A behind-the-scenes look at Bayyinah ARÖMER, our summer Arabic program in Istanbul, from the placement exam to the farewell dinner.

Every summer, students of the Quran walk into the same classroom building in Istanbul, most of them strangers to each other, all of them there for the same reason. Some of them are thirteen years old and some are seventy-five, and by the end of the first week they are correcting each other’s homework.

This is the story of how Bayyinah ARÖMER happens, told from the side you usually do not get to see. If you have ever wondered what it takes to learn Arabic in Istanbul with a few hundred people from more than thirty countries, this is the honest version.

Why Istanbul and Why ARÖMER

ARÖMER stands for the International Arabic Center for Education, Implementation and Research, a university program that has been teaching Arabic in Istanbul for years. It ran mostly for Turkish students until Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan and Bayyinah partnered with the institute and opened it to the wider family of Quran students around the world. There is a sister program called TURKÖMER for people learning Turkish, which I only discovered on my first visit to the university when I saw the board on the wall, after having managed the program remotely for years.

Istanbul earns its place in this story. A city with thousands of years of history, standing on two continents, with mosques that stop you mid-stride and kebabs worth the flight on their own, gives every study day a horizon beyond the classroom.

An Arabic Quran, Meant to Be Understood

Allah describes His own book in terms that make our whole purpose clear:

إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَ

“Indeed We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran, so that you may understand.”

(12:2)

Thousands of people study the Quran with Bayyinah every year, and what changes at ARÖMER is that the language stops being a subject and becomes a habit. Our goal is not that you pass an Arabic exam, it is that you sit with the Quran and follow it the way you follow a conversation in your own tongue.

How Every Student Finds the Right Level

Depending on how many students join a cohort, we open somewhere between six and eight levels. Everyone sits an aptitude test first, and if you are wondering how a single sheet of paper can decide where you spend your summer, the answer is that it does not. Our teachers then interview each candidate personally, because a short conversation reveals what a written test cannot and that is how we place you in the level where you will actually grow.

The Planning You Never See

Long before applications open, our team is working through inflation figures, meal costs and print runs for the books, so that every student walks into a room with their resources already waiting. We plan dormitories down to who shares a room with whom, matching age groups thoughtfully, arranging space for families traveling with young children and preparing for a nanny when a family needs one.

Our website carries the photos of the venue, the dorms and the classrooms, our inbox stays open across weekends and we answer because you have entrusted us with money you worked hard for. That trust is what pays for the best resources we can find and brings the best students from over thirty countries together each year.

More Than Class Time

A community that spends the year scattered across time zones finally shares meals, classrooms and evening walks. Much of what people carry home is not the grammar drills at all but the ice cream runs after class, the table tennis, the ordinary hours of being in the same city as people who care about the same thing you do.

Arabic You Can Actually Use

Classes run daily from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, and the afternoons belong to homework and seminars. In one classroom you will find a seventy-five-year-old sitting beside a thirteen-year-old, placed together because their level of knowledge matched, learning the kind of Arabic that shows up in ordinary life. That means speaking to your family, buying groceries, watching a documentary and reading the Quran, all in the same language.

The Farewell Dinner

The course closes with a farewell dinner in one of the historic parts of Istanbul, away from campus, and yes it is the hardest evening of the summer. Nobody treats it as an ending though. Most students come back the following year, so we have taken to calling it a farewell until next summer rather than a goodbye.

Joining the 2027 Cohort

Nobody should be left behind for financial reasons, so the program offers scholarships every year. Applications open around December and stay open until April, with a small non-refundable deposit to hold your place and the remaining balance arranged before the program runs in July and August. Two administrations watch over your experience, Bayyinah and the ARÖMER institute, and along the way you will receive reminders on when to arrive and what to pack, guidance on whether you need a visa, feedback forms and a guide book covering how to buy a SIM card, how to greet someone in Turkish and how to book a ride from the airport to your dormitory.

Three years in, this is still the summer our team looks forward to most. If you want more of the behind-the-scenes of how we build things at Bayyinah, that is what Bayyinah Works is, and you can join us at bayyinah.com/works.

By Dr. Hashir, Program Coordinator for Bayyinah ARÖMER