The following study examines a widely circulated language learning compilation, entitled both Ahsan al-Nukhab fi Ma‘rifat Lisan al-‘Arab and Traité de la lange arabe vulgaire by Muhammad ‘Ayyad al-Tantawi (1810-1861) who composed it at the height of his career teaching Arabic in St. Petersburg. Ahsan al-nukhab is structured as an atypical rendition of a chrestomathy, a selection of texts of varied genres compiled with the intention of teaching a language. Unlike Silvestre de Sacy’s popular Chrestomathie Arabe (1802, 2nd edition 1826), al-Tantawi included mostly his own writings and sample phrases, rendering his distinctive language the authentic source to be imitated by students. Ahsan al-nukhab received acclaim for its originality and utility in the Orientalist periodicals of the era, even replacing de Sacy’s work at some institutions. I argue that his book constitutes not simply an unprecedented linguistic-lexicographic experiment, but also an avenue for understanding al-Tantawi’s representation of his cultural and literary world in Russia. Born in 1810 in the central Nile Delta, al-Tantawi moved to Cairo as a teenager to study and later teach at al-Azhar, and gave private lessons to Orientalists. At the age of 30, he accepted an invitation from the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs to teach Arabic at the University of St. Petersburg, where he would rise to the highest rank of professor. Ahsan al-nukhab, in its phrases, poems, proverbs, and correspondence, bears the important traces of this movement—from Tanta to the intellectual circles of Cairo, to the banks of the Neva, where he taught his language and culture as both a purportedly authentic shaykh and salaried professor. This study starts by outlining the circumstances of Ahsan al-nukhab’s publication, then moves to a close analysis of the style and structure of the text to bring into focus the larger vision of Arabic literary modernity produced in St. Petersburg and published in Leipzig, 1848.