Abū'l-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Ḥasanī al-Nadwī's anthology (1359 AH / 1940 CE) of the natural, unselfconscious Arabic prose that lives in ḥadīth, sīra, fiqh, and the writings of the spiritual masters — not in the rhymed-prose canon. Released here as a free reading library: front matter and a growing collection of selected stories, each as a self-contained reader with English translation, vocabulary keyed to al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's Mufradāt and Lane's Lexicon, and a language insight on every sentence.
الغلاف والتمهيد
The cover, bibliographic front matter, and the foreword to al-Nadwī's anthology — a personal piece by ʿAlī al-Ṭanṭāwī (from his preface to al-Muslimūn fī'l-Hind) explaining why the Mukhtārāt is the school anthology he had long hoped for. Six sentences of modern classical Arabic with English translation, vocabulary keyed to Mufradāt and Lane's Lexicon, and a language insight on every line.
Read →مُقَدِّمَة الكِتاب
Al-Nadwī's full introduction to the anthology — a sustained argument that the truer Arabic prose lives in ḥadīth, sīra, fiqh, and the writings of the spiritual masters, not in the rhymed-prose canon. 110 sentence cards including four long classical narrations as worked examples: Kaʿb b. Mālik on his absence from Tabūk, the boycott that followed, and ʿĀʾisha on the ḥadīth al-ifk. Fully vocalised throughout.
Read →جَوَامِعُ الكَلِم
Al-Nadwī's note on the Prophet ﷺ's eloquence, then a khuṭba narrated by ʿUqba ibn ʿĀmir al-Juhanī and preserved by al-Bayhaqī and Ibn ʿAsākir — a chain of short, dense maxims on truthful speech, wealth and certainty, the sanctity of the believer, and "whoever does X, Allāh will do Y". Sixty sentences with English translation, vocabulary keyed to Mufradāt and Lane's Lexicon, and a language insight on every line.
Read →الخَطَابَة المُعْجِزَة
The Prophet ﷺ's oration to the Anṣār after Ḥunayn, narrated by Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and preserved in Ibn al-Qayyim's Zād al-Maʿād — twenty-eight sentences of classical Arabic with English translation, vocabulary keyed to Mufradāt and Lane's Lexicon, and a language insight on every line.
Read →في بَني سَعْد
Ḥalīma al-Saʿdiyya's first-person account of taking the orphan Prophet ﷺ as a nursling in a famine year — the immediate signs of barakah, the splitting-of-the-chest incident, and Āmina's reply about the light she saw at his birth. Fifty-seven sentences from Ibn Hishām's Sīra, with full apparatus.
Read →حَديث النّاس
A vivid 4th-century AH narrative by Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī recounting the Samanid crisis in Khurasan — sixty-seven sentences of classical Arabic prose with English translation, vocabulary keyed to al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's Mufradāt, and a language insight on every line.
Read →في سَبيل السَّعادة واليَقين
Imām al-Ghazālī's spiritual autobiography from al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl — his crisis at Baghdad, the seizure of his tongue, his escape from the Niẓāmiyya college, the years of retreat in the Umayyad Mosque minaret and the Dome of the Rock, and the ten years of seclusion that brought him certainty in the path of the Sufis. Forty-three sentences of classical Arabic prose with full apparatus.
Read →More Mukhtārāt stories being added — check back regularly.
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