Juz 25

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 Fussilat 41:47 through Al-Jathiya 45:37. A sequence of Meccan surahs on revelation and accountability: Ash-Shura ('Consultation'), Az-Zukhruf ('Ornaments of Gold'), Ad-Dukhan ('The Smoke') with its Night of blessing, and Al-Jathiya ('The Kneeling') picturing every nation kneeling at the Judgement.

The celebrated verse of hope in Az-Zumar, 'do not despair of the mercy of God, He forgives all sins' (39:53), read at the start of this juz, is regularly cited in later Islamic pastoral and devotional literature as scripture's strongest single statement against theological despair, addressed explicitly to those who have 'transgressed against their own souls.' Ghafir preserves the speech of an otherwise unnamed 'believing man' from Pharaoh's own court who argues, at personal risk, for sparing Moses (40:28-45), a rare Quranic instance of extended reported speech given to a minor figure rather than to a prophet.

Juz 25 packs an unusual number of complete surahs into a single division: after finishing Fussilat's last eight verses, it carries four complete surahs back to back, Ash-Shura, Az-Zukhruf, Ad-Dukhan and Al-Jathiya, fifty-three, eighty-nine, fifty-nine and thirty-seven verses respectively, ending precisely on Al-Jathiya's final verse, another instance of a juz boundary landing exactly on a surah's own close.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the twenty-fifth 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, and printed Mushafs typically mark each juz's opening in the margin with a small medallion inscribed with its number. Many print editions, including the widely used 604-page Uthmani Mushaf standardised by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd Complex, begin each juz on a fresh page and hold each to roughly twenty pages, letting a reciter track a night's target by page count alone without consulting verse numbers.