Basics of Qur’anic Arabic
A Two-weekend Course for Beginners
Introduction
As the Word of God, the Qur’an is the most powerful means to connect with the Divine. To receive the full impact of the divine Word demands that it is read in its original language. However, it is most unfortunate that the majority of Muslims today do not know the language of the Qur’an. Consequently, we deprive ourselves of the most powerful and profound blessings of the Holy Book: the direct psycho-spiritual impact of the divine speech on the heart. The Basics of Qur’anic Arabic course is the first step in that direction. This course introduces students to the fundamental building blocks of Qur’anic language. It thus enables the students to comprehend the underlying structure of the Qur’anic language, paving the way toward understanding the divine Word directly.
Goals
The goals of the Basics of Qur'anic Arabic include:
• Building the grammatical foundation of Qur’anic Arabic in order to lay bare its underlying structure and logic.
• Preparing the students for a basic ability in translating the Qur’an into English, and for an intermediate level of instruction in grammar.
Disclaimer: This course does not instruct in Arabic conversation or the modern dialect.
Methodology
The course is designed to teach the structure of the Arabic language to an English-speaking audience. For this reason, we do not insist that students learn the Arabic terminology. For the most part, our focus remains on the English terminology. In addition, we have reduced the flood of jargon that accompanies the learning of a new language. As our main focus will be to read and understand the Qur’an, we neither teach nor expect students to write in Arabic. Finally, as opposed to long hours of rote memorization, our method emphasizes concepts and analysis.
Pre-requisite
The only prerequisite for this course is that the student should be able to read the Qur’an in Arabic, even if with difficulty.
Materials
There are no books required for this course. All course materials are in the form of notes and homework assignments. These are distributed to the students via email.
Syllabus
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