Classical Arabic mainly refers to the language of the Qur’an or the texts that are guided by the Qur’an’s form and content. Advanced students will be exposed to Islamic legal, theological, and mystical texts from the classical and medieval eras.

The Classical Arabic Program aims at mastering classical Arabic in a gradual and progressive manner. The foundational phase focuses on the linguistic aspect which includes grammar, morphology and rhetoric (nahw, sarf and balagha); at this level, students do not only excel in reading and understanding classical texts, but they are also able to analyze, translate and interpret them, resulting in developing listening, reading, speaking and writing skills necessary for the intermediate and advanced levels.

The intermediate and advanced level intends to move students from learning Arabic to using it as a tool to decipher various texts dealing with classical and contemporary issues. These include Scriptural Exegesis (tafsir), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), Prophetic narratives (hadith) and Islamic history, to name a few. The books used in the advanced classical level are selfsame to those used by native speakers in Arab universities, which testifies to the advanced level a student at Ibn Ghazi Arabic Institute can achieve in about 2 years with little or no prior knowledge of Arabic.