficient what he came from. The verse is a sentence of lowering, not a description. To turn the verse into a lesson in embryology renders its real work invisible.

To sum up: the word's sense of "hanging, holding on, sticking" is given and is not reduced; the reader who notices that this calls to mind the phase of attachment in modern embryology may count that association, for his own part, an occasion for thought; but this cannot be presented as the verse's claim and cannot be turned into a proof of miracle. The rule of the method (Method) that "no hunting for scientific miracles is done" exists precisely to preserve this distinction.

At the centre of the word is holding on, and this is a notion with a side that looks out over the whole sūra.

The human being's first state is holding on to something. This holding-on later changes form but does not end: the infant holds on to the mother, the child to the family, the adult to work, to a relationship, to a group, to a name. And the transgression to be described in the sixth verse of the sūra is exactly the state of supposing oneself not to be holding on. It will say: "He saw himself as needing nothing."

So at the outset the sūra puts a name to the human being: the one who holds on. Then it puts a name to the illness: to suppose one is not holding on. The distance between the two is the whole sūra.