From the ḥadd of iʿrāb in al-Ājurrūmiyya to the shawāhid of the Alfiyya: what governs a word, what sign that government leaves on its end, and what to do when the sign is not there to be seen.
Read the entriesBiography
Shaykh Ibrahim Al Mubtasim
الشيخ إبراهيم المبتسم
Imam of the Croydon Islamic Community Trust Masjid, and the author of the entries on this site.
Teacher of Nahw, Sarf and Balagha; imam of the Croydon Islamic Community Trust Masjid; and the author of every entry on this site. What follows is his academic journey, the sciences he teaches, and where his lessons may be heard.
- ImamCroydon Islamic Community Trust Masjid
The khuṭba, the daily prayers, and the ḥalaqa in the Arabic sciences that this encyclopedia is drawn from.
- Teacher of the Arabic sciencesMadinah College
Nahw, Sarf and Balagha taught as a graded curriculum — the same order of texts the study path on this site sets out.
The academic journey
From the first primer to a year on the Alfiyya. The stages are given in order; they are not dated, because the dates were never stated and this site does not supply what it was not told.
The beginning
The first books, and the decision to read Arabic properly
الطلب الأول
The journey began where it begins for most English-speaking students: the Madinah books of Dr. V. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, and al-ʿArabiyya Bayna Yadayk alongside them. What made the difference was the decision not to stop there — not to settle for the reading knowledge that lets a man follow a khuṭba, but to go on to the sciences that let him open a matn.
- Texts read
- Durūs al-Lughat al-ʿArabiyya li-Ghayr al-Nāṭiqīna bihā — the Madinah books
- Al-ʿArabiyya Bayna Yadayk
Kuwait
The intensive: Arabic all day, in Arabic
الدورة المكثّفة
An immersive intensive in Kuwait — the point at which Arabic stops being a subject that is studied and becomes the language the study is conducted in. Months of full days with the language, and the shift that every serious student describes: you stop translating in your head.
SOAS, University of London
BA in Arabic — the language read academically
البكالوريوس في اللغة العربية
A degree in Arabic at SOAS, where the language is met a second time and from another side: its history, its dialects, its literature, and the discipline of reading a text critically. The traditional ḥalaqa and the university reading room ask different questions of the same page — a teacher who has sat in both can answer both.
Morocco
A year in Morocco on the Alfiyya of Ibn Malik
سنةٌ على الألفية
A thousand lines of rajaz that hold the whole of Nahw and Ṣarf, read the way the text has been read for seven centuries: memorised, recited, and unpacked line by line with a commentary — a year of it, in a country that never let go of the tradition of memorising the matn before understanding it.
- Texts read
- Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik (d. 672 AH)
- Sharḥ Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 769 AH)
London
From student to teacher
التدريس
Teaching the Arabic sciences at Madinah College, and the imāma of the Croydon Islamic Community Trust Masjid — the ḥalaqa, the khuṭba, and the students who arrive able to pray in Arabic and unable to read it. This site is the ḥalaqa written down.
What he teaches
Four fields, and the encyclopedia is organised by three of them.
The scale of the word: the six bābs of the bare triliteral, the ten augmented patterns and what each addition does to the meaning, the seven derived nouns, and the rules of iʿlāl that make the “irregular” verb regular.
Read the entriesMaʿānī, bayān and badīʿ — why this word was fronted, why that one was deleted, and what a metaphor claims that a simile does not. The science that turns a correct reading of the Qurʾān into an attentive one.
Read the entriesTeaching the language itself to those who have none of it: the Madinah books and al-ʿArabiyya Bayna Yadayk, taught in Arabic from the first lesson, to students who work full-time and study in the evening.
All coursesTeachers and chains
Where to hear the lessons
The ḥalaqa of the masjid, and the recordings published to the Shaykh’s channel.
This site
The encyclopedia collects what is taught in the ḥalaqa into entries that can be looked up, cross-read and returned to; the study path sets out the texts in the order they are taken. Both are added to as the lessons proceed.