The death of Ǧamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (Nasser) on 28 September 1970 left the Arab world with no political leader and at the same time it marked the end of an era. After years of a rather intellectually liberal atmosphere, Egypt entered a new phase: President Anwar al-Sādāt – who succeeded Nasser – steered the country away from the Nasserite project and replaced the civic nature of the Egyptian state of the 1950s and 1960s with a quasi-Islamic one (cf. Osman, p. 90). Moreover, his foreign policy marked the end of Egypt's leading role in the Arab world. The political vacancy this created was filled first by King Fayṣal of Saudi Arabia, then by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, both of whom tried – in vain – to replace Nasser (Campanini, p. 174).

Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, the new branch of applied linguistics that flourished during the 1960s in Egypt, now suffered a setback in the country. As a result, it crossed the Suez Canal eastward and Cyrenaica westward to spread across territories and reach other corners of the Arab world. Hence, during the 1970s, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Libya saw the rise of TAFL, which developed considerably as the number of publications increased and conferences were organized within the Arab world. The undisputed Arab capitals of the new expansion were Riyadh and Khartoum, together with the Syro-Lebanese region and Cairo, albeit in the background. Tunisia, in particular, saw the appearance of the first work on TAFL only in 1979, even though the Bourguiba School had already published dedicated textbooks (Ibn Ismāʿīl, Ibn Ṣāliḥ, and al-ʿĀyid; Ibn Ismāʿīl 1974) and continued to train foreign learners of Arabic during summer sessions for the whole decade. In all these places, Arab scholars debated TAFL, started new projects, conducted experimental studies and had the opportunity to create institutes which focused their attention on this specific research field both from theoretical and practical points of view.

Apart from the Bourguiba School and Maʿhad al-Qāhira – which mainly pursued practical objectives – the first institute dealing with TAFL theory within the Arab world was established in Sudan. The reason that such a decision was taken in a remote country of the Arab world stems from both historical and linguistic factors. On the one hand, Sudan was experiencing a fertile moment at the beginning of the 1970s.