Juz 7

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-Maida 5:82 through Al-Anam 6:110. The close of Al-Maida recounts the disciples' request for a table set from heaven and Jesus' disavowal of being worshipped. Al-Anam ('The Cattle'), a Meccan surah on pure monotheism, follows with Abraham's reasoning from star to moon to sun toward the one Creator.

Al-Maida closes, in this juz, with the disciples' request for a table spread from heaven (5:112-115) and Jesus' own disavowal, put in his mouth by the text, of ever having told people to worship him and his mother as gods (5:116-117), verses classical commentary reads as a direct Quranic rebuttal of Trinitarian and Marian devotion as understood by its audience rather than an account of mainstream Christian doctrine. Al-Anam, a Meccan surah of sweeping theological argument that follows, is reported in early Islamic tradition to have been revealed essentially complete in a single occasion, an unusual claim for a surah of its length that later scholars have treated with some caution.

Juz 7 finishes Al-Maida's last thirty-nine verses, including the Quran's account of the disciples' request for a heavenly table, before opening Al-Anam and carrying about two-thirds of it, its first one hundred and ten of one hundred and sixty-five verses. A juz boundary here again cuts across a single surah's sustained theological argument rather than marking any structural division within it.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the seventh 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.