Juz 2

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-Baqara 2:142 through 2:252. This portion carries the change of the prayer direction (qibla) toward the Sacred Mosque at Mecca (2:144), the ordinances of fasting in Ramadan (2:183-185), rules of pilgrimage, marriage and divorce, and the narrative of Saul (Talut), Goliath and the young David that closes it.

The consonantal text these verses share across every copy of the Quran in use today goes back to a standardisation carried out under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, traditionally dated to the years around 650-656 CE: a committee led by the Prophet's former scribe Zayd ibn Thabit produced an authoritative written text, working in part from manuscript sheets kept by Hafsa, one of the Prophet's widows, and Uthman then sent copies to the empire's major cities while earlier variant collections were withdrawn from circulation. The juz division used to organise recitation came only later, laid over this already-fixed consonantal text rather than shaping it, so a juz boundary never marks a textual variant, only a convenient stopping point for reciters.

Juz 2 is unusual among the thirty divisions for falling entirely inside a single surah: every verse of it, from 2:142 to 2:252, belongs to Al-Baqara, which at 286 verses is long enough on its own to fill a complete juz with substantial material from the same surah still remaining on either side of it. Only a handful of the thirty divisions manage this; most straddle at least one surah boundary.

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