Thus, the seminal role of the Qur’an in Arabic literature-a place it shares with pre-Islamic Arabic oral poetry-can hardly be underestimated. No other significant written literature in Arabic appears to have preceded the Qur’an indeed, there are scarcely any examples of Arabic writing prior to it apart from a few inscriptions.
Arabic written literature begins with the foundational sacred book of Islam, the Qur’an, which came down in a series of separate revelations to the Prophet Muhammad from about 609 to 632. Under Islam, Persian was an Arabicized form of the pre-Islamic language of Iran and written in the Arabic script.
Arabic is the foundational language of Muslim civilization, occupying a role similar to Greek in the classical Graeco-Roman tradition or Sanskrit in the ancient Indian civilization. Though the Muslim canon in either language was enormous by 1500, the Arabic was somewhat larger, in part because it was older, having begun in the seventh century, while Persian Muslim literature began in the tenth. Although Muslim literature later came to be written down in a considerable number of languages, until 1500 it was almost entirely written in just two, Arabic and Persian. By 1500 the Muslim literary tradition-by then nearly nine hundred years old-was one of the leading traditions of the world and probably the largest in size at that time. From early on Islam produced a broad prose literature of enduring significance.
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