Surah Al-Insan, Ayah 3

Which was revealed in Makkah

The Recitation of Surat As-Sajdah and Al-Insan in the Morning Prayer on Friday

It has been mentioned previously that it is recorded in Sahih Muslim from Ibn `Abbas that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to recite in the Morning prayer on Friday:

الم تَنزِيلَ

(Alif Lam Mim. The revelation...)(32) and;

هَلْ أَتَى عَلَى الإِنسَـنِ

(Has there not been over man...) (76)

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَـنِ الرَّحِيمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Allah created Man after He did not exist

Allah informs that He brought man into existence after he was not even a thing worth mentioning, due to his lowliness and weakness. Allah says,

هَلْ أَتَى عَلَى الإِنسَـنِ حِينٌ مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ لَمْ يَكُن شَيْئاً مَّذْكُوراً

Neither we were there, nor was there any demand from us. It is only Your mercy that listened to what we never said.

Verse [ 2] describes the inception of human creation thus:

اِنَّا خَلَقْنَا الْاِنْسَانَ مِنْ نُّطْفَةٍ اَمْشَاجٍ (We have created man from a mixed sperm-drop __76:2). The word amshaj is the plural of mashj or mashj which means a 'mixture'. Here obviously it refers to the male and female gametes according to most commentators, but some commentators say, as cited in Ruh-ul-Ma` ni, that amshaj refers to the four fluids of the body [ blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy ] of which the sperm is composed.

The Quran was revealed in the seventh century A.D. At that time nobody in the whole world knew that the formation of a human being in the mother’s womb started with a drop or clot. It was only in the twentieth century that man came to know that a human being’s (as well as an animal’s) initial creative clot was formed by a combination of two parts—the ovum of a woman and the sperm of a man. When these two microscopic elements combined, that living thing started forming in the mother’s womb which finally took the shape of a human being. The occurrence of the expression, ‘a drop of mingled fluid’ (min nutfatin amshajin) in the Quran one thousand five hundred years ago proves that the Quran is the Book of God. There are many such examples in the Quran. These exceptional cases clearly establish that the Quran was divinely inspired. And when it has once been established that the Quran is the Book of God, its every statement has to be accepted as true, solely on the basis of its having been recorded in the Quran.