Curriculum
The Study Path
المسار الدراسي
Not a list of courses but a road: four stages, each one resting on the one before it, from a student who cannot yet read a vowelled line to one who parses the shawāhid of the Alfiyya.
Stage 1
Stage one — the language itself
المرحلة الأولى: اللغة
Before a single rule of Nahw: read Arabic until it is not a code to be broken. Two books of the Madinah series, taught wholly in Arabic, and roughly a year of steady weekly study. Do not begin the Ājurrūmiyya on a language you cannot yet read aloud.
These are taken in order: finish the first before you open the second.
Stage 2
Stage two — the two foundations, together
المرحلة الثانية: التأسيس
Now the primers. Take al-Ājurrūmiyya and the foundations of Ṣarf in the same term, one lesson of each per week: the syntax names what the word does in the sentence, the morphology names what the word is. Memorise the matn of the Ājurrūmiyya as you go; understanding follows memorisation here, not the reverse.
These two are taken side by side, not one after the other.
Stage 3
Stage three — consolidation
المرحلة الثالثة: التثبيت
The third Madinah book closes the language series while Qaṭr al-Nadā re-reads every chapter of the primer with its evidences and its exceptions. By the end of this stage the student should be reading an unvowelled classical text and supplying its endings himself.
These two are taken side by side, not one after the other.
Stage 4
Stage four — the long texts
المرحلة الرابعة: التمكّن
The Alfiyya with Ibn ʿAqīl's commentary — a thousand lines that hold both sciences, and a year of work at the least. Balagha is read alongside it, not before: a man who cannot parse a sentence has no business ruling on whether it is eloquent.
These two are taken side by side, not one after the other.