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Muhammad and illiteracy: Difference between revisions
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new section on pre-islamic literacy
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'''Muhammad's literacy''' is a commonly mentioned topic in regards to the historicity, revelation, and compiling of the Quran. Many Muslim scholars have argued that Muhammad's illiteracy is evidence that the Quran is a divine miracle. However, skeptics disagree that this is enough to constitute a miracle and challenge the claim altogether. Among modern academic scholars there is virtual unanimity that the Quran does not in fact describe Muhammad as illiterate, and that this was a reinterpretation arising some time after his death. | '''Muhammad's literacy''' is a commonly mentioned topic in regards to the historicity, revelation, and compiling of the Quran. Many Muslim scholars have argued that Muhammad's illiteracy is evidence that the Quran is a divine miracle. However, skeptics disagree that this is enough to constitute a miracle and challenge the claim altogether. Among modern academic scholars there is virtual unanimity that the Quran does not in fact describe Muhammad or his people as illiterate, and that this was a reinterpretation arising some time after his death. Indeed, there is now known to be abundant evidence of significant literacy among the pre-Islamic Arabs. | ||
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This, it is argued, would provide Muhammad a source for Judeo-Christian ideas that he could incorporate into the Quran and his teachings. | This, it is argued, would provide Muhammad a source for Judeo-Christian ideas that he could incorporate into the Quran and his teachings. | ||
==The myth of pre-Islamic Arab illiteracy== | |||
Old Arabic (i.e. pre-Islamic) comprised a continuum of dialects over a large region, and is found enscribed on rocks and monuments in a variety of scripts such as Safaitic, and eventually in early Arabic scripts. Ahmad al-Jallad, a leading expert on the history of Arabic and its epigraphic evidence outlines how we now know that a sizable segment of South Arabian society was able to write even for informal purposes, and that North and West Arabia were literate societies, as traced in the extensive range of inscriptions, and even that a large number of desert nomads were able to read and write. He further writes, "Thus, the growing body of pre-Islamic evidence strongly indicates that the use of Arabic for administration in the early Islamic period does not reflect an ad hoc invention, but the continuation of an established tradition of administration in Arabic which must have its origins in North Arabian and Syrian scribal practices."<ref>Ahmad al-Jallad (2020) [https://www.academia.edu/43141064 Chapter 7: The Linguistic Landscape of pre-Islamic Arabia - Context for the Qur’an] in Mustafa Shah (ed.), Muhammad Abdel Haleem (ed.), "The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies", Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 122</ref> | |||
==Was Muhammad illiterate?== | ==Was Muhammad illiterate?== | ||
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====Chapter 62 Verse 2==== | ====Chapter 62 Verse 2==== | ||
The modern academic view is that again this verse refers to gentiles or pagans i.e. those not given a scripture. The verse has traditionally been interpreted to describe the Arabs as illiterates. However, modern epigraphic research has refuted this picture (as outlined above), and first century Quran manuscripts show that an early Arabic orthographic standard was already in existence. | |||
{{Quote|{{Quran|62|2-3}}| | {{Quote|{{Quran|62|2-3}}| | ||