Arabic 4 — The verb's three tenses + the health reading passage أَزْمِنَةُ الفِعْلِ وَالصِّحَّةُ بَيْنَ المَاضِي وَالحَاضِرِ

1 · فِعْل and زَمَن — the verb has a tense

• فِعْل (fiʿl) = verb. زَمَن / زَمَان (zaman / zamān) = time, tense — the Sheikh used both forms.
• Every verb carries a tense, and on the basis of tense verbs divide into three kinds:

2 · Building the present, then the future

To go from past to present you prefix one of the four muḍāriʿ letters to the verb (the Sheikh referred to them as "the four letters" and did not list them out in this recording). To go from present to future, put سَـ (sa-) or سَوْفَ (sawfa) in front of the present verb.

• حَدَثَ (ḥadatha) = "it happened, it occurred" — from the same root as حَادِث (ḥādith), an accident.
• تَزَوَّجَ is a five-letter (augmented) verb — "he married," i.e. completed his marriage.
• صِيَغ (ṣiyagh) = the verb's forms/shapes; the Sheikh said they come to twelve in all, and that the detailed conjugation section is postponed to an upcoming physical class — so it is not owed in this lesson.

3 · The time-word decides which tense must come

This is the exam-usable half of the grammar: read the sentence, find the time-word, and it tells you which tense the verb has to be in.

The Sheikh's own two sets of model sentences:

With قَبْلَ يَوْمَيْنِ a سَيَقْرَأُ cannot come — the past قَرَأَ must. That is the whole test: match the verb to the time-word.

4 · أَمْسِ and الآنَ are frozen words (كَلِمَة جَامِدَة)

• كَلِمَة جَامِدَة (kalimah jāmidah) = a frozen word. جَامِد (jāmid) = "frozen," from جَمَدَ (jamada, "to freeze, to be rigid").
• أَمْسِ (amsi, "yesterday") is one: nothing in it changes — no derivational pattern behind it, no plural, and its ending never shifts for grammatical reason. It stays amsi wherever it stands, including مِنْ أَمْسِ (min amsi).
• الآنَ (al-āna, "now") belongs to the same class. It comes from آنَ (āna), "the time has come," and آن (ān) = "time" — hence "at this time." It carries a fixed fatḥah ending rather than a case-driven one, and like amsi it does not change.

5 · The reading passage — الصِّحَّةُ بَيْنَ المَاضِي وَالحَاضِرِ

• الصِّحَّة (aṣ-ṣiḥḥah) = health · المَاضِي = the past (era) · الحَاضِر = the present, the contemporary age. The unit title above it is العِنَايَةُ بِالصِّحَّةِ (al-ʿināyah bi-ṣ-ṣiḥḥah), "Care of Health."
• The passage's question: how was health regarded then, and how is it regarded now?

Paragraph 1 — the old sign of health

Word by word, as he took it:

• كَانَ + a present verb = "used to": كَانَ النَّاسُ يَأْكُلُونَ = "people used to eat," a habit, not one occasion. Same shape in كَانَ الرِّجَالُ يُفَضِّلُونَ.
• The particle after الزَّوَاج is بِـ or مِنْ: الزَّوَاجُ بِالمَرْأَةِ, and تَزَوَّجْتُ مِنْكِ (tazawwajtu minki) = "I married you."
• Recap of the paragraph's point: stoutness was the mark of health — no fault in their eyes; the thin one was reckoned weak and sick.

Paragraph 2 — medicine advanced, and obesity became the sign of illness

• تَتَقَدَّمُ سِرِيلَانْكَا إِلَى الأَمَامِ (tataqaddamu Sīrīlānkā ilā-l-amām) — "Sri Lanka is moving forward": his everyday example of تَقَدَّمَ, as one says of a country's economy advancing.
• أَصَابَنِي الحُمَّى (aṣābanī-l-ḥummā) = "a fever struck me" — the same verb as تُصِيبُ الشَّخْصَ السَّمِينَ.
• ضَغْطُ الدَّمِ was already taught last class (lesson 3, the doctor–patient dialogue).

Paragraph 3 — the diet people now follow, and "white food"

What the doctors now say, in the passage's own words:

• خُبْز (khubz) = bread in the widest sense — flour worked and baked, roasted or toasted.
• Note the pair of colour-adjectives the passage trades on: أَبْيَض / أَسْمَر (white / brown) and أَحْمَر (red, of meat).

Paragraph 4 — Islam's own call to restraint

• دَعَا (daʿā) = "he called, invited" — Islam calls us to this.
• الأَكْلُ الكَثِيرُ (al-akl al-kathīr) = "eating a great deal"; it strikes a person بِالبَدَانَةِ, with a body grown heavy.

6 · The proof-text: Qurʾān 7:31

• كُلُوا (kulū) = "eat" · اِشْرَبُوا (ishrabū) = "drink" · وَلَا تُسْرِفُوا = "do not waste, do not go to excess," from أَسْرَفَ (asrafa, to be wasteful) · المُسْرِفِينَ = "the wasteful ones."
• The Sheikh's reading: eating and drinking are permitted — what the verse forbids is the waste.

What إِسْرَاف actually is

• Eating beyond your own measure is waste. His example: a man who buys thirty shirts for Eid. He does not need thirty; buying far beyond need, and throwing out what he never uses, is إِسْرَاف (isrāf). Spending past the measure you genuinely need — that is the definition in practice. Eat and drink to what suffices you.
• Throwing a thing away turns into ظُلْم (ẓulm) — wrongdoing — and ẓulm is a great sin. Its definition: وَضْعُ الشَّيْءِ فِي غَيْرِ مَوْضِعِهِ (waḍʿu-sh-shayʾi fī ghayri mawḍiʿih), "putting a thing somewhere other than its proper place." Food used where it ought not to be used makes the doer a ظَالِم (ẓālim, wrongdoer).

A grammar note on the verse — an imperative that is not an obligation

• كُلُوا and اِشْرَبُوا come as أَمْر (amr, the imperative) — command forms of أَكَلَ / يَأْكُلُ and شَرِبَ / يَشْرَبُ.
• The rule you meet in uṣūl is that an imperative as a rule indicates فَرْض (obligation). But it does not apply everywhere. Where the matter is one of ordinary, natural life — as here — the imperative does not carry obligation: eating and drinking are not wājib, not farḍ; the command is permission and guidance.

7 · The ḥadīth of the three thirds

Three points he drew out of it:

The verb مَلَأَ takes two objects

• وِعَاءً and شَرًّا are both مَفْعُول بِهِ — which is why the rendering has to be worked out carefully: "a man has filled no vessel more harmful than his stomach."
• مِنْ بَطْنِهِ — the مِنْ of comparison, as in أَنَا أَكْبَرُ مِنْكَ (anā akbaru minka, "I am older than you"). So: no vessel is worse than the belly he keeps filling with what harms him.

يُقِمْنَ صُلْبَهُ — food that holds the spine up

• From أَقَامَ / يُقِيمُ come مُقِيم (muqīm, "resident, one who stays" — against مُسَافِر, musāfir, "traveller") and إِقَامَةُ الصَّلَاةِ (iqāmatu-ṣ-ṣalāh, "the establishing of prayer").
• أُكُلَاتٌ يُقِمْنَ صُلْبَهُ = "mouthfuls that hold his spine upright" — food enough to keep a man on his feet is what suffices him.

نَفَس is "breath," not نَفْس "soul"

• With a sukūn on the fāʾ: نَفْس (nafs) = soul, self — as in كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَائِقَةُ المَوْتِ (kullu nafsin dhāʾiqatu-l-mawt, "every soul shall taste death").
• With a fatḥah: نَفَس (nafas) = breath — from تَنَفَّسَ (tanaffasa, "he breathed"). So ثُلُثٌ لِنَفَسِهِ = "a third for his breathing" — leave a third of the stomach empty so he can breathe. Not "for his soul."

The fractions, on one pattern

8 · The exercises the Sheikh set

1. Sort the verbs by tense — separate a given list into مَاضٍ / مُضَارِع / مُسْتَقْبَل and write each under its heading.
2. Past era or present era? For each sentence, say whether it describes المَاضِي or الحَاضِر. The ones he worked through are in the table below.
3. The main idea of each paragraph — for each of the three paragraphs, pick (أ / ب / ج) the sentence stating its الفِكْرَة الرَّئِيسِيَّة (al-fikrah ar-raʾīsiyyah, the main idea); the others are supporting details sitting under it. For paragraph 1 the candidates were يُفَضِّلُ الرِّجَالُ المَرْأَةَ السَّمِينَةَ · الإِنْسَانُ السَّمِينُ أَفْضَلُ مِنَ النَّحِيفِ · كَانَ النَّاسُ يَأْكُلُونَ كَثِيرًا.
4. Give each paragraph a heading — e.g. paragraph 2 could be headed أَمْرَاضُ القَلْبِ وَالسُّكَّرِيِّ or البَدَانَةُ عَلَامَةٌ عَلَى المَرَضِ.
5. Five multiple-choice questions (أ / ب / ج) on the passage, plus a voice clip posted to the class group to listen to before answering. The postponed فَهْم المَسْمُوع (fahm al-masmūʿ, listening comprehension) exercise and its audio also go into the group.

The sentences he sorted in exercise 2: