Juz 26

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-Ahqaf 46:1 through Adh-Dhariyat 51:30. Al-Ahqaf ('The Sand-Dunes') recalls the people of Ad and the jinn who heard the Quran. Muhammad treats the ethics of conflict, Al-Fath ('The Victory') celebrates the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, Al-Hujurat ('The Chambers') teaches manners and brotherhood, and Qaf opens the run of short Meccan surahs.

Fussilat's engagement with Meccan objections to the revelation, read in this juz, includes the striking image of skin itself testifying against its owner on the Day of Judgement (41:20-21), a passage later mystical and homiletic literature returned to repeatedly when discussing bodily witness and accountability. Ad-Dukhan preserves reference to a 'Night' of blessing on which the Quran was sent down (44:3), a phrase most classical commentators connect to the same Night of Decree, Laylat al-Qadr, named explicitly in its own short surah late in the Quran, rather than to a separate occasion.

Juz 26 opens exactly where Al-Jathiya ends and carries five complete surahs in sequence, Al-Ahqaf, Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, thirty-five, thirty-eight, twenty-nine, eighteen and forty-five verses respectively, before opening Adh-Dhariyat and stopping exactly halfway through its sixty verses. Five distinct Medinan and Meccan surahs are represented whole in a single nightly portion.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the twenty-sixth 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, and printed Mushafs typically mark each juz's opening in the margin with a small medallion inscribed with its number. Many print editions, including the widely used 604-page Uthmani Mushaf standardised by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd Complex, begin each juz on a fresh page and hold each to roughly twenty pages, letting a reciter track a night's target by page count alone without consulting verse numbers.