Bachelor of Arabic Language and Literature

– To graduate distinguished students in Arabic language and literature with the capability to engage fruitfully in the labor market and join graduate programs, throughout acquiring knowledge, skills, and other educational demands necessary to their field of specialization.
– To provide students, from various university majors, with the language skills that serve their university academic needs through the enrollment in the university’s compulsory requirement course (Arabic Language (1)) and other elective courses offered by the department.
– To participate effectively in improving the quality of academic life in college and university through engaging in various activities and membership of academic and cultural committees.
– To boost the department/ university relations with the local community by participating in events, seminars and conferences and by establishing active membership with intellectual and cultural institutions in particular; in addition to holding symposiums and conferences on the university’s campus with the collaboration of intellectuals from the university and abroad.
– To enhance the academic level of the department’s faculty members by boosting the positive, competitive research atmosphere which facilitates publication, investigation, and authorship; whether in joint projects or individual research.
– To communicate constantly with the university library administration for encouraging students to carry out research, write reports, and review the possibility to develop the collection of Arabic language books and literature in the library.

Jordanian General Secondary Certificate with min 60% average, required documents like certified transcript and ID.

401103 – Writing and Expression Skills (3:3-0) Composition & The Art of Writing

Prerequisite: None
This course provides a practical foundation in the design and planning of written work. It focuses on the structure and content of writing, emphasizing methods for producing effective written pieces. The course also introduces common writing errors—grammatical, morphological, semantic, spelling, punctuation, and stylistic—and offers strategies to avoid them.
Students are exposed to expressive techniques in both written and oral communication. The course also introduces major forms of writing, including essays, reflections, letters, memos, speeches, and more, helping students develop strong expressive and analytical skills.

Arabic Language Issues in the Modern Age (401104)

Prerequisite: None
This course applies modern linguistic methodologies to analyze a range of contemporary Arabic language issues from cultural, social, political, and civilizational perspectives. It addresses topics such as the coexistence of Standard Arabic and dialects, Arabization of scientific terminology, the influence of translated foreign structures on modern Arabic, the impact of mass media on language use, and the need for standardized language levels for educational curricula.
The course also examines students’ declining proficiency in Arabic, its causes, and ways to address it, as well as writing systems, grammar teaching methods, and other language-related challenges facing Arab societies.

Introduction to Hebrew Language (401110)

Prerequisite: None
This course introduces students to the basic components of modern Hebrew. It explores its relationship with Arabic and develops foundational skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Students also learn approximately 1,500 commonly used vocabulary words.

Ancient and Modern History (401115)

Prerequisite: None
This course covers selected topics in ancient and modern history.

• Part I: Major ancient civilizations such as Sumerian, Canaanite, Egyptian, and Greek.

• Part II: Key milestones in modern European history including the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, and Industrial Revolution.

• Part III: Social and political systems such as capitalism, socialism, and democracy.

• Part IV: Pivotal events in modern Arab history—Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Great Arab Revolt, the rise of Zionism, and the modern Arab renaissance with a focus on Jordan.

• Part V: Introduction to three major modern international and regional institutions: the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Literary Appreciation (401203)

Prerequisite: None
This course enhances students’ literary taste and analytical ability. Through selected exemplary texts, students study the artistic and thematic dimensions of literature and explore the contexts that shaped them. Readings include classical and modern Arabic poetry, short stories, novels, plays, maqama, and autobiographical works.

Writing Skills in Arabic for Journalism & Media (401205)

Prerequisite: None
This course trains students in correct linguistic, grammatical, and stylistic writing in Arabic, with a focus on media and journalism. It includes analytical reading of journalistic articles and emphasizes simplified Standard Arabic as used in professional media.

Principles of Syntax (401210)

Prerequisite: None
This course provides an overview of common topics in Arabic grammar, including declension and non-declension, nominatives, accusatives, and genitives. It also covers major linguistic structures and common grammatical and morphological errors relevant to classroom teaching.

Pre-Islamic Literature (401211)

Prerequisite: None
This course enables students to closely analyze pre-Islamic poetry through selected texts. It employs an integrative method to identify poetic elements, interpret texts in their historical and geographical context, and highlight defining characteristics of the pre-Islamic poetic tradition.

Syntax (1) (401212)

Prerequisite: None
This course explores declension of nouns, verbs, and particles, original and secondary grammatical markers, nominal sentence rules (subject and predicate), the functions of kāna and inna and their sisters, verbs of approach, hope, and initiation, rules of the imperfect verb, agents and passive agents, and conditional structures.

Islamic & Umayyad Literature (401213)

Prerequisite: 401211
This course examines major poetic themes in two distinct periods:

• Prophetic and Early Caliphate Period (until 45 AH): The impact of the Islamic message, reasons for fluctuations in poetic production, poetry of the mukhaḍramūn, repentance poetry, and poetry of the Ridda Wars.

• Umayyad Period (until 132 AH): Expansion of poetry, themes of chaste love (ʿudhrī), rivalry and satire, political and praise poetry.
  The course highlights prominent poets, stylistic features of each period, and societal, political, and intellectual influences on poetic output.

Metrics & Prosody in Poetry (401215)

Prerequisite: None
This course introduces the origin and development of Arabic prosody, its terminology, and methods of scansion. Students learn short and long syllables, prosodic writing, poetic meters, their subdivisions, rhyme, rawī consonants, rhyme defects, poetic licenses, and free verse.

Morphology (401216)

Prerequisite: None
This course examines word structure, morphological changes resulting from addition or deletion, derivation, patterns, and structures. Topics include nisba, diminutive forms, verb conjugation with pronouns, and phonological processes such as assimilation, substitution, and elision.

Poetry in the Abbasid Period (401218)

Prerequisite: 401213
This course covers major poetic themes of the Abbasid era, including nature poetry, badiʿ poetry, hedonistic poetry, explicit love poetry, political praise, asceticism, Sufism, and philosophical poetry. It highlights innovations of the period, key poets, and the effects of political, social, and intellectual life on poetic production.

Children’s Literature (401219)

Prerequisite: None
This course defines children’s literature and its philosophy, offering evaluative criteria for various literary forms across age stages. It combines theoretical and practical approaches, allowing students to examine children’s books closely based on educational, linguistic, and artistic standards.

Old Arabic Prose (401240)

Prerequisite: None
This course explores classical Arabic prose from the pre-Islamic period to the end of the Abbasid era. It covers major prose genres—speeches, letters, maqama—and key prose works such as Kalila wa Dimna, al-Bukhalā’, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāma, al-Imtāʿ wa-l-Mu’ānasa, and others. The course emphasizes the relationship between prose development and cultural, intellectual, and civilizational transformations.

Semantics and Lexicography (401329)

Prerequisite: None
This course introduces the field of semantics—its definitions, origins, development, and major theoretical contributions—and examines its relationship with lexicography. Students explore lexicon compilation, lexical schools, differences between dictionaries of words and dictionaries of meanings, modern dictionary-making, linguistic academies, challenges of contemporary lexicography, digital dictionaries, and electronic linguistic tools.
The course includes practical use of:

• Al-Maany Online Dictionary

• Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic

Syntax (2) (401322)

Prerequisite: 401212
This course covers the five types of objects in Arabic grammar, as well as ḥāl, tamyīz, and major grammatical structures including praise/censure, exclamation, exception, vocative, appeal for aid, lamentation, specification, and warning/prohibition. It also covers conditional structures.

Classical Criticism (401323)

Prerequisite: None
This course studies the environments that shaped classical Arabic literary criticism—linguistic, philosophical, theological, and literary. It covers major critical issues and includes selected classical critical texts for analysis.

Arabic Teaching Methods (401325)

Prerequisite: None
This course equips students with methodological skills for teaching Arabic. It details instructional goals, practical methods for achieving them, unit-based instruction, assessment techniques, and applied teaching models.

Andalusian Literature (401326)

Prerequisite: 401218
This course covers major literary themes of the Andalusian era.

• Poetry: Foundational poetry, Eastern influence, nostalgia and longing, nature poetry, elegies for cities, muwashshaḥāt, zajal, and troubadour influence.

• Prose: Eastern influence, the uniqueness of Andalusian prose, and its imprint on European prose.
  The course highlights major writers, key stylistic features, and political, social, intellectual, and geographical influences on Andalusian literary production.

Syntax (3) (401327)

Prerequisite: 401322
Topics include prepositional constructions, meanings of prepositions, additional and quasi-additional prepositions, lexical and real annexation, syntactic dependents (coordination, emphasis, adjective, apposition), and sentences/phrases with or without syntactic positions, as well as the masdar mu’awwal.

Applied Linguistics (401430)

Prerequisite: 401341
This course distinguishes between general and applied linguistics, defining the latter in detail—its origins, nature, scope, and goals. It explores core sources of applied linguistics such as linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education.
Major topics include second-language teaching, internal/external comparison for curriculum design, error analysis, and key branches such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, contrastive linguistics, and geographic linguistics.
Applications include translation, lexicography, language testing, and language teaching for specific purposes. Students also practice using:

• Trados (CAT Tool)

• Computational linguistics applications for course topics.

Rhetoric and Stylistics (401350)

Prerequisite: None
This course introduces the core concepts of Arabic rhetoric—maʿānī, bayān, and badīʿ—through applied examples. It connects classical rhetorical theory with modern stylistic and critical approaches. Students learn to analyze literary discourse through linguistic structure, explore modern stylistic methods, and distinguish literary language from other forms of expression.