Thursday, September 12, 2019

Tom Holland on the Question of Whether Muhammad was Illiterate



Two verses, Qur’an: 7.157 and 29.48 are used to adduce the theory of Muhammad’s illiteracy. 7.157 refers to him as ‘ummi’: a word conventionally translated as ‘unlettered’, but which could also mean ‘lacking a scripture’, in the sense of being neither Jewish nor Christian. Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that the Qur’an frequently refers to itself as a kitab, a book, while 25.4-6 it is strongly implied that Muhammad could indeed read. Even more suggestively, Ibn Hisham has reports of which imply that Muhammad could not merely read, but write. (p. 53)

Muslim scholar of the tenth century, Ibn Mujahid, established what subsequently became the orthodoxy: that there were seven, equally valid, qira’at—‘readings’—of the Qur’an. The modern, widely held notion that there is one single text was established only in 1924, with the publication in Cairo of an edition of the Qur’an that went on to become the global standard. (Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World [London: Abacus, 2013], 335)