Terminology

• Quran: (also romanized Qur'an or Koran), is the central religious text of Islam. It is made up of words which contain truth and guidance for every human being, and Muslims believe that these are words revealed directly by God (Allāh), to the last of His prophets and messengers, Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him). Unlike other religious texts, Quran has been preserved in its original language, Arabic, and has not been altered or changed in any way. Since it is a revelation from God, every word, every letter, and every punctuation mark is important.
• Surah: A chapter of the Quran. There are 114 chapters in Quran, each of different length.
• Ayah: A verse number in the particular surah (chapter) of Quran. It is relative to the surah.
• AyahId: Unique identifier for a verse in the Quran. It is a number that is the concatenation of the of sum ayahs of previous chapters of Quran and the verse number of particular Ayah. There are 6236 ayahs in Quran. AyahId is absolute, positive and is not relative to any surah.
• Juz: A section of the Quran. There are 30 Juz (ajza) in Quran of roughly equal length. Most Juz’ are named after the first word of the first verse of the Juz’. Read more here
• Hizb: Each Juz’ is divided into two Hizb (lit. “two groups”, plural: Aḥzāb). Therefore, there are 60 Hizbs (ahzab) in the Quran.
• Rub-el-Hizb/Maqra: Each Hizb is subdivided into four quarters called Maqra (lit. “reading”), making eight quarters per Juz. In Arabic, rub means ‘one-fourth’ or ‘quarter’, while ḥizb (plural aḥzāb) translates to ‘a group’. There are 240 Maqras in the Quran. In most mushafs it is noted by symbol in the shape of an octagram, represented as two overlapping squares ۞. Read more here
• Manzil: For the convenience of those who read the Quran in a week the text may be divided into seven portions. Each portion is called a Manzil. There are 7 Manzil in Quran. Read more here
• Page: A section of the Quran that contains 15 lines (Madina mushaf)(depends on the mushaf).
• Saajdah: Special ayahs that require reader to prostrate. There are 15 of them in Quran.
• Qira'at (Recitations) and Riwayat (Narrations): The Quran has been transmitted through different authentic modes of recitation, known as Qira'at. There are ten recognized Qira'at, each named after a prominent reciter (Qari). Within each Qira'at, there are multiple Riwayat (narrations) - the chains of transmission through which these recitations were preserved. The most widely used today is the Hafs from 'Asim narration, which is used throughout most of the Muslim world and forms the basis for all visualizations on this website. Other well-known narrations include Warsh from Nafi' (common in North and West Africa) and Qalun from Nafi' (used in parts of Africa). While the variations between these narrations are minor (mostly involving pronunciation, elongation, or slight differences in word forms), they can occasionally affect verse counts and word statistics. Read more here
• Ruku: (paragraph) is a group of related verses in a Surah. The end of a Ruku’ is marked by the Arabic letter ﻉ in superscript. There are 558 Rukus in the Quran. These are logical sections according to similar theme/objective or meaning. The bigger Surahs have been split into a number of Rukus, so that we would recognize when to do Ruku’ (bowing) in Salat without interrupting a proceeding subject of the Quran. Additionally, on the margins of the Quran, usually three figures are written with ﻉ. The top figure shows the number of Rukus completed in that Surah. The middle figure shows the number of Ayats in the Ruku just completed. The bottom figure shows the number of Rukus completed in that Juz.