Approach
One interface: the text
The text at the centre
The original stays at the centre, always reachable as it was written. Around it are layers a reader can move through, outward, inward or around, and each layer points back to its sources. The roots run under all of it, so the library reads as one web of texts.
These texts were made to be read again: recited, memorised, commented on across centuries. The reader is built for that kind of return, slow and close, one passage at a time.
The layers, one tap away
The word and its root
أصلTap any word. The panel gives its root, the core sense of that root in Ibn Fāris, its range in Lane, the pattern the word is cast in, and every other place the library uses it. Most Arabic words grow from three letters, so one root opens a family that runs under every text here.
Grammar where it occurs
نحوThe same panel names the grammar of the word in front of you: its case and why, its form, its part in the sentence. The classical primers are in the library too, so a rule met in a line can be read where the grammarians stated it.
Translations, and where translators differ
ترجمةPublished translations sit beside the original, each named and dated, with an AI translation where none is free to show. Where the translators part ways on a word, the passage says so (Translators differ) and sets their readings side by side.
Try itḤikam 16, where the translators differ →the Rose-Garden, couplet 79 →
Commentaries, by lineage
شرحThe commentators speak in their own words, passage by passage, grouped by the line they belong to. In the Fuṣūṣ, al-Qūnawī's school and the later commentators can be read against each other, and the synthesis says where they agree and where they part.
Try itFaṣṣ Ādam, the third passage →the commentators side by side →
Companions: recitations and lectures
صحبةA text is heard as well as read. Each passage can be listened to, word by word as it is lit, and where a good recitation or lecture exists elsewhere it is linked from the lines it covers, with a note on its reliability.
The printed page
صفحةBehind a reading edition there is a page someone printed. Where a public-domain edition is scanned, the line opens onto the page it came from, so a doubtful reading can be checked by eye.
Connections
صلةEach passage lists what it touches: the Quran it quotes, the texts that cite it, the roots it shares, and resonances with other traditions. Every connection says what kind of claim it is: a documented lineage, a shared source, a resonance with no influence claimed, or a contrast.
Try itConnections on Faṣṣ Ādam 3 →the Hymn of the Pearl beside Suhrawardī →
AI, marked and graded
علامةSome glosses, translations and summaries are drafted with AI. They always carry the amber mark, are never presented as quotation, and point back to the lines they rest on. Interpretive claims are graded, from what a source states to our own frame and what is contested.
How everything is marked
- Published sourceFrom a published source (a lexicon, an edition, a corpus), linked to the exact place.
- Automatic analysisMade by a morphological analyser and not checked by a person.
- AIWritten by AI. Never a quotation, and not reviewed by a scholar. Amber means AI and nothing else.
Learning through the texts
Classical Arabic, and the thought it carries, can be learned the way it long was: by staying close to a few great texts. The tools are in the reader; the passage stays the same while each reader goes as deep as they can.
Soundصوت
Hear the line read, with the text and then without it, and say it back. The ear learns before the rules do.
Rootsأصل
Open a root and a family appears. The same three letters in a verse, a poem and a commentary are how the texts talk to each other.
Patternsوزن
A word is a root poured into a mould. Learn one mould and it makes the same kind of meaning with every root.
Grammar where it occursنحو
A case ending is met in the line first, then named, then found in the primer that states it.
A line by heartحفظ
Keep a little, understood, and come back to it. One line a week is enough to change the ear.
Reading togetherحلق
Say back what you understood, hear what others noticed, disagree kindly. The circle is the oldest classroom there is.
Every level in one room
- The curious, with no Arabic start from the sound and a handful of roots, with the English and the word panel open.
- Heritage speakers meet the words of home in their classical setting, and learn the patterns by name.
- Native speakers find the classical register, its grammar and its primers, one line at a time.
- Scholars and the classically trained go straight to the apparatus, the commentators and the scholarship.
What the traditions said
Long before anyone measured it, teachers in Arabic, Greek, Latin, Chinese and Hebrew said much the same things about how a language and its thought are learned. One word travelled through three of them: ἕξις → مَلَكة → habitus, a having, from the root م ل ك (to own, to have power over).
- By doing, until it becomes a having. What is practised becomes a settled state: hexis in Greek, malaka in Arabic, habitus in Latin.
- Carrying the best words inside you. Memorised lines are a store to think with, and every tradition kept one.
- Aloud. Texts were read out, recited and heard; reading in silence came late.
- Little by little, and again. A short portion, returned to, holds better than a long one read once.
- With companions. Questions asked, answers heard, readings compared: the study circle, the ḥalqa, the hevruta.
- Gently. Teachers warned against forcing a student, and asked for patience on both sides.
A ladder
Almost every tradition that taught through texts taught in an order, with the highest study reached last, by steps: Plato's Academy, the Latin arts, the philosophers of Islam, the madrasa, the Sufi path. They disagree usefully on where to begin (al-Fārābī with language, the Brethren of Purity with number, Ibn Sīnā with logic). What we take from them is a light threshold, asking for a little participation and never for prior knowledge, and a ladder with steps anyone may climb.
Reading together
A circle is a few people, one short passage a week and about an hour, on a video call or round a table. It needs no permission and no centre. It teaches reading and asks no one what they believe. The Academy and the zāwiya are ancestors we name and learn from; we claim no affiliation with either. Tools for circles are being prototyped and will join the reader when they are ready.
Tools and keys
- The menus. Texts opens the library; Arabic holds the roots, letters and grammar; Scholarship names the scholars, institutes and sources. Every page is on the site map.
- Search. Texts, roots in Arabic or as rhm, words and English glosses: the magnifier, ⌘K or /.
- Hear the passage with each word lit as it is read; choose the voice, the speed and how much is read.
- Glosses under the words, the translation below or beside, vowel colours, the Arabic size.
- The text alone, as prose or verse. Press . to switch.
- Quran quotations and wordplay, where the vowels change the meaning, the synthesis, resonances.
- About the text (witnesses, editions, decisions), a study sheet to print, key words and the commentators.
- On a word or a passage: copy it as text or a citation, save an image card, or copy a link that opens the reader there.
Background music
The round button in the bottom-right corner of every page plays quiet music on the maqāmāt, made in your browser and never the same twice. Hold it (or tap the ▴ beside it) for the mood, the maqām and the volume. It is separate from the recitation: a reading voice only lowers it for a while. Browsers let sound start only after a tap, so a dashed ring means it is waiting for yours.
The keyboard
Press ? on any page for the legend.
- /⌘K
- Search texts, roots, words and glosses
- ?
- This legend
- Esc
- Close a sheet, menu or dialog
In a text
- ←j
- Next word (Arabic reads right to left)
- →k
- Previous word
- Enter
- Open the selected word's study
- Space
- Listen / stop
- r
- Repeat the passage
- g
- Word glosses on / off
- t
- Translation on / off
- v
- Vowels: colour → plain → unvowelled
- .
- Reading mode