Literacy Among the Arabs in the Prophet’s Time — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/02/literacy-among-the-arabs-in-the-prophets-time/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as a comment on r/AcademicQuran, in the thread “About the lack of literacy of the Arabs in the time of the Prophet Muhammad”, copied here as written.
This adds interesting color to the above post. It seems that the way to reconcile them is:
A literate society is one that requires a writing system for functionality, which means enough people that participate in the economy or government need to be able to read.
How “literate” those people are varies from the base level of functionality needed to sign a document, inscribe their name, perform basic calculations – to being able to read works of complex literature.
Pre-Islamic Arabia seems to be a literate society with most literate people being basically functional and a few, mostly due to their need to engage with Jewish/Christian scriptures, being highly literate.
Is that how you understand it as well?
Posted February 2, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
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