The Ibn Jabal Institute was born in the summer of 2001 out of the convergent vision of two students. Having completed their legal and political education at the LSE and Manchester University respectively, it was just and right for them to develop a most intensive (but tractable) Arabic course.

They set themselves the task to develop an approach for teaching the material normally taught in a full-time undergraduate degree programme in only fifteen lessons. Drawing from their collective experiences of previous teaching and combining traditional approaches from the Arab world and the Indian sub-continent with conventional language teaching techniques used in the West, they arrived at a very effective synthesis. The comments of former Ibn Jabal students bear testimony to the success of this approach.

The Ibn Jabal institute is a charitable organisation. All the proceeds from course fees, after costs, goes into a scholarship fund to sponsor promising students who don't have the means to go abroad to study Arabic. Over the last few years, bursaries have been granted to a substantial number of students.