Juz 1

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-Fatiha 1:1 through Al-Baqara 2:141. It opens the Book with Al-Fatiha, the seven-verse prayer for guidance recited in every unit of the ritual prayer, then carries the long early stretch of Al-Baqara: the threefold typology of believers, disbelievers and hypocrites; the creation of Adam and the prostration of the angels; and the extended address to the Children of Israel recalling the Exodus, the covenant and the golden calf.

Juz 1 opens the Quran with Al-Fatiha in full, all seven verses of the opening prayer, before carrying the first 141 of Al-Baqara's 286 verses, so more than four-fifths of this juz belongs to a single surah still only half told. The division is a length-based convenience rather than a thematic unit: it stops mid-argument, partway through Al-Baqara's extended address to the Children of Israel, with the change of prayer direction and much of the surah's legal material still to come in the following juz.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the first night's portion, though many mosques recite faster to finish early in the month or slower to spread the reading further, and some congregations instead divide the whole Quran among thirty reciters for a single collective khatm. Huffaz reviewing memorised portions often pace themselves by a juz's two hizb and four quarter-hizb divisions rather than by surah, since these evenly sized units make a consistent daily review schedule possible regardless of where a surah boundary falls. Printed Mushafs typically mark each juz's opening in the margin with a small medallion inscribed with its number, a page-level convention distinct from the finer hizb and quarter-hizb marks placed within the text itself to guide reciters mid-portion.