This is a text-based course which seeks to introduce the scholarship and literature of early and medieval Arabic linguistic thought through the study, translation and analysis of a representative selection of the tradition’s original literary sources. Key emphasis will be placed upon encouraging students to develop a critical understanding of the dynamics of grammatical and lexicographical discourses and their function within the wider framework of Islamic thought and the production of knowledge. Using the spectrum of contemporary international scholarship associated within the study of early medieval Arabic linguistic thought, students will have the opportunity to explore subjects and themes which range from the genesis of Arabic linguistic thought to historical milestones in the synthesis of key grammatical and philological constructs. The course will provide some sense of  the sophistication, significance and fecundity of the scholarship associated with the tradition of Arabic linguistic thought, but also demonstrate the extent to which grammatical and philological theories played such a distinctively critical role in the fleshing out of legal, exegetical and theological concepts.