Welcome to the SDSU Arabic Program
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| This page offers various links to the Arab-speaking world, as well as important departmental information. If you are looking for information concerning Arabic classes, please visit our Programs page, located on the main Modern Languages' homepage, or click here.
The Arabic language is the everyday mode of communication for 256 million people, making it the sixth most spoken language world-wide according to the 13th edition of the Ethnologue. But considering the fact that Islam (which means submission to God) has 1.3 billion followers (Sept. 6, 2002) and uses the Koran as its bible, Arabic is, perhaps, the most prayed-in language of the globe. The Muslim congregation is currently growing at a rate of 2.9% outpacing all the Christians put together who only reach 2.3%. As a Semitic language its roots date back to Shem, the second son of Noah, who expanded his seed throughout Mesopotamia, the Middle East and the Orient. The Greco-Byzantine heritage of learning was preserved and enriched by the Muslims through a vigorous program of translations from Plato and Aristotle, Euclid and Hippocrates, aiming to create a universal and cohesive social order. Culturally, Arabic enjoyed the preeminence of the sophisticated and poetic Middle Ages in reconfirming the bases of Western Civilization (800-1100 AD). Teachers were looked upon as masters of scholarship and their lectures, meticulously recorded in notebooks, were conduits of ancient science and philosophy. Students often made long journeys to join the circle –maktab- of great teachers, thus setting the pattern of the university system initiated by the early European Studia Generalia.
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