Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

A Thirtieth of the Recitation Cycle

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
A Thirtieth of the Recitation Cycle

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-Mujadila 58:1 through At-Tahrim 66:12. A run of Medinan surahs on community life: Al-Mujadila ('The Pleading Woman'), Al-Hashr ('The Gathering') closing with the beautiful names of God, Al-Mumtahana, As-Saff, Al-Jumua ('Friday') on the congregational prayer, Al-Munafiqun ('The Hypocrites'), At-Taghabun, At-Talaq and At-Tahrim.

Qaf, opening the long run of short, rhythmic Meccan surahs that continues through the rest of the Quran, is traditionally reported to have been the surah the Prophet regularly recited at the Friday and festival prayers, a liturgical use later jurists cite as sunna independent of the surah's content. Ar-Rahman's structure, built around the repeated refrain 'which of your Lord's favours will you both deny,' addressed grammatically to two listeners at once, jinn and humankind together, is read by classical commentators as making the surah a direct address to both kinds of creation rather than to humanity alone.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.