An Introduction to the
Arabic Language through Islamic Texts
Book: An
Introduction to the Arabic Language through Islamic
Texts, 950pp. (two volumes)
Author: Syed Iqbal Zaheer
Reviewer: Biju Abdul Qadir
Publisher: Al-Attique
Publishers Inc, Toronto
11 Progress Ave Unit #7, Toronto, ON M1P 4S7, Canada
Tel.416—335-1170 – e-mail:
al-attique@al-attique.com
Year of Publication: 2007
There is no other language which
attained to such perfection with so sudden a moment in
history as the Arabic language during, and following,
the 23-year revelation of the Qur’an. Indeed, the Arabic
language appears singularly fortunate in having been
favored with the invigorating, empowering, burden of
God’s last, unchangeable, communication to mankind.
For keen and impartial observers of the historical
experience of religion in human life, it is not too
difficult to accept that the Qur’anic revelation, in
effect, engineered a faux paus, as it were, an
unassailable benchmark in terms of man’s highest
understanding of his origins, his progress and his
future – both of the material and the moral type – that
he can ever aspire for. This remarkable, even
miraculous, characteristic of the Qur’an certainly did
not go without its effect on the language in which it
was destined to be scripted. Revealed to an unlettered
individual in the Arabia of the seventh century after
the disappearance of Christ, the Qur’an thus froze, in
its perfection - in its highest evolution - the language
in which it was revealed. Since that defining moment in
history more than fourteen centuries ago, the language
has remained incapable of further gradation for all time
to come: both upgradation and degradation has become
impossible despite the best human efforts
Syed Iqbal Zaheer’s notable, and innovative, effort in
his An Introduction to the Arabic Language Through
Islamic Texts must be emphasized here as a
path-breaking, pioneering, attempt to teach the Arabic
language fully through the medium of the very cause of
its perfection, its raison d’etre even: the divine text
of the Qur’an and its inescapable, time-honored, human
derivative – the Ahadith or the traditions of the last
messenger of God. This attempt has been pioneering in
the sense that while several instructors in the Arabic
language have, in the past, employed certain verses of
the Qur’an here or a few Ahadith there in order to
enrich their course material, none have so singularly
focused on this medium of instruction as has been done
in the book under discussion. Thus, a dual purpose is
served: learning Arabic as well as Islam from its
sources.
In studying the Arabic language, it is the structure
which is the main reason for the language seeming
difficult to learn, particularly in the early stages.
While the said structure is built logically enough,
students unused to such difficulties in other languages
often struggle to come to grips with it. But come to
terms with it they must, since Arabic, of which Hebrew
is an off-shoot, is a highly structured language. Once
this structure is understood, the learning process is
rendered simpler and faster. Once this is successfully
attained, the students need only to learn new words. It
is, perhaps, with this difficulty in mind that the
author of An Introduction to the Arabic Language Through
Islamic Texts has endeavored, especially in the earlier
lessons, to stoke the student’s interest by inserting
surprise sentences, short stories, anecdotes, humor,
puns and the like.
Although sentences used as examples in the earliest
lessons might seem unconventional, the author’s effort
in using such sentences seems more for the purpose of
avoiding grammatical constructions that the student
would not have learnt earlier. In fact, with each
further lesson, these sentences actually sound more
complete. However, any difficulty arising out of this
approach is quickly nullified in most cases, since the
meaning is clearly provided close by.
With the exception of three passages in the book,
translations into English are entirely by the writer
himself. One advantage in taking these three
translations from others is that the student is provided
an opportunity to see how free translations and
abridgements are done, although Zaheer himself tries to
be verbal throughout the lessons so much so that even
where the sentence structure had to be modified for
idiomatic reasons, he has endeavored to maintain the
word order in the translation to correspond with the
Arabic texts.
Its approach apart, an added consideration in
appreciating An Introduction… is that contemporary
research into the nature of works on the Arabic language
tend to give the impression that at least a certain
class of writers actually have the objective of
concealing genuine Islamic literature – and, therefore,
Islam - from the Western public. So apprehensive are
they of Islam capturing the imagination of their own
people that they have skillfully created an entirely
negative stereo-type of the Arabs, their life, culture,
and literature. It is one of the merits of An
Introduction... that it caters to the direly felt need
for a correction of these stereotyped, distorted,
images. While two volumes might not fully meet the
requirements of this important objective, the history,
richness, and brilliance of Arab culture being hardly
condensed in them, the two volumes may, nevertheless,
constitute useful tools in giving the reader a feel of
what true Arab tradition - of the past as well as the
present - is really like.
The main thrust in the selection of the texts appears to
be in covering as many literary genres as possible. It
may be pointed out at the outset that the lessons on
Qur’an and Hadith commentary, or on Hadith and Fiqh
principles could prove difficult to comprehend for the
lay reader, but in studying Islam on one’s own such
initial difficulty is but natural. Furthermore, in their
seeming complexity, these lessons impress upon the
student that Islamic Science rests on the foundation of
reason and logic, albeit guided in all matters by the
Last Revelation made to Muhammad.
A further value-addition to the two volumes of An
Introduction… is in the form of a DVD compact disc,
unique in many respects, and which comes with the book
at no extra cost. This DVD disc contains audio
explanations of all the lessons in the book, the famous
20-volume Arabic-Arabic Lisan al-Arab dictionary in two
electronic formats, four valuable Arabic books on Arabic
grammar, one English-Arabic and Arabic-English
dictionary, two Arabic software that cover major Qur’an
commentaries and Hadith collections, three stories in
Arabic as power-point presentations, five audio speeches
in pure Arabic, and six songs for children.
All things considered, An Introduction to the Arabic
Language through Islamic Texts must be seen as the
painstaking result of two decades of research, study and
application. Starting with the alphabets, it takes the
student through a useful 90-step process right up to the
classical works of Imam Qurtubi, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ghazali,
and Sayyid Qutb amongst a host of other giants in the
history of Islamic literature. Considering the range and
variety offered under one program as An Introduction…
presents, and the fact that it is already being used in
several Islamic centers, and at least in one institution
in India, the book is definitely a ‘must-buy’ for anyone
interested in the pursuit of the Arabic language, in
particular, and for any student of Islamic culture, in
general.
[Printed in Riyadh, the book should be available in
major bookstores of the Kingdom] top^
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