Kalam & Its Components | Introduction | Arabic Grammar in 40 Lessons | Dr Shadee Elmasry

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim.

[00:00:02]Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salam ala Rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. As the Prophet said, anything that does not be anything of import that does not begin with the name of Allah Ta'ala is cut off. What does he mean cut off? Means the baraka is cut off. And take this as one of your first Arabic vocabulary words. What is the meaning of baraka? The meaning of baraka is increase. That means if it's a small amount, it'll increase. If it's a big amount, it will um uh be even more of an increase. So, increase means it gets you what you need. And that's the meaning of baraka.

[00:00:35]It gets you to what you need and uh supplies you with what you need. The opposite of baraka is lan. Lan means that it's uh you have a lot, but it doesn't achieve the goal. Doesn't make you happy. All right? Even though it's a lot, it doesn't make you happy. So, Allah raises those who uh who uh those of you who believe and those who are given knowledge many degrees. Okay? So, Allah raises everybody of the believers, okay?

[00:01:01]However, those who are given knowledge are given a lot more. Okay? Those who are given knowledge are given far more. So, there's those who believe, but there's also those who have been given knowledge. All right? They've been given far more than uh uh degrees of closeness to Allah than simply believe. And that's why our path is the path of knowledge and it's the path of companionship. Keep the company of other decent Muslims and keep studying at least once a week, if not twice or three times a week, you take a class. And go at your your own pace, but keep taking classes.

[00:01:38]Whoever takes a path to knowledge, Allah makes easy for him the path to paradise.

[00:01:43]Why? Because whoever learns realizes the wisdoms behind all the uh uh rituals and rulings of Islam and doesn't find them difficult. So, he finds them easy because it makes sense to him. All right? And they find them not only that, they find it sweet to be in a state of submission to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

[00:02:01]Next, the angels lay down their wings for the seeker of knowledge. So pleased are they with what he does.

[00:02:08]To attend a gathering of knowledge is better than praying a thousand rak'ahs.

[00:02:13]Okay, how many of you can attend pray a thousand rak'ahs? I mean, you pray eight rak'ahs in in Ramadan and you feel like khalas, my legs are going to collapse underneath me and I'm exhausted. But here, 1,000 rak'ahs is outweighed by a single class of knowledge.

[00:02:31]The superiority of the scholar over the worshiper is as my superior superiority over the least of my companions. Masha Allah.

[00:02:39]Okay. Next, how do you turn this page here?

[00:02:44]Oh, I got to turn this off.

[00:02:46]All right, next page. How do you turn these pages here?

[00:02:50]All right.

[00:02:52]All right, let's take a look at our table of contents. Firstly, we have a little preface and then we have we cover kalam and its components. What is the meaning of kalam? Very important for us to study what is the meaning and what are what are the components of kalam?

[00:03:07]The components of kalam are number one, al-ism.

[00:03:12]Uh Where's my pencil tool here? There we go. I love my pencil tool. This is my new iPad which I'm putting to use.

[00:03:19]Special reward for the person who got it to me.

[00:03:23]Al-ism, okay, which is the noun, basically. And the noun is anything and it's going to be here that uh has a meaning in itself and is not connected to time. That everything that we call that an ism. Anything that has a meaning in and of itself. Okay?

[00:03:40]Next, oops.

[00:03:43]Next is al-fi'l.

[00:03:45]The verb. Anything that has meaning in itself and is connected to time.

[00:03:50]Okay? So that's the difference. So anything that has, as you see here, past tense, present tense, past tense, present tense, command, future, anything that's connected to time, must be a fail.

[00:04:06]All right? What's next?

[00:04:09]Okay.

[00:04:11]Next, we have the huruf, which we didn't They don't have a chapter in the of themselves, but the harf, which you're going to see all the charts are here, the huruf charts, okay? A harf is that which does not have any meaning in and of itself, okay? A harf is that which has to give meaning to something else.

[00:04:36]Like what, for example? What is the meaning of from in the English language? Can you concep- Can you imagine a from?

[00:04:45]Okay? I can imagine an apple. I can imagine a someone running. Can you imagine a from?

[00:04:52]You can't imagine a from, all right? Can you imagine an in?

[00:04:56]Right? The English word in, I N. You can't. So, you need Okay? In order to understand this, you need to imagine two other things, like the apple is in the basket, okay? So, a harf in the Arabic language has no meaning in and of itself. It has to give meaning to something else, and it relies upon other things to receive its meaning.

[00:05:19]Okay?

[00:05:20]All right. Next.

[00:05:25]How to benefit from this book.

[00:05:27]This is very important here.

[00:05:29]All right?

[00:05:31]How to benefit from this book.

[00:05:33]This book is meant to be your first grammar book, and for this reason, we rely heavily on English translations and explanations, so that the basic concepts become clear. In the future, however, it is better to rely on Arabic only works such as a Tuhfat as-Saniyyah, which is an explanation of al-Ajrumiyyah, upon which this book is based. Okay?

[00:05:56]Uh while the grammar elements of the book are in English, I have left the examples untranslated so that students can begin the weaning process off of the English language. Okay? As for the titles, they are transliterated there In other words, Arabic in Latin letters.

[00:06:11]So, this word transliterated.

[00:06:15]Not translated, transliterated means Arabic in Latin letters. Like this, for example. At-Tuhfat as-Saniyyah. So, it's Arabic, but it's in Latin letters. These letters that we use, they're not called English letters, they're called Latin letters. Okay? Like ABC, they're not English, that's the Latin alphabet. All right?

[00:06:35]Okay, what else we got here? The most important concept to grasp at this level is declension or i'rab, which I guarantee you you're going to trip over, especially the young students that we have here. We have a number of young students, which is good. But I guarantee you you won't get it from the first time. If you do, then masha Allah, you got a high IQ and Allah reward you. Then maybe you're smarter than me, because it's in I didn't get it on the first time. But if you don't, that's okay. What you're going to do is keep going back to watch the videos, and when we do the readings, you'll start to understand. Okay? When we do the readings, that's where you'll start to grasp things and understand them. All right? English does not have i'rab.

[00:07:17]Okay? English does not have this. German has it, Russian has it, a lot of other languages have it, but there's no concept of declension in the English language. Okay?

[00:07:29]Now, the most important things I don't want to put this to in red, to memorize is what? The charts. You got to memorize these charts.

[00:07:39]There are a ton of charts, but they're all easy to memorize. And the way I used to do it when I was young, uh when I was studying, is that I used to tape up the charts all around the house, right? Uh but the little I lived in a little apartment in Washington, D.C., Foggy Bottom, only, you know, like 2 mi from the White House, believe it or not. And uh I used to put these charts up everywhere, okay?

[00:08:06]Like three, four charts in the in the family room, three, four charts in my bedroom. I had charts in the hallway.

[00:08:12]And you you go by, you glance at it every single time. So, you need to memorize these charts, and you'll find the charts all at the bottom, okay?

[00:08:21]All right. So, erase all that, and let's move on.

[00:08:27]All right, the first thing that we want to talk about.

[00:08:37]Al-Kalam. What is Al-Kalam?

[00:08:40]Al-Kalam who al-lafth al-murakkab al-mufidu bil-wada.

[00:08:48]All right. What a weird four.

[00:08:50]All right.

[00:08:51]Kalam is an expression, it's an utterance. A lafth is an utterance, so something that you say. So, the written word is not treated as kalam, okay?

[00:09:00]Uh gestures are not treated like as speech, they're not considered kalam.

[00:09:05]It So, something must be a lafth.

[00:09:08]Something must be murakkab.

[00:09:10]Murakkab implies that it is connected.

[00:09:13]Okay, it has to be connected. So, you can't say uh at-tuffahatu and then wait, and then say hamra' is red. The apple is red. So, you split up the sentence like that. That's not kalam, okay? So, you need to have uh two things, which is number one, it has to be an expression, an utterance, and number two, it has to be connected.

[00:09:35]A single word by itself is not speech.

[00:09:38]Okay?

[00:09:41]A single word is known as a kalimah and its plural is kalimaats. All right? The word kalimah is also used to refer to a full speech or a sentence with a deep meaning such as kalimat at-tawhid which is ash-shahada. So, that's just different uh meanings of the word kalimah but al-kalam number one is al-lafz al-murakkab al-mufid.

[00:10:04]What does it mean that kalam has to be mufid? Mufid means that the listener is not left waiting for more words.

[00:10:14]Hence, half a sentence, okay? Like Samih ate the akala Samihu What did he eat?

[00:10:26]I need to know what he ate. Okay? So, we're waiting. Dot dot dot. We're all waiting. What did Samih eat? Okay? So, it's not speech. It's just a phrase.

[00:10:36]So, what we're waiting to do what we have to have is that Samih we we shouldn't be waiting for anything else. That's the key. Now, mufid beneficial does not mean that uh we're all actually benefiting because if you ate me tell me like the bear ate salt that does I don't care. Right?

[00:10:54]Doesn't doesn't benefit me. So, we're not talking about moral benefit or or wisdom here. We're just talking that the listener is not waiting for more speech. Okay? So, al-kalam huwa al-lafz al-murakkab al-mufidu bil-wada. What is al-wada?

[00:11:10]It refers to al-wada al-arabi. Hence, speech in any other language is not considered kalam in the Arabic language, okay? So, we won't have to apply the rules of Arabic grammar when we mix speech. Okay? When we when we say, let's say Ali ibn Abi Talib, all right? Uh he he did this, that, or the other. I don't have to sit there saying okay, Ali is a verb. Therefore, I should say Ali you etc. So, when we mix up speech, the other languages we don't apply Arabic grammar rules to the Arabic words words if they're mixed up in other speech.

[00:11:49]Okay, cuz we don't consider that speech.

[00:11:52]The components of Kalam.

[00:11:55]Next.

[00:11:56]Ibn Ajurrum Ibn Ajurrum is a very blessed scholar who wrote the book. This base This book is based upon the the words of the the book of called the Ajurrumiyyah and everybody should know what this book is. It's a very famous book. Al Al Ajurrumiyyah.

[00:12:13]Okay.

[00:12:15]Ibn Ajurrum is Moroccan and he wrote the Ajurrumiyyah without looking at the paper. He was looking at the Kaaba the entire time and he said I pray that Allah Ta'ala bless this book and let it be beneficial to the Muslims just because you know of the Baraka of being at the Kaaba and looking at the Kaaba. And literally nothing in the Ajurrumiyyah is something unique that cannot be found in a thousand other books.

[00:12:45]All right, it's the same Arab basic Arabic grammar that you can find in a thousand other books, but Allah Ta'ala has blessed that book.

[00:12:52]Okay.

[00:12:53]Because Allah accepted the intention of the author. That's the key and that we call that Al Qubool or Qubool right when Allah accepts just like 40 Nawawi Hadiths. There are many books that are 40 Hadiths. A lot of scholars gather 40 Hadiths, but Imam Nawawi's is the one that is special.

[00:13:10]Okay.

[00:13:13]All right. [gasps] >> [sighs] >> Now, what are the Aqsam?

[00:13:18]The next thing wa Aqsamuhu Thalatha Ism wa Fi'l wa Harf wa Harfun Ja'a li Ma'na. Ism, Fi'l, and Harf. The ism is anything that has meaning in itself and it's plural is asma.

[00:13:35]Okay, asma. Now, you might be asking, why would anybody name asma? Because asma is a popular name.

[00:13:41]The reason why is that something noble in the Arabic culture has multiple names. Didn't you ever see like the 99 names of Allah? You see 100 names of the prophet Muhammad or more.

[00:13:54]Right? What they what people do that the Arabs used to do that if something was noble, they gave it many names. So, when someone's named asma, means she has many names, which means that she's noble in other words. So, that's why people name the name asma.

[00:14:11]But, the first one is the ism that has anything that has meaning in itself.

[00:14:15]Okay?

[00:14:18]All right, let's go to the next page now.

[00:14:23]Page nine.

[00:14:25]>> [clears throat] >> By the way, this this PDF it's I'm not releasing it for download yet, but you can read from it from the myarkview classroom. All right, so you just sign in to your myarkview classroom and if you have trouble if you don't know how to sign in to my myarkview classroom, then you just send a message to Yusra whose name is here as Safina Society. The just send her a message say, hey, how do I get access? I don't know how to do it. Again, all the live classes will be through links to the Google Classroom and all the recordings will be on myarkview.org.

[00:15:01]That's where you're going to get the recordings. Okay?

[00:15:05]Okay, so The ism is everything that has meaning in and of itself. Now, let's take a look at number two. The fi'l is anything that has meaning in itself and is connected to time. That's the key. What does it mean? Past, present, future, or command. So, anything that you could say, "Well, yeah, that's in the past." Right? Or that's in the future.

[00:15:30]Then you know that it is a fi'l. It is not an ism anymore. It's a fi'l. Okay?

[00:15:34]What we call a verb.

[00:15:36]Okay?

[00:15:37]>> [clears throat] >> Connected to time. All right? Simple, right?

[00:15:46]Next, the harf.

[00:15:55]The harf is that which has that expresses meaning for something else.

[00:16:02]Not in itself. Because again, we as we said, the harf has no meaning in and of itself.

[00:16:08]Like I said earlier, can you can you imagine above? I want you to imagine an above.

[00:16:16]All right?

[00:16:17]Just imagine above. You can't. I have to think of for example, the pen is above the iPad, right? That you have to think of it that way. You have to think of something else. You cannot think of an above. So, therefore, it's a harf.

[00:16:31]Okay?