Muhammad was commanded to read (iqra). The
scriptural nature of Islam made literacy a primary
vehicle for the dissemination of the faith, as well
as a virtue for pious Muslims wanting to read the
Quran and other religious texts.
As the Islamic religion spread beyond the Ara-
bian Peninsula, Arabic, the language of the Quran,
became a lingua franca for trade and government
as well as religious edUcation and the literary arts.
Prominent notables, as well as merchants and
professionals, were careful to give their children
the gift of literacy, at least in the Quran. More-
over, prominent institutions of learning, such as
the House of Wisdom in baghdad and al-azhar
University in cairo, flourished at the height of the
Islamicate empires.
Despite the rich legacy of literacy in Mus-
lim lands, however, widespread literacy has been
a more recent phenomenon, as in many other
regions of the globe, as a result of the introduction
of the printing press and, more recently, new elec-
tronic technologies. Modern governments in the
Middle East have had varying success in spreading
literacy in the postcolonial era. Reformers such as
the Iraqi Sati al-Husri (1869–1967) proclaimed the
importance of mass education for the success of
the modern nation-state, while President Jamal abd
al-nasir (d. 1970) expanded university education
far beyond its traditional class boundaries in Egypt.
Policies such as these did much to bring mass liter-
acy closer to a reality for the modern Middle East.
However, many Muslim countries continue
to struggle with literacy at the dawn of the 21st
century. For example, among the largest Muslim
populations in 2005, Indonesians had a literacy
rate of 87.9 percent, but Pakistan’s was 48.7 per-
cent and Bangladesh’s was 41.1 percent. The lit-
eracy rate among India’s Muslim population was
59.1 percent. As of 2005 Egypt had a literacy rate
of 55.6 percent, Sudan a rate of 59 percent, Iran a
rate of 80 percent, and Saudi Arabia a rate of 79.4
percent. Jordan and Lebanon have been the most
successful Arab nations in terms of literacy, reach-
ing a rate of over 86 percent in 2005, while Israel
had a rate of 96.9 percent. In tUrkey it was 88.3
percent. Although the majority of adults living in
Muslim countries are literate, there is still much
work to be done in a number of areas to achieve
literacy rates that match those of top-tier coun-
tries of the world.
See also adab; arabic langUage and literatUre;
books and bookmaking; kuttab; madrasa; Ulama.
Nancy L. StockdaleFurther reading: Jack Goody, The Interface between the
Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987); Irfan Habib, Iqtidar Alam Khan, and K.
P. Singh, “Problems of the Muslim Minority in India.”
Social Scientist 4 (June 1976): 67–72; Paul Lund, “Ara-
bic and the Art of Printing.” Saudi Aramco World 32
(March–April 1981): 20–35; Golnar Mehran, “Social
Implications of Literacy in Iran.” Comparative Educa-
tion Review 36 (May 1992): 194–211; Brian V. Street,
ed., Literacy and Development: Ethnographic Perspectives
(London: Routledge, 2001).literature See african language and literature;
arabic language and literature; persian language
and literature; turkish language and literature.literature 445 J