Meaning
What is meant here is that Shahrur presents the course of societies’ development in three ordered phases: motherhood, then fatherhood/villages, then equality/civil states. This is a formulation of a Qur’anic historical reading of the course of human social organization, according to the available evidence.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
The evidence states: “He presents a Qur’anic historical reading of the development of societies through three stages: the age of motherhood, then the age of fatherhood/villages, then the age of equality/civil states.” Accordingly, the sequence and the three designations are attributed to his own presentation, not to a reconstruction by the atlas.
Atlas Explanation
This claim atom establishes only the existence and order of a threefold division. The compound phrasing in the evidence is retained: “fatherhood/villages” and “equality/civil states”; these expressions are not separated into equivalent terms, nor are characteristics added to them that the evidence does not mention.
For reading in the context of the book and the course of history: Muhammad Shahrur: State and Society, History, Development, and Patterns.
Inference
The division may be read as a general map of a social trajectory that culminates, in its ordering, in “equality/civil states.” Yet this remains a synthetic inference limited by the ordering in the evidence; it does not, on its own, establish a detailed description of the civil state or an independent evaluative judgment on each historical society.
It is also connected in the structure of the book to Monism and Despotism Lead to Ruin.
Open Question
What criteria distinguish each age? And how does Shahrur explain the transition from one age to another? The available evidence does not settle these two questions; therefore, they require other passages in the book before any detail can be attributed to him.