Arabic and Persian

Arabic and Persian at the University of St Andrews is a four-year combination that brings together the two most widely studied languages of the Islamic world, each with a literary and intellectual heritage of extraordinary richness and each of enormous significance for understanding the contemporary Middle East and Central and South Asia. Arabic is spoken by hundreds of millions of people across the Arab world and is the language of the Quran and of a classical literary and philosophical tradition that preserved and extended the learning of Greece and Byzantium while producing its own extraordinary achievements. Persian is the prestige language of scholarship, poetry, and court culture across a vast swathe of the Islamic world from Iran to the Mughal court of India, and its literary tradition, encompassing poets such as Rumi, Hafez, and Omar Khayyam, is among the most celebrated in world literature.

The programme includes a year abroad.

You will develop practical proficiency in both Arabic and Persian alongside deep engagement with their literary, cultural, and intellectual traditions. The combination creates exceptional opportunities for comparative analysis across two closely related but distinct civilisations, and St Andrews notes that Arabic's breadth and the depth of the Persian tradition make this pairing particularly illuminating for students of Islamic history, culture, and the contemporary Middle East.

A typical entry tariff of 184 points reflects the selectivity of the programme. Graduates are well placed for careers in diplomacy and the foreign service, area studies research, international journalism, academic posts in Islamic studies, translation and interpreting, cultural institutions, and international non-governmental organisations. Many continue to doctoral research in Arabic or Persian studies, Islamic history, or comparative literature.