Nutfa
Nutfa ( Arabic نطفة, DMG nuṭfa 'drops') is a term from the vocabulary of the Koran , which is of central importance for the Islamic conceptions of the origin of human life and embryogenesis .
The creation of man from Nutfa
Nutfa is found in twelve places in the Koran, all of which come from the Meccan period. The first evidence dates back to the early Meccan period. So in sura 80 the person with the image of the drop is pointed out to his low origin and encouraged to be thankful:
“Cursed be man! How ungrateful he is! From what did he create it? He created it from a drop (nu erfa) . "
In sura 75 , God's ability to create man from a drop is cited as evidence of his ability to resurrect man after his death :
“Was it not even a drop (nuṭfa) of poured out semen and then became a clot until God formed it and made it into two sexes, male and female? Isn't he able to raise the dead? "
This theme is encountered again in Sura 36:
“Didn't man see that we created him from a drop? And already he's a clear opponent! He coined a parable for us, but forgot that he was made. He said: 'Who can bring the bones to life when they have already disintegrated?' "
As the occasion for the revelation of these verses, at-Tabarī cites the tradition that the pagan Meccan ʿĀs ibn Wāʾil, the father of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀs , once came to the Prophet Muhammad with a bone in his hand and challenged him to ask whether God can resuscitate this bone.
In five passages of the Koran (Sura 18:37; 22: 5; 23: 12f; 35:11; 40:67) the creation from the drop is also a creation from “earth” (turāb) or “clay” (ṭīn ) prepended. This is how a man is asked in a parable:
"Don't you believe in the one who created you from earth, then from a drop, then formed you evenly into a man?"
According to at-Tabarīs, the creation of clay does not refer to the individual prenatal development of humans, but to the creation of their common father Adam .
Nutfa as a mixture of male and female seeds
In Sura 76 , which Nöldeke and Schwally assign to the Middle Meccan period, the drop from which God created man is described as a "mixture" (amšāǧ) :
"See, we created man out of a drop, a mixture"
Muslim Koran exegetes such as at-Tabarī have interpreted the “mixture” referred to in this Koranic verse as a mixture of the semen of the man and the semen of the woman. The assumption of a female semen is based on the ambospermatic teaching of galenic medicine, which assumes that the woman can also experience ejaculation and that this female ejaculation of semen is a prerequisite for successful conception.
The interpretation of Nutfa as a mixture of male and female semen also had an impact on the interpretation of another verse of the Koran, in which it says:
" Let man see what he was created from: he was created from water that flows out, that comes out between loin (ṣulb) and ribs (tarāʾib) ."
Contrary to what the wording of the passage suggests, the terms ṣulb and tarāʾib were not interpreted by Muslim scholars as places of origin of the seed, but as evidence of the belief that both men and women contribute semen to reproduction. Ṣulb , in their view, refers to the man and tarāʾib to the woman.
According to medieval Muslim scholars, the drop of semen of men and women, from which the fetus later develops, is contracted from all parts of their bodies during ejaculation. The traditional scholar Abū Sulaimān al-Chattābī , for example, is quoted as saying that the Nutfa arises “under every fingernail and under every hair”. This corresponds to the Hippocratic Pangenesis theory .
The Nutfa within human prenatal development
The most detailed Quranic description of human prenatal development can be found in a passage in Sura 23 . Here, too, the creation from the drop is preceded by a creation from clay:
“We made man out of a portion of clay. We then made it into a drop (nuṭfa) in a solid container (qarār makīn) . Then we turned the drop into a blood clot (ʿalaqa) , this into a lump of meat (muḍġa) and this into a bone. And we covered the bones with meat. "
According to Muslim scholars such as Ibn Qaiyim al-Jschauzīya , God summarized in these verses the origin and development of man up to the resurrection on the day of judgment. It is generally assumed that the three stages of embryogenesis (nuṭfa, ʿalaqa, muḍġa) , which are also mentioned again in Sura 22 : 5, each last 40 days. This is based on the following hadith which is narrated in Saheeh al-Buchari in the name of Abdallah ibn Mas'ud . It reads:
“The Messenger of God reports to us, and he is the truthful and believable. When either of you is 'created', he is 'brought together' in the womb of his mother for forty days. Then he's a blood clot for just as long. Then he is just as long a lump of meat. "
As Ursula Weisser has shown, this three-phase doctrine agrees with the Pythagorean doctrine of prenatal development in humans, but no concrete influence can be proven.
Nutfa as a bearer of divine predestination
Various hadiths report that the later fate of man is already decided in the drop stage. This is a hadith that is narrated by ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd and has also found its way into at-Tabarī's commentary on the Koran:
"When the drop falls into the womb, God sends an angel and he asks, '(Should he) create or not (be) created?' And if he says: '(He shall) not be created,' then the womb gives it (ie the drop) as blood. And if he says: '(He shall) be created,' then he (that is, the angel) says: O Lord, and what is the quality of the drop? (Should he) be male or female? What is his livelihood supposed to be, what is his death date? (Should he) be 'damned' (where unhappy) or 'blessed' (where happy)? And then he is told: Hurry to the original (umm al-kitāb) and copy the property of this drop from it! And the angel hurries (there) and copies (them). He doesn't stop until he has mentioned the last of his characteristics. "
Another hadith , which was taken up in the canonical collection of Muslim ibn al-Hajjājāj and is traced back to the Kufic traditionarian Hudhaifa ibn Asīd al-Ghifārī (st. 42/662) reads:
“The angel joins the drop after it has stayed in the womb for 40 or 45 nights. And he says: Oh Lord! (Should he be) 'damned' (where unhappy) or 'blessed' (where happy) (be)? Both are written down. And he says: Oh Lord! (Should he) be male or female? And both are written down. And his actions, influence, date of death and livelihood are recorded. Then the leaves are rolled up. And nothing is added or shortened in it. "
Such traditions played an important role in the early Islamic discussions about predestination . Hudhaifa is said to have recited his hadith when the Meccan ʿĀmir ibn Wāthila (d. 718 or later) doubted the correctness of the predestinian doctrine propagated by ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd.
Modern interpretations of the Nutfa
Various modern Muslim scholars have tried to harmonize the teachings from the Koran and Hadith on Nutfa with modern biological knowledge. For example, the Iraqis Iyad As'ad dunun aš-Sawi has developed the theory in a book about the evolution of man, that there are three types of Nutfa: 1. male Nutfa that the sperm corresponded, which are contained in the semen; 2. the female Nutfa, which corresponds to the egg cell expelled by the ovaries ; and 3. the Nutfa as a mixture according to sura 76: 2, which corresponds to the zygote .
literature
- MA Albar: Human development as revealed in the holy Qurʾān and ḥadīth . 3rd edition. Jeddah 1992.
- Julia Bummel: Procreation and prenatal development of humans according to writings of medieval Muslim religious scholars on the "medicine of the prophet". Hamburg 1999. Available online at: http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/1999/244/pdf/Dissertation_Julia_Bummel.pdf
- Theodor Frankl: The origin of man according to the Koran. Prague: Calve 1930. Available online here: http://archive.org/stream/MN41889ucmf_3#page/n3/mode/2up
- Ayād Asʿad Ḏunūn aš-Šāwī: al-Masār min an-nuṭfa ilā dār al-qarār . Al-Mauṣil: al-Maġrib li-ṭ-Ṭibāʿa wa-t-Taṣmīm 2000.
- Ursula Weisser: Conception, Heredity and Prenatal Development in Medicine of the Arab-Islamic Middle Ages . Erlangen 1983.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. at-Tabarī: Ǧāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-qurʾān ad Sura 36: 77-79.
- ↑ See Frankl 25.
- ↑ See Frankl 27.
- ↑ See Weisser 117–119.
- ↑ See Bummel 76f.
- ↑ See Bummel 82f.
- ↑ See Weisser 103-109.
- ↑ See Bummel 183, 197.
- ↑ Quoted from Bummel 200f.
- ↑ See Weisser 356.
- ↑ See Frankl 32.
- ↑ Quoted from Bummel 193.
- ↑ Cf. al-Ǧāmiʿ aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ, K. al-qadar No. 2.
- ↑ Quoted from Bummel 184f.
- ↑ See Josef van Ess: Between Ḥadīṯ and Theology: Studies on the emergence of predestinian tradition . Berlin [u. a.]: de Gruyter 1975. pp. 1-32.
- ↑ See van Ess 22.
- ↑ Cf. his book al-Masār min an-nuṭfa ilā dār al-qarār p. 19. Albar 57-63 said something similar earlier.