Language is a natural means of communication between people. Each language has its own rules and develops within the framework of these rules. In order for a language to be accepted as a language, it must have grammatical rules. Arabic is recognized as a language that has the essential features of a language. As a matter of fact, Arabic is not just a language made up of sounds, but a language with its own grammatical rules. Arabic is a language with a set of rules that include two main principles classified as grammar and morphology. While grammar contains basic grammatical rules, morphology is defined as a science that examines the morphological structure of words.

One of the language scholars who devoted his life to teaching Arabic was Ahmad Hadī Maqsūdī a Russian Turk. Maqsūdī wrote works in the fields of both grammar and morphology in order to teach Arabic, and he himself used these works as a teaching material in his classes. Maqsūdī, known as an educator, writer, pedagog, newspaper owner, a well-known Tatar nationalist and scholar, was born in 1868 in the village of Tashsu, now known as the town of Biektau in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. He began his education in the village by learning Persian and Arabic from his father. On January 15, 1906, Yildiz was published with its first issue. On June 28, 1941, he died of lung disease contracted during interrogations and exile. 

As a language scholar, Maqsūdī published works consisting of lecture notes for teaching his own language, including Russian, French and Arabic, and developed new methods for language education. He claimed that he could teach spoken language skills in a very short period of time through his works and his own methods. Maqsūdī, who taught languages with his own unique methods, argued that students who were taught in a certain systematic way could effectively and permanently learn a foreign language they wanted to learn in a short period of time such as a year, and said that the educational methods, curricula and syllabi of schools should be redesigned in this direction, Maqsūdī’s contribution to Arabic is quite numerous in terms of teaching the language.

Maqsūdī came to prominence primarily as a teacher, with the textbooks he prepared and the teaching methods he developed in these books. Maqsūdī, who devoted his life to education, is also recorded as the person who opened the first branch of the national library in Kazan. Regarding the quality of the old-style schools, Maqsūdī stated that there were many deficiencies in these schools, and that both humanities and religious sciences were not taught in a certain order and to a sufficient degree. Maqsūdī points out that students studying in madrasahs cannot understand an Arabic book despite four years of uninterrupted Arabic education and argues that madrasahs provide a very unqualified education in Arabic, and writes that a student who is educated in line with an innovative method and systematically can learn any foreign language he wants in a short period of about a year, and for this to happen, schools and curricula should be redesigned and improved. Maqsūdī, who devoted almost all of his life to knowledge and educating his students, gave language education to his students in terms of reading and writing, grammatical structure and speaking. He wrote original works on foreign languages using his own unique methods that he developed to use in these trainings, as well as valuable works in the fields of Arabic grammar, spoken and written education.

Maqsūdī’s greatest contribution to Arabic education is his Istiftāh on the science of morphology, which deals with the morphology of Arabic with his unique methods. The author began this work with an introduction. He started from the very basic level of letters, gestures, and words and provided definitions and examples of these words. After discussing the topics necessary to gain the ability to read using the Arabic alphabet, terms related to morphology are included. The author presented the topics in a systematic manner and ordered them in a way that facilitates learning in stages. In addition, the fact that he includes all the conjugations, babs and mushtak with plenty of examples has made this work a very valuable and comprehensive work among the existing morphology works. This work, which is valuable in terms of its richness of content, is also a valuable work that differs in terms of the author’s style of explaining the subjects and the examples he gives.

Unlike other studies on morphology, this research is important in terms of providing all the principles of morphology. As a matter of fact, it is not possible to find all the topics in a single work in a full-fledged manner in published works on morphology. In this work, it is possible to find almost all the topics of mor phology and even some of the rules of grammar, which are related to the rules of morphology, together.

According to Maqsūdi’s own statement, the infinitive forms of short verbs are given fortyeight in the work, unlike other morphology works. As a matter of fact, while it is possible to reach all of these infinitive forms only by examining more than one morphology work, Maqsūdi gave all infinitive forms together with their examples in his work. Again, in his own words, under the title of long verb phrases, he has given fourteen of the infinitive phrases of the mezīd verb.

Another important contribution of the work in terms of Arabic education is the rich examples and conjugations related to the rules of morphology. For example, he has given examples of all the verb types known as aksām-u sab’a in many works of morphology in all siga, and he has given the exact conjugations of the verbs that are different from the conjugations of the examples he has given until the point where they are similar. In addition, he has given all the babs in the work and, unlike other morphology works, he has given the purposes and meanings of all the babs one by one and mentioned the benefits of the babs in detail. 

Maqsūdī’s contribution to Arabic and Arabic education, along with all his works on Arabic, especially his Istiftāh, is quite significant. It is of great importance to carry out studies on all other works of Maqsūdī, about whom there is only one postgraduate study and a transcription of his work Istiftāh and a work in which detailed information about the author is given, and to find the manuscripts of all his works and to bring them to the world of science.