Juz 10

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-Anfal 8:41 through At-Tawba 9:92. The close of Al-Anfal and the opening of At-Tawba ('Repentance') address the dissolving of treaties with the polytheists, the expedition of Tabuk, and the exposure of the hypocrites. At-Tawba is the only surah that does not begin with the Bismillah.

At-Tawba is the one surah in the Quran that does not open with the invocatory Bismillah, and the classical explanation, reported from Uthman himself in response to a question from Ibn Abbas, holds that the Prophet died without clarifying whether At-Tawba was a separate surah or a continuation of the preceding Al-Anfal, since the two shared closely similar subject matter and were sometimes called 'the paired ones'; on that uncertainty the compilers left no Bismillah between them. A later, more homiletic explanation, that the formula of mercy was withheld because the surah addresses treaty-breaking idolaters, is widely repeated in popular teaching but is not attributed to any authentic hadith from the Prophet.

Juz 10 finishes Al-Anfal's final thirty-five verses before opening At-Tawba, the one surah in the Quran without an opening Bismillah, and carries its first ninety-two of one hundred and twenty-nine verses, meaning most of this juz belongs to the surah later tradition remembers for the absence of that formula rather than to the one it closes.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the tenth 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. Some Mushaf editions additionally shade or border the margin differently for each hizb, so a reciter can judge progress through the juz at a glance without counting verses.