Exploring the Tahawiyya

Farid Dingle

Intermediate Arabic 1.

Consolidate your knowledge of grammatical structures and morphological forms and acquire style and vocabulary through a complete study of the language of the widely celebrated Aqida of Imam al-Tahawi.


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ARB211-220x220
Live session time: Saturday at 13:00 UTC with Farid Dingle
Department
Starting From
11 May, 2013
Duration
10 weeks
Price
$375 USD

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At A Glance

  • Work consistently through a classical text to develop an innate familiarity with its style of writing and vocabulary usage.
  • Test your grammatical understanding with thorough quizzes from the passages of the book
  • Learn new concepts in grammar and morphology that help explain the text, presented in a practical not theoretical manner
  • Learn to speak and listen to phrases that are commonly used in an Arabic-speaking classroom teaching Islamic studies
  • Take exercises that develop all four language skills as you proceed through the text

Details

Exploring the Tahawiyya is the first course of our new Level 2 Arabic program.

Level 2 Arabic courses work to develop vocabulary acquisition, reading and listening skills through closely working with classical texts as well as developing classroom-Arabic communication skills.

The first of these is through a study of the classical work on Islamic belief, the celebrated Aqida of Imam al Tahawi. It is a book that stands out not only for its authoritative coverage of Islamic belief but also for its beautiful use of Classical Arabic.

Level 2 Arabic courses cater to the needs of students of Arabic and Islamic Studies who have acquired the basic keys of understanding grammatical structures and dictionary usage and need the opportunity to apply this knowledge to Islamic texts to be able to practice and consolidate their knowledge of grammatical structures, acquire relevant vocabulary and develop communicative skills to be able to study such texts in an Arabic classroom environment.

Students will:

  • Grammatically analyse the text through automated exercises that focus on consolidation of foundational grammatical concepts
  • Learn new grammatical topics that are needed to understand the text, carefully chosen and presented to be practical and helpful
  • Practice recognizing morphological patterns from the ten forms table
  • Work with conjugating verbs with weak and doubled-up roots
  • Develop listening skills through activities designed around listening to the text of the Aqida al Tahawiyya
  • Learn useful phrases to facilitate study in a native Arab environment, with activities to utilize these phrases in listening and speaking.

By the end of the course students will be able to:

  • Understand any passage in the Aqida of Imam al-Tahawi without the help of a dictionary both through reading and listening
  • Memorize and be able to use key phrases in classroom Arabic
  • Learn conjugating with weak and doubled-up verb roots
  • Be able to grammatically analyse any passage in the Aqida al-Tahawiyya to the level of word identification of roles as covered in a basic text such as the Ajurrumiyya

Working through a complete text as celebrated as the Aqida of Imam al-Tahawi from beginning to end is a very empowering experience and opens the door to an entire genre of Islamic texts, some of which will be explored in subsequent Level 2 Arabic courses.

The focus of this course is using Arabic and developing a natural ability in reading and understanding such texts where grammar is a tool, not the objective of one’s studies.

The course divides the text into 19 sections to mirror the coverage of the text in the course BLF101: Introduction to Islamic Belief. These 19 sections will be covered in twelve weeks as follows:

Week 1

Section 1: Introduction

Week 2

Section 2: God

Section 3: God’s Creative Act

Week 3

Section 4: Divine Omnipotence

Week 4

Section 5: The Prophet Muhammad (Upon Whom be Peace)

Section 6: The Qur’an

Week 5

Section 7: Supernatural Events

Week 6

Section 8: Divine Determination

Week 7

Section 9: The Throne and the Stool

Section 10: Prophets

Week 8

Section 11: Belief

Section 12: Major Sins

Week 9

Section 13: Government

Section 14: The Next Life

Week 10

Section 15: Human Responsibility

Week 11

Section 16: The Companions

Section 17: The Righteous

Week 12

Section 18: The Unseen

Section 19: Summary

Each week students will be expected to devote at least 2 hours to working with the text and completing exercises before attending live sessions in which student questions are answered and classroom-Arabic activities undertaken.

As this is not an Aqida course; the theological concepts of the text will not be explained. Students that have not previously taken BLF101 are strongly encouraged to take the course alongside this course to get a good grasp of one of the most celebrated and widely-accepted texts in Islamic creed.

Students must be able to analyse word roles that are covered in a simple text in Arabic such as the Ajurrumiyya.

Students that have just finished ARB112 as well as those that have taken 200-level courses are all welcome candidates. Please note that this course does not make reference to sentence diagramming, or to constructions but rather to word roles. Support will be provided for students that need to adjust to this classical method of sentence analysis.

Students should be familiar with the ten forms table and be able to use a root-based dictionary such as Hans Wehr.

Students will need functioning microphones.

Writing exercises may be written on a word processor or by pen and then scanned and emailed to the instructor.