The Illiteracy of Arabs before Islam: a Refutation of a Prevailing Conception

Abstract

This study sheds light on the way the prevailing trend of past and contemporary Arab researchers has dealt with Arabs before Islam. The aim is to show the impact of these researchers’preconceptions on their research studies and on consolidating a widely accepted conception of Arabs. This conception is based on the assumption that Arabs before Isalm were capable neither of producing thought nor of engaging in any philosophical abstraction. Our study, therefore, aims, to show the contradictions between the theoretical frameworks utilized by these researchers when conductiong their studies, and their explanations for what they discover and find about Arabs. Moreover our study endeavors to demonstrate not only the richness of the Arabic language and its subsequent capacity to serve as an epistemological tool capable of describing the early Arabs’ understanding of nature and of the necessary survival skills for life in the desert, but also their ability to accurately interpretr their social and cultural life.