She gained worldwide recognition for her researches into the emergence of the Arabic script and the oldest written documents of Islam.

Her father was a Christian merchant whose business activities brought his family first to Mosul, then to Baghdad and finally to Bombay.

[3] In 1923, Abbott moved with her family to the United States and received a master's degree in 1925 from Boston University.

They claimed that these originated, instead, in the first few centuries of Islam (therefore, not contemporaneous with Muhammad), and that these were attempts to shoehorn authority atop a legal foundation that had already been laid.

Nabia Abbott, on the other hand, argued that hadith was an original practice in Islam, held in written form until they entered the canonical books.

In answer to the question of the unavailability of these early manuscripts, she blamed the Caliph Umar, who ordered the destruction of these writings to prevent a parallel development of holy literature that might contend against the Qur'an.