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Introduction¶

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These are notes I’ve made whilst on an Arabic course. The aim of the course is to be able to get an understanding of the Quran and be able to converse at a basic level. It’s more of an intro course than a course that will get you fully versed in Arabic (there’s a lot in the language to learn).

There is one main assumption: you know how to read and recite Arabic already (with punctuation).

Things required for the course are (I suggest buying physical copies):

• Hans Wehr English-Arabic dictionary - you’ll use this quite a bit
• Al-Qira’atur-rashidah
• Al-Arabiyyatu-bayna-yadayk - this isn't really used as such in these notes, but was worked on alongside this. ie this book provides the speaking side of things, these notes provide the grammar side of things. The 2 complement each other.

An optional resource is:

• Treasures of Arabic Morphology - this is a useful resource for learning basic Arabic

(note that these links may not be the correct/up-to-date versions)

The idea is that we’ll first cover some initial Arabic, then start reading Al-Qira’atur-rashidah, learning more Arabic as it comes up in the book.

Note that it's probably best not to read ahead too much. Don't rush it, take things steady, making sure to keep yourself going. Arabic has a lot of rules. There are ways of learning Arabic that involve memorising a lot of rules up-front; this course is not like that. Above all, don't get discouraged, keep going, keep making progress. Once we start reading Al-Qira'atur-rashidah a bit, you should start feeling like you're making decent progress.

Also, note that I’m not including punctuation everywhere. I’ll try and include it the first time I use a word though, but note that, except in some places e.g. the Quran, punctuation isn’t used in Arabic normally.

During the course we were given some inspirational things/miracles of the Quran. I forgot most of these, but will try and include the ones I remembered. Here’s the first one.

Ayatul Kursi¶

You can find Ayatul Kursi here. Here’s a translation of it, split onto separate lines in a particular way:

Look at the first and last line, note the similarities in terms of what is being mentioned. Then the second and penultimate line, note their similarities. And so on, till you get to the middle line, which ties it all together. This structure is known as a ring couplet.