In progress — 10 lessons written, in 2 of the 48 books on the ladder. The rest are mapped and not yet taught.
From Umm to the Ummah من الأمّ إلى الأمّة

The five levels

The classical course, in the order it has always been taught, with the books that belong at each rung. Most of it is not written yet — every level says exactly how much of it is.

  1. 01

    Foundation

    “I am starting from nothing. I cannot read Arabic.”

    The first rung. You learn to tell a noun from a verb, you meet the forty-two hadith students have always begun with, and you learn how to pray correctly. No Arabic assumed — every word is explained.

    What you can do after it: By the end you can identify the parts of an Arabic sentence and read a short hadith with help.

    2 of 10 books open Open this level →

  2. 02

    Intermediate

    “I know the basics. I want to read the text myself.”

    Where a student stops relying on translation. Morphology joins grammar, the fiqh moves from a summary to a real matn, and the first book of legal theory appears.

    What you can do after it: By the end you can parse an unvowelled sentence and follow a page of Qudūrī in Arabic.

    12 books mapped, none written yet Open this level →

  3. 03

    Advanced

    “I can read Arabic. I want to follow the reasoning.”

    The commentaries. Here a text is no longer a set of rulings to learn but an argument to follow — why this position and not that one, and what the other schools said.

    What you can do after it: By the end you can follow a commentary’s argument and say where a difference of opinion comes from.

    13 books mapped, none written yet Open this level →

  4. 04

    Specialisation

    “I want to go deep in one science.”

    One field, taken to its own literature — the long fiqh compendia, the tafsīr of al-Bayḍāwī, inheritance law, comparative jurisprudence.

    What you can do after it: By the end you can work inside one science’s primary literature without a bridge text.

    7 books mapped, none written yet Open this level →

  5. 05

    Dawra

    “I want to read the hadith collections themselves.”

    The final year of the classical course: the six books read end to end, with the Muwaṭṭaʾ and al-Ṭaḥāwī’s Maʿānī al-Āthār. It is the traditional close of the ʿālim programme.

    What you can do after it: The last rung of the ladder. Everything before it is preparation for reading these.

    6 books mapped, none written yet Open this level →

Why five, and where they come from

These are not levels we invented. They are the shape of the classical ʿālim course as it is actually published by the seminaries that still run it — the same books in the same order, with the names put into plain English so that a beginner can find their own shelf without first learning the vocabulary.

A book appears on a level because at least one published curriculum sets it there. Where the seminaries disagree about placement, we have followed the majority and said so on the book’s own page.

Nothing here is a qualification. Finishing a level means you finished a course of reading; it is not a degree, it is not accredited, and it is not licensed by any state.

Where the book list comes from: the published curricula of Qalam Seminary, Masjid DarusSalam, the Institute of Islamic Education, Zidni, SeekersGuidance and Zaytuna, read against the Dars-e-Nizāmī as recorded by ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, by Muḥammad Taqī ʿUthmānī in Hamārā Taʿlīmī Niẓām, by Wifāq ul-Madāris, and in the comparison table published in By The Pen, the Qalam student journal.

Two of our choices depart from that inheritance on purpose. Al-Ājurrūmiyya is not a Dars-e-Nizāmī text — the South Asian ladder begins grammar at Naḥw Mīr — and al-Waraqāt is Shāfiʿī where the Ḥanafī first book of legal theory is Uṣūl al-Shāshī. Both are here because they are the shorter, better door for a student reading in English, and both are said rather than hidden.