Incidents proving the literacy of the prophet?
Q. When the peace treaty of Hudaybiyah was to be signed, the nonbelievers objected because the treaty said “Muhammad the Messenger of Allah.” They wanted the words “Messenger of Allah” struck out. Muhammad struck out the words and instead wrote “son of Abdullah.” A. Because of the variations in the reports which describe this incident one cannot be sure that the prophet himself wrote “son of Abdullah.” But if for the sake of discussion we grant that he did, this does not detract from the fact that he was illiterate. Seldom do we find a person who is so illiterate that he could not write his own name. Yet, if there is no evidence that a person wrote more than his name we do not have sufficient evidence to describe such a person as literate. The title “son of Abdullah” would function as an identifying element in the prophet’s name. Hence this would be roughly equivalent to someone writing Mark, son of John, or usually Mark Johnson. Writing this much not proof enough of a person’s literac
