Quote:The Arabic society was based on storytelling & oral communication ; reading was scarce & only few in the society were able to read.
True of all societies in antiquity.
Moreover, there were degrees of literacy then as now.
The Romans attained a literacy rate of about 10% mainly by teaching military recruits how to read Latin. But just because you could read the duty roster for cleaning the latrine did not mean that you could read advanced philosophical texts. That was reserved to the upper classes alone.