A juz (plural ajza), also called a para in South Asia, is one of thirty roughly equal divisions of the written Quran. The division is made by length rather than by meaning, so a juz usually begins and ends in the middle of a surah; each is further split into two hizb and each hizb into quarters. Reciting one juz a night completes the whole Quran across a lunar month, a rhythm tied above all to Ramadan, when the entire text is recited in the nightly tarawih prayers. This portion spans Al-Furqan 25:21 through An-Naml 27:55. The close of Al-Furqan portrays the humble 'servants of the Most Merciful.' Ash-Shuara ('The Poets') recounts prophet after prophet meeting rejection, and An-Naml ('The Ant') tells of Solomon, the ant, the hoopoe and the Queen of Sheba.
An-Nur's vindication of Aisha, the Prophet's wife, against an accusation of infidelity circulated by some in Medina, an episode known in the tradition as hadith al-ifk, the affair of the slander, occupies a substantial passage in this juz (24:11-20) and became a foundational text in later Islamic law on the punishment for slanderous accusations of unchastity (qadhf) and on the number of witnesses required to establish such a charge. Al-Furqan, which follows, takes its name from a term meaning criterion or discernment, used elsewhere in the Quran for the Torah as well, and the surah's closing portrait of the 'servants of the Most Merciful' (25:63-77) is frequently anthologised on its own as a summary of Quranic ethical ideals.