al-Gharra' — Nahj al-Balagha, Sermon 82 (study video)

An 11-minute (672 s) narrated study video in the style of Justin Sung: a priming question, the big picture first, five linked chunks, and a retrieval challenge at the end.

• Source text: https://hekm.co/article/1259
• Narration (full text): ../../transcripts/gharra-sermon-82.txt

Files

Structure

The video is built around one question: Why do people waste the one window of time they are given?

Gifts ──tools for the test──▶ Window
Trap  ──makes it feel far───▶ End
Response (taqwa) uses the Gifts, acts inside the Window,
                 sees through the Trap, prepares for the End

Rebuild

Requirements: Python 3, edge-tts (network access to Microsoft's TTS service), ffmpeg/ffprobe, and a headless Chrome. Fonts go in ~/.fonts (override with FONTDIR): Amiri Regular and Bold, Caveat, and Inter, all from github.com/google/fonts (ofl/).

pip install edge-tts
python3 build.py                  # writes slides, audio, clips, subs.srt to ./build (override with OUT=...)
cd build
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i clips.txt -i subs.srt -map 0 -map 1 -c copy -c:s mov_text \
  -metadata:s:s:0 language=eng -movflags +faststart gharra-sermon-82.mp4

PREVIEW=0,5,9 python3 build.py renders only those slides, with no audio. Set CHROME=/path/to/chrome if Chrome is not at the default path.

Notes

• Voices: en-US-AndrewNeural for English and ar-SA-HamedNeural for Arabic (rate −12%). These are generic AI voices; the video copies the teaching style, not Justin Sung's voice.
• The narration is original English commentary. Arabic quotes are short lines from the sermon. The Arabic TTS may mispronounce some words, so it is worth checking by an Arabic speaker.