The Qur'an is the holy book of Islam. Muslims
believe that the Qur'an is the literal word of God in Arabic
and the culmination of God's revelation to mankind, revealed
to Muhammad, the final prophet of Islam, over a period of
23 years through the angel Jibril (Gabriel).
Format of the Qur'an :-
The Qur'an consists of 114 suras (chapters)
with a total of 6,236 ayat (verses) excluding 112 of the
113 sura-commencing bismillahs ("In the name of God,
the Compassionate, the Merciful"), which are mostly
considered as unnumbered. Alternatively, the figure may
be reckoned as 6,348 ayat including these bismillahs;
the exact number of ayat is disputed, not due to content
disputes but due to different methods of counting. (A
few "Quran-only" Muslims, having rejected two
verses of the Qur'an as spurious, give the exact number
as 6,346.) Muslims usually refer to the suras not by their
numbers, but by an Arabic name derived in some way from
the sura. (See List of sura names.) The suras are not
arranged in chronological order (in the order in which
Islamic scholars believe they were revealed) but in a
different order, roughly by size, also believed by Muslims
to be divinely inspired. After a short opening, the Qur'an
proceeds to the longest sura, and closes with some of
the shortest ones.
The Qur'an for reading and recitation
Reading the QuranIn addition to and largely independent
of the division into suras, there are various ways of
dividing the Qur'an into parts of approximately equal
length for convenience in reading, recitation and memorization.
The seven manazil (stations) and the thirty ajza' (parts)
can be used to work through the entire Qur’an in
a week or a month, one manzil or one juz' a day, respectively.
A juz' is sometimes further divided into two ahzab (groups),
and each ahzab is in turn subdivided into four quarters.
A different structure is provided by the ruku'at, semantical
units resembling paragraphs and comprising roughly ten
ayat each.
A hafiz is one who has memorized the entire
text of the Qur'an. There are believed to be millions
of hafiz. Even Muslims who do not otherwise understand
Arabic will memorize the Qur'an. All Muslims must memorize
some parts of the Qu'ran in order to perform their daily
prayers.
