"Gardan yaad hi nahi hoti." If you have studied Sarf for even a week, you have probably said this. You recite نَصَرَ نَصَرَا نَصَرُوْا in class, it feels fine, and two days later the forms have mixed into each other. Then the next bab starts and the pile gets bigger.
I am the founder of Islamic Desk, where we build Sarf ki Dunya, an app made only for Arabic morphology. Building it meant going through conjugation tables screen by screen and thinking hard about how a student actually remembers them. This post is what I would tell anyone stuck on sarf sagheer and gardan: what you are really memorising, the order that makes it easier, and a daily routine that keeps it in your head.
What sarf sagheer and gardan actually are
Students often use these words loosely, so let us be clear first.
Sarf sagheer: the family of one verb in one line
Sarf sagheer (the "small" conjugation) is a short summary that gives you the main forms that come from one verb. It usually starts like this:
نَصَرَ يَنْصُرُ نَصْرًا فَهُوَ نَاصِرٌ، وَنُصِرَ يُنْصَرُ نَصْرًا فَهُوَ مَنْصُوْرٌ
In order, that is the past, the present, the masdar, and the doer (ism fa'il), then the same again in the passive with the one it is done to (ism maf'ul). Fuller versions go on to the command (amr), the prohibition (nahi), the place or time (zarf), the tool (aalah) and more. Different books word the full line a little differently, so follow the wording of your own book or teacher.
Gardan: one tense, all fourteen forms
Gardan, or sarf kabeer, takes one tense and conjugates it for all 14 sighas: he, they two, they, she, and so on down to I and we. This is the part most students struggle with, because it looks like 14 new words for every verb.
| Sarf Sagheer | Gardan (Sarf Kabeer) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A one-line summary of a verb's main forms | The full conjugation of one tense across all 14 sighas |
| Example | نَصَرَ يَنْصُرُ نَصْرًا فَهُوَ نَاصِرٌ | نَصَرَ نَصَرَا نَصَرُوْا ... نَصَرْتُ نَصَرْنَا |
| What it teaches you | The family of a verb: past, present, masdar, doer, done-to, command, place, tool | How one tense changes for who is doing the action |
| How to memorise it | Recite it as one rhythm, then swap in new verbs of the same bab | Learn the endings once on one verb, then apply them to others |
The big shift: memorise the pattern, not the words
Here is the one idea that makes everything easier. For a sound verb (fi'l salim, with no weak or doubled letters), the 14 forms of the past tense are the same stem with the same 14 endings. You do not memorise 14 words for نَصَرَ, then 14 more for ضَرَبَ. You memorise the endings once, on one model verb, and they carry over.
| # | Sigha | Past (madi) | Present (mudari) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | huwa (he) | نَصَرَ | يَنْصُرُ |
| 2 | huma (they two, m) | نَصَرَا | يَنْصُرَانِ |
| 3 | hum (they, m) | نَصَرُوْا | يَنْصُرُوْنَ |
| 4 | hiya (she) | نَصَرَتْ | تَنْصُرُ |
| 5 | huma (they two, f) | نَصَرَتَا | تَنْصُرَانِ |
| 6 | hunna (they, f) | نَصَرْنَ | يَنْصُرْنَ |
| 7 | anta (you, m) | نَصَرْتَ | تَنْصُرُ |
| 8 | antuma (you two) | نَصَرْتُمَا | تَنْصُرَانِ |
| 9 | antum (you all, m) | نَصَرْتُمْ | تَنْصُرُوْنَ |
| 10 | anti (you, f) | نَصَرْتِ | تَنْصُرِيْنَ |
| 11 | antuma (you two) | نَصَرْتُمَا | تَنْصُرَانِ |
| 12 | antunna (you all, f) | نَصَرْتُنَّ | تَنْصُرْنَ |
| 13 | ana (I) | نَصَرْتُ | أَنْصُرُ |
| 14 | nahnu (we) | نَصَرْنَا | نَنْصُرُ |
Learn the order of the 14 sighas first
Before any verb, get the order of the sighas into your head. It is a simple grid: absent (gha'ib), then the person spoken to (mukhatab), then the speaker (mutakallim). Inside the first two, it goes masculine then feminine, and singular, dual, plural. That gives 12, and the speaker adds two more: ana and nahnu. Once you see it as a grid of 3 x 2 x 2 + 2, you stop forgetting where you are in the list.
Then attach the endings
Look down the past tense column above. Everything before the ending is the same: نَصَر. Only the ending changes. The present tense works the same way, except the change happens at the start and the end of the word (the ي, ت, أ, ن letters at the front, and the endings at the back).
A developer's way to see it
I write code for a living, and the clearest way I can show this is with a few lines of JavaScript. If gardan is "stem plus ending", then a sound verb's past tense is just a map over 14 endings:
// Past tense (fi'l madi) endings, in the traditional gardan order
const endings = [
'َ', 'َا', 'ُوا', // huwa, huma, hum
'َتْ', 'َتَا', 'ْنَ', // hiya, huma, hunna
'ْتَ', 'ْتُمَا', 'ْتُمْ', // anta, antuma, antum
'ْتِ', 'ْتُمَا', 'ْتُنَّ', // anti, antuma, antunna
'ْتُ', 'ْنَا', // ana, nahnu
];
// Works for sound (salim) verbs only. Weak and doubled verbs need the rules.
const madi = (stem) => endings.map((e) => stem + e);
console.log(madi('نَصَر').join(' '));
console.log(madi('ضَرَب').join(' '));Run it and you get نَصَرَ نَصَرَا نَصَرُوا ... نَصَرْتُ نَصَرْنَا, and the same pattern for ضَرَبَ. You do not need to code to learn Sarf, of course. The point is this: if 14 endings are enough to produce every past tense form of a sound verb, then 14 endings are what you should memorise. The comment in the code matters too. Weak and doubled verbs break this simple pattern, and that is exactly where the rules of Sarf come in.
Learn the six abwab with one model verb each
A three-letter verb in its basic form (thulathi mujarrad) follows one of six patterns, called abwab. The difference is the vowel on the middle letter in the past and in the present. Learn one model verb for each, and every new verb you meet becomes "this one is like ضَرَبَ" instead of something new.
| Bab | Past | Present | Vowel on the middle letter | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | نَصَرَ | يَنْصُرُ | fatha, then damma | to help |
| 2 | ضَرَبَ | يَضْرِبُ | fatha, then kasra | to hit |
| 3 | سَمِعَ | يَسْمَعُ | kasra, then fatha | to hear |
| 4 | فَتَحَ | يَفْتَحُ | fatha, then fatha | to open |
| 5 | كَرُمَ | يَكْرُمُ | damma, then damma | to be noble |
| 6 | حَسِبَ | يَحْسِبُ | kasra, then kasra | to think, to reckon |
When your teacher gives you a new verb, the first question should be: which bab is it from? Once you know that, its sarf sagheer and its gardan follow the model you already know.
A daily routine that actually works
Memorising conjugations is not about one long session. It is about short rounds, again and again, with a bit of testing each time.
Recite out loud, in rhythm
There is a reason sarf sagheer is recited aloud in class. Saying it in a steady rhythm turns a list into something closer to a line you know by heart. Do it out loud, not only in your head.
Test yourself before you look
Cover the table and write the 14 forms from memory, then check. Getting it wrong and correcting it teaches you more than reading the table five times. Quizzes do the same job.
Revise yesterday before learning today
Start each session with what you learned the day before, and spend extra time on the forms you got wrong. Ten to fifteen minutes every day beats two hours on the weekend.
Add meaning to every form
Do not just recite نَصَرْتُمْ. Say "you all helped" with it. Gardan you can recite but not understand will not help you read the Quran or a classical text, and it fades faster.
Leave weak verbs until sound verbs are solid
Verbs with a weak letter (و, ي or alif) or a doubled letter change shape through rules. If you try them before the sound verb pattern is automatic, you will mix up both. Get the six abwab of sound verbs solid first.
Where Sarf ki Dunya helps
We built Sarf ki Dunya for exactly this kind of practice. Based on its Google Play listing, it has 90 definitions, 40 rules for changing word forms, and more than 4,000 conjugations of 201 masdar, so you can check any form of a verb you are studying instead of guessing. For testing yourself, it has 11 quizzes, each with 8 levels of 10 questions, which is 880 questions in total. It also has Sarf books in Arabic and Urdu. When I checked the listing on 20 October 2026, it had no "Contains ads" label, and its Data safety section said no data is collected or shared.
If you want to see how a word form is used in the Quran, the Seegha tool on Islamic Desk is made for that kind of research.
The app is a practice tool, not a teacher. Use it next to your class or book. If you are still deciding where to start, my posts on Sarf vs Nahw and learning Quranic Arabic grammar for free lay out the path.
Wrapping up
Sarf sagheer gives you the family of a verb in one line, and gardan gives you one tense in all 14 forms. Both get much easier once you stop memorising words and start memorising patterns: the order of the sighas, the endings on one model verb, and one model for each of the six abwab. Then keep it alive with short daily rounds of reciting, testing and revising.
If there is a bab or a form that keeps slipping for you, or you think something in Sarf ki Dunya could explain it better, tell me. That kind of feedback is how we decide what to improve.
You can find me at bilalattari.com, email me at attari1235@gmail.com, or message me on LinkedIn.
Sources
- Google Play: Sarf ki Dunya (features, ads label and Data safety, checked 20 October 2026)
- Islamic Desk: Seegha tool
