An ~11.6-minute (1920×1080, 30 fps) teaching video on the sermon of Imam ʿAlī known as al-Wasīla (خطبته المعروفة بالوسيلة), from Tuḥaf al-ʿUqūl by Ibn Shuʿba al-Ḥarrānī, pp. 67–72 (it ends at the top of p. 72). It teaches the sermon big-picture-first, in a Justin Sung–style way (method only; generic TTS voice, not his voice or likeness).
Files
| Path | What |
|---|---|
al-wasila-explainer.mp4 |
Final video (H.264 + AAC, with an embedded English subtitle track) |
al-wasila-explainer.srt |
Subtitles / timed narration |
beats.py |
Narration script: one (scene, step, text) entry per beat |
scenes.html |
All slides. Elements with data-step="N" appear from step N (data-hide removes them) |
render.js |
Screenshots each beat's slide state with headless Chrome (Playwright) |
build.py |
Full rebuild: TTS → frames → per-beat clips with crossfades → mp4 + srt |
package.json, package-lock.json |
Node dependency (playwright-core) for render.js |
source-pages/page-67.png … page-72.png |
Scans of the source pages, for checking the translations |
../../transcripts/al-wasila-explainer.txt |
Plain narration transcript |
Outline
- Hook: 100+ sayings read as a list are forgotten; flip the order (big picture → concepts → details).
- Context: the book, the compiler's note that this is an excerpt, and the shape of the text.
- Read the ending first: Muslim ← scrupulous (wara‘) ← detached (zuhd) ← resolute (ḥazm) ← intelligent (ʿaql). Big picture: the heart swings, intellect steers, we crash at the tongue and the ego, every choice compounds.
- Mind map with intellect at the centre and six branches: the swinging heart, wanting, the tongue, the ego, the tools of intellect, the long game. One scene per branch, with anchor quotes.
- Key link: the "talks much" slide-down chain and the closing chain share the wara‘ rung.
- Connections across the map, a place-the-saying quiz, three experiments for the week, and a redraw-from-memory recap.
Rebuild
Needs ffmpeg, ImageMagick (magick), Python 3 with edge-tts, Node.js, a Chrome/Chromium binary, and network
access (TTS, plus Google Fonts: Kalam, Caveat, Amiri).
cd videos/al-wasila
npm ci
pip install edge-tts
CHROME=/path/to/chrome python3 build.py
Intermediates (audio, frames, clips) go to build/, which is git-ignored and safe to delete.
Narration is en-US-AndrewMultilingualNeural at +6%. Each beat lasts 0.35 s lead + audio + 0.55 s (+0.4 s at a scene
change), with a 0.5 s crossfade from the previous beat. TTS output can change slightly between runs.
Caveats
- English renderings were translated for this video straight from the scanned Arabic (the PDF has no text layer). They are approximate; have them reviewed before sharing.
- The six-branch map is an interpretive reading, not sections in the original.
- The opening praise of God is covered only briefly; the video focuses on the practical wisdom.
- Arabic is shown on screen only; TTS speaks phonetic spellings of names (e.g. "al-Waseela", "Tuhaf al-Uqool").
- The full source PDF (450 pages, a user attachment) is not stored here; only pp. 67–72 are.