Did you know Arabic well when you entered Damascus as an immigrant with your father?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Did you speak Arabic well at that time or not?
The Shaykh : I did not know anything of the Arabic language; in fact, I did not know anything of the Arabic letters. It seems that my father (may Allah have mercy on him) did not pay attention to teaching us, even though he was the imam of a mosque and perhaps the teacher of a kuttab. So, when we came to Damascus, we did not know anything of reading and writing, as they say in our region in Syria: "We do not know the five from the blackboard, nor the alif from the long stick". The long stick is the long stick that the kuttab teacher used to use when he wanted to catch a child who was misbehaving there with it. He then enrolled me in the school there; it was a private school for a charitable association named the Al-I'saf al-Khayri Association. There I began my education, and naturally, due to mixing with the students, my learning of the Arabic language, or rather the Shami dialect, was stronger than that of those who were not affiliated with the school. I remember well, perhaps due to my advanced age relative to the elementary students, that I completed the first and second grades in one year. Therefore, I obtained the elementary certificate in four years.
And it seems that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) had created me with a love for the Arabic language, and this love was the reason, as a material cause after the divine grace, for me to be distinguished and superior to my Syrian colleagues in the science of the Arabic language and its grammar.
And I also remember well that the teacher of language and grammar, when he would write a sentence or a verse of poetry on the board and ask the students about the grammatical analysis of that sentence or verse, Al-Albani would be the last one to be asked. I was known at that time as Al-Arna'ut. As for the word Al-Albani, when I left school and began to write, because the word Al-Arna'ut is a common term similar to or corresponding to: the Arabs. And just as the Arabs are divided into peoples, among them are the Egyptian, the Shami, the Hijazi, and so on, so too are the Arnauts divided into, for example, the Albanians, and the Serbs of Yugoslavia, and the Bosniaks. So, between the word Albanian and the word Arnaut, there is a relationship of generality and specificity; the Albanian is more specific than the Arnaut. Yes.
So the grammar teacher would call me out last if the students failed to analyze the grammar, calling out: "Hey, Arnaut, what do you say?"
I would hit the mark with one word, and he would return to taunt the Syrians with me, saying: "It is not shameful for you, this is my Arnaut," and this is from the grace of Allah upon me.
The questioner : Praise be to Allah.
The Shaykh : I did not know anything of the Arabic language; in fact, I did not know anything of the Arabic letters. It seems that my father (may Allah have mercy on him) did not pay attention to teaching us, even though he was the imam of a mosque and perhaps the teacher of a kuttab. So, when we came to Damascus, we did not know anything of reading and writing, as they say in our region in Syria: "We do not know the five from the blackboard, nor the alif from the long stick". The long stick is the long stick that the kuttab teacher used to use when he wanted to catch a child who was misbehaving there with it. He then enrolled me in the school there; it was a private school for a charitable association named the Al-I'saf al-Khayri Association. There I began my education, and naturally, due to mixing with the students, my learning of the Arabic language, or rather the Shami dialect, was stronger than that of those who were not affiliated with the school. I remember well, perhaps due to my advanced age relative to the elementary students, that I completed the first and second grades in one year. Therefore, I obtained the elementary certificate in four years.
And it seems that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) had created me with a love for the Arabic language, and this love was the reason, as a material cause after the divine grace, for me to be distinguished and superior to my Syrian colleagues in the science of the Arabic language and its grammar.
And I also remember well that the teacher of language and grammar, when he would write a sentence or a verse of poetry on the board and ask the students about the grammatical analysis of that sentence or verse, Al-Albani would be the last one to be asked. I was known at that time as Al-Arna'ut. As for the word Al-Albani, when I left school and began to write, because the word Al-Arna'ut is a common term similar to or corresponding to: the Arabs. And just as the Arabs are divided into peoples, among them are the Egyptian, the Shami, the Hijazi, and so on, so too are the Arnauts divided into, for example, the Albanians, and the Serbs of Yugoslavia, and the Bosniaks. So, between the word Albanian and the word Arnaut, there is a relationship of generality and specificity; the Albanian is more specific than the Arnaut. Yes.
So the grammar teacher would call me out last if the students failed to analyze the grammar, calling out: "Hey, Arnaut, what do you say?"
I would hit the mark with one word, and he would return to taunt the Syrians with me, saying: "It is not shameful for you, this is my Arnaut," and this is from the grace of Allah upon me.
The questioner : Praise be to Allah.