# Why did most pre-colonial nations of sub-Saharan Africa have no written language? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 3, 2004, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-pre-colonial-nations-of-sub-saharan-africa-have-no-written-language/253407 "2004-07-03T20:54:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 37
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2004, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-pre-colonial-nations-of-sub-saharan-africa-have-no-written-language/253407/37 "2004-07-04T22:57:19Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Why did they never adapt the Arabic letters to their own languages and develop native literatures? Well it is likely that literacy in Arabic script was initially mostly the province of the religious class and it was long considered necessary for proper religious writing to be in Arabic. But that aside, my understanding is that at least a few languages _were_ being written in Arabic script by the time of the European conquest. The Hausa were literate in Arabic from the 15th century and by at least the early 19th Hausa itself was being written in Ajami, an adaptation of Arabic script ( remember they weren’t brought under European control until the late 19th ). I believe Swahili literature dates back even further, to the early 18th. The biggest factor was probably time - the diffusion of literacy in Africa just happened late in history. Had it occurred a few centuries earlier, native scripts might have been much more common. - Tamerlane --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-pre-colonial-nations-of-sub-saharan-africa-have-no-written-language/253407)._