Re: What books to self-study Classical/Quranic Arabic, from beginner to advanced?

As salaamu alaykum respected brother.

I myself have been doing something similar on and off the last few years. Given that, before I say
anything else I can say that "learning on your own" is much less efficient than enrolling in something
like the Shariah Program but it can still be done and when you do learn, in my opinion, you MIGHT
have a certain advantage both in terms of thawaab/ajr given the difficulty you might encounter and,
furthermore, given that you will learn the "hard way" certain lessons may forever stick in a way that
they might not for other students.

Anyways....

In my answer to your question, I will restrict myself to those materials, resources, etc. that can be
obtained freely online. If you want another answer or suggested path that might incorporate other
materials as well, please say so and I will do my best to share my suggestions.

PHASE I (the outline of the Foundation) [4-5 weeks]

1) Book 1 of the Madinah Series with the aid of the videos on this websites: www.lqtoronto.com 
2) The Book, "Fundamentals of Classical Arabic: volume 1"

The videos for the Madinah books on that website are recordings of a live class that was taught in the
year 2008. If you follow a schedule of doing one class session a day, four (4) days a week, you should
finish book/volume 1 in 4-5 weeks as it was covered in 18 sessions (if I'm not mistaken).
Follow the lessons to a "T" and do EVERYTHING SINLGE I'RAAB (i.e. "syntactic parsing") exercise
that Brother Asif (the instructor) walks you through; you will do hundreds (and it will pay dividends
later).

In addition, do the "Fundamentals of Classical Arabic" book concurrently, however, you will be
primarily concerned with MEMORIZING the VERB TABLES in the book; MEMORIZE EACH ONE! Be
able to say them in your sleep. Know them like you know your own name. The most effective method
that I found for memorizing them was to do the following:

Recite the table about 20-30 times from beginning to end while looking at it in the book. Then, attempt
to close your eyes and recite the first two or three conjugations from memory and then open up your
eyes and read from the book to complete the table. Then, after about 10-12 times of doing this,
attempt to recite the first 7-9 conjugations from memory and then look at conjugations 8-14 to
complete the recitation of the table. After doing so another 10-12 times, you should be able to recite
the table with your eyes closed, if not, recite it in the aforementioned fashion a few more times till you
able to recite it from beginning to end with your eyes closed. Upon finding yourself able to do so,
proceed to recite the table with your eyes closed 150 times! You may find that every now and then
you might get tongue-tied or forget and need to look into the book; that is Okay BUT do not count any
full recitation of the table where you needed to look into the book to complete it. Remember, 150
recitations of the table with your eyes closed. The following day, recite the SAME TABLE from
memory another 150 times. Then the following day move on to the next table. I myself would only
memorize two tables a week (which meant that the three days that I wasn't doing the Madinah Book
videos I would be memorizing verb tables and then there would be only one day during the week
where I did BOTH a Madinah Book video and a verb recitation session).

I cannot emphasize how important the memorization of those tables are. You should not, under any
circumstances, move on to Book 2 of the Madinah series until you have FIRMLY memorized every
table in the book "Fundamentals of Classical Arabic: Volume 1."

If you want to do any review of the material studied in this phase before going on to Book 2 of the
Madinah Books, just read the english answer key of the series for Book 1 at a leisurely pace over the
course of a week; that should be more than sufficient.

PHASE II (Broadening the Foundation) [8-9 weeks]

1) Book 2 of the Madinah Series again with the aid of the videos on www.lqtoronto.com

Follow the same schedule of 4 days on, 3 days off. Remember, now you will be exposed to nearly all
of the bare essentials of Nahw and a significant portion of Sarf. To put things into context, as far as
Nahw goes, you will now have studied approximately all that which the famed "Ajurumiyyah" contains.
As far as Sarf goes, if my memory serves me correctly, you will have about a 70% understanding of
Ajwaf verbs and a thorough introduction to Naaqis verbs. Just finish this book and understand
EVERYTHING that you go over during class and you'll be in much better shape than others who have
plodded along in the language for 2 years or so who have used other means. I would dare say that,
with the exception of Vocabulary, you will be in a much better position than many who study Arabic for
2 years in a Western University.

PHASE III (Strengthening the Foundations and Filling in the Gaps) [2-4 weeks]

1) All the Arabic You should Have Learned the First Time Around: Part 1
2) From the Treasures of Arabic Morphology: Pages 1-90

Do both of the above books CONCURRENTLY.

In this phase, you will not only be reviewing much of what you've already learned but you will be filling
in gaps. The book "All the Arabic You should have Learned the First Time Around" is really an
overlooked treasure. If you read the content complete ALL the exercises in Part I, you will thoroughly
remember all the wierd spelling and orthographic rules as well as nearly all the essential (non-verb
related) grammar in the language. But remember, most of it will be review since you will have covered
it in the Madinah series but reviewing or re-learning material through a different medium is often
VERY EFFECTIVE and much more so than redoing the same material over again. In addition, the
selected pages (noted above) of "From the Treasures of Arabic Morphology" will mostly be review,
however, it will be an ESSENTIAL review because in the next phase you will be going at so-called
"irregular verbs" (the bane of every Arabic student's existence) in a big way so there must be NO
WEAKNESS in your understanding of regular verbs (which will serve as your reference point when
learning about what makes irregular verbs like the mahmooz, muda'af, ajwaf, naaqis, lafeef, etc.
different).

Do not try to rush this phase so if it does, indeed, take you the full 4 weeks to go through the above-
mentioned material, then so be it. Furthermore, any new vocab that you come across should be
looked up in the dictionary and then memorized.

PHASE IV (completing the core 80% of the language) [12-20 weeks]

1) All the Arabic You Should have Learned the First Time Around: Part 2 (entitled "Verbally
Speaking")
2) Arabic Tutor (aka "Arbi Ka Muallim") volumes 1-3 (compromising lessons 1-44 of the entire series)

Do both of the above sets of material concurrently, though you might want to pause at lesson 37 of
Arabic Tutor until you completely finish "Part 2" of "All the Arabic You should Have Learned the First
Time Around" as the discussion of "baabs" or "Verb Paradigms" or "Verb Forms" is a bit more clear (in
my opinion at any rate) in the latter as opposed to the former.

Make sure that you continue to try to memorize the new vocab you come across in "All the Arabic You
Should Have Learned the First Time Around" and the vocab in the vocabulary lists in "Arabic Tutor."
In addition, make sure that you can reproduce the "I'raab" examples that you come across in Arabic
Tutor. I would actually suggest writing out those examples and trying to reproduce the analysis the
next day without looking at the book. Furthermore, I repeat, do EVERY SINGLE EXERCISE in both
series.

Once you graduate from this phase, truthfully, you should have a near complete mastery of verbs, a
decent working vocabulary to begin reading without being frustrated on every page for lack of
vocabulary, and you should be about 80% of the way towards your ultimate goal.

PHASE V (completing Nahw)

1) Arabic Tutor Volume 4

2) All the Arabic You Should have Learned the First Time Around: Part 3

Once you finish this phase, you will have completed all the rules of nahw contained in the book
"Hidayatun Nahw." This is very significant given that more than one scholar from the Indian sub-
continent has remarked that "Nahw is complete upon the Hidaayatun Nahw" or, as Mufti Yusuf Mullan
of the Shariah Program once said, "If you understand the book Hidaayatun Nahw from cover to cover,
you will not need another book in Nahw."

However, this is not to say that you will now just be able to pick up cryptic texts like the Mukhtasar
Ma'ani or Al Kafiyah, etc. and read them with no difficulty and the like; far from it given that reading
itself is a different skill. Furthermore, even as far as Nahw goes, though you may not have much more
as far as rules go to learn for your purposes (i.e. to read Tafsirs, classical Islamic texts, and modern
books), but that is not to say that there isn't anything to be learned from more advanced study.

Regardless, I think that this post has probably answered your question(s) insha'allah. If not, please
reply and I will do my best to further clarify by the Will of Allah.

Wa'salaam