and its inscription read: “Muhammad, Messenger of Allah.” (1) No intelligent person would suppose that he ﷺ failed to grasp this; all of it shows that he knew how to write his own name and that of his father. Yet Allah has told us that—blessings be upon him—he did not previously know what writing was, and then Allah, Exalted be He, taught him what he had not known.

Writing, moreover, is a laudable quality. The Exalted One says: “Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know” (96:4–5). After he had delivered the message and people were entering the religion of Allah in droves, Allah willed that His Prophet should learn that rare form of writing which does not disqualify one from still being called unlettered. He himself said, “We are an unlettered community; we neither write nor calculate.” (2)

His statement is true, for legal rulings follow what is predominant. He denied writing and calculation for himself and for his community because such skills were scarce among them; otherwise, they did have scribes of revelation and others besides, and there were those who could reckon. Allah says: “…so that you may know the number of years and the reckoning” (17:12).

Among the sciences they know is the law of inheritance, which requires calculation and proportional reduction (ʿawl). Yet he ﷺ negated calculation for the ummah, so we understand that what is negated is mastery of its minute details—the exactitude practiced by the Copts and the ancients—something the religion of Islam has never needed, praise be to Allah. The Copts plunged deeply into arithmetic, algebra, and other pursuits that only waste one’s time, while the devotees of