15
A drop, a clinging, a chewed lump
نُطْفَةً ثُمَّ عَلَقَةً ثُمَّ مُضْغَةً
23:13
ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاهُ نُطْفَةً فِي قَرَارٍ مَّكِينٍ ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا النُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا الْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا الْمُضْغَةَ عِظَامًا فَكَسَوْنَا الْعِظَامَ لَحْمًا
Then We placed him as a nutfah in a firm lodging; then We made the nutfah a clinging alaqah; then We made the alaqah a chewed mudghah; then We made the mudghah bones, and We clothed the bones with flesh.
22:5
فَإِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ ثُمَّ مِنْ عَلَقَةٍ ثُمَّ مِن مُّضْغَةٍ مُّخَلَّقَةٍ وَغَيْرِ مُخَلَّقَةٍ
We created you from dust, then from a nutfah, then from a clinging clot, then from a lump formed and unformed.
The ayah in tafsir
Nutfah: a small amount of fluid. Alaqah: something that clings, that hangs, that is like clotted blood in the old language. Mudghah: a piece the size of a chew. Then bones, then clothing with lahm. Mukhallaqah and ghayr mukhallaqah: shaped and not yet shaped. This sequence is in the Quran and in the hadith of the stages of forty nights. The fuqaha built rulings of the womb on it.
What later eyes saw
A zygote is a drop in a lodging. It implants and clings. The somite embryo is the size and look of a chewed morsel, with tooth-mark grooves. Cartilage models become bone; muscle clothes them. The order — fluid, cling, chew, bone, flesh — is the order later embryology wrote with lenses. Greek doctors had stages; they did not have this spare Arabic chain.
Where we stop
Keith Moore’s classroom comparisons are not wahy. Some popular charts over-map weeks onto words. Alaqah is wider than “leech.” The Quran is not a week-by-week textbook. The sign is the named sequence and the alaq that clings in a qarar makin.