How to Memorise Juz Amma: The Order, the Method and the Revision

The simplest way to memorise Juz Amma is to begin with the surahs you already hear in every prayer, fix their errors before you build on them, then work through the rest in groups of similar length, revising each group by reciting it in your daily prayers. Juz Amma is the 30th and final juz (one of the thirty roughly equal parts of the Quran), running from Surah an-Naba, the 78th surah, to Surah an-Nas, the 114th: 37 surahs in all.

A great many hifz journeys start here for practical reasons: the surahs are short, so the first successes come quickly; many are recited in prayer, so a beginner already carries their sound; and the whole juz, once secure, is what a person needs to pray with variety and confidence.

Backwards from an-Nas or forwards from an-Naba?

Teachers genuinely differ here, and it is worth understanding why rather than assuming one side is correct.

The backwards route starts at Surah an-Nas and works towards an-Naba, so the surahs gradually lengthen. The learner meets the shortest surahs first, gains confidence, and by the time they reach the long surahs at the front of the juz they have the habit of memorising in place. Many children's programmes follow this order.

The forwards route starts at an-Naba and keeps the order of the mushaf. Its advocates point out that the learner tackles the hardest surahs while motivation is freshest, that the order of the Quran is fixed in the memory from the outset, and that the later short surahs then feel like a reward.

Neither order changes what you end up holding. Take your teacher's order if you have one; otherwise a fluent reader can go forwards and a hesitant one should go backwards, because the short surahs forgive weak reading and the long ones do not.

Grouping the surahs by length

Whichever direction you take, do not treat the 37 surahs as one undifferentiated list. Sort them into three rough bands and plan by band.

• The very short surahs, each memorised in a sitting or two, mostly sitting towards the end of the juz.
• The middle band, of perhaps half a page to a page, which need a portion plan of a few lines a day.
• The long surahs at the front of the juz, approached like any other long passage: small daily portions, seams joined, revision from the first day.

The value of the bands is that a learner knows what kind of week they are in: a week of very short surahs might finish three, a week in the long band might finish none, and that is the same progress in a different unit. Children especially need this explained, because to a child a finished surah is the only visible achievement and the long band can feel like a wall; our guide to hifz for children covers how to keep that motivation steady.

The surahs you already half know

Here is the trap that catches nearly everyone who begins with Juz Amma. Because these surahs are heard in prayer from early childhood, a learner arrives already able to produce something that sounds like Surah al-Ikhlas or Surah al-Asr. It feels like a head start and is often a liability.

What was absorbed by ear from a parent, an imam or a recording came with whatever errors were in the source, plus whatever a young ear added: a vowel lengthened where it should be short, a heavy letter made light, an ending swallowed. Those errors are now years old and fluent, and fluent errors are the hardest kind to remove, because the correct version feels wrong.

The fix is to treat every familiar surah as unmemorised for one honest session. Read it from the page, slowly, with your teacher, and let them mark every place where your habitual sound differs from the text; then re-memorise only those places. If your reading is not yet strong enough to see the difference on the page, a short period on the Noorani Qaida is time well spent, and if the corrections keep returning to the same handful of letters, a grounding in the basics of Tajweed will pay for itself across the whole juz.

Recording your teacher as your model

A published recitation is a fine reference, but it moves at a reciter's pace, not a learner's, and it does not know which words you stumble on.

Ask your teacher, at the end of each lesson, to recite your next portion once slowly and once at a natural pace, and record it. Listen during the day and again just before you memorise. Then, once the portion is memorised, record yourself and play the two back to back. The differences you hear are your corrections for the next lesson, and you will hear more than you expect.

One caution: keep to one reciter throughout the juz, because changing models halfway means every surah memorised so far sounds slightly different from the one you are learning, and those differences in pace and stopping places leak into your recitation.

A revision loop that needs no chart

Charts and tick-boxes work for some learners and become an abandoned notebook for others. Juz Amma is small enough to be revised without one, provided you use the structure the day already gives you.

Every surah you hold is recited in a prayer at least once a week, in order, and the one memorised most recently is recited in every prayer for the week after you learn it.

Assign the surahs across the week by band, so that Monday's prayers carry some of the long ones, Tuesday's the next stretch, and so on until the whole juz has been recited by the week's end. Because there is no page to glance at in prayer, this is a recall test rather than a recognition exercise, and any surah that fails goes to the front of the queue for the following day. The three-part split of new work, recent revision and older revision is explained in our article on the sabaq, sabqi and manzil system; this loop is that system with the prayers doing the timekeeping.

Children not yet praying five times a day can recite the week's surahs to a parent in a fixed daily slot instead; what matters is that the order is fixed and complete, not that it is written down.

What comes after Juz Amma

The next juz backwards is the 29th, which runs from Surah al-Mulk to Surah al-Mursalat: eleven surahs, longer than most of Juz Amma but still self-contained. The same habits apply: memorise by surah, band by length, join the seams, revise in prayer.

Some learners instead move to a single long surah they want to hold for its own sake, and Surah al-Kahf is a common choice. Either route is fine. The one thing to avoid is stopping: a finished Juz Amma that is never revised erodes just as surely as any other memorised portion, and the rotation that built it is what keeps it.

Frequently asked questions

How many surahs are in Juz Amma?

Thirty-seven, from Surah an-Naba, the 78th surah of the Quran, to Surah an-Nas, the 114th. They range from the long surahs at the front of the juz to the three-ayah surahs near the end.

Is it better to start from the back or the front?

Teachers differ and both orders work. Start from the back if your reading is still developing or you are teaching a young child; start from the front if you read fluently and want the hardest work done first.

My child already recites several of these surahs. Do we skip them?

Do not skip them; check them. Have the teacher hear each familiar surah read from the page and correct the errors absorbed by ear. Those corrections are usually quick, but left alone they persist for life.

Do I need to know Tajweed before memorising Juz Amma?

You need to read accurately, and the basic rules that keep letters and vowels correct are part of that. Fuller Tajweed theory can be learned alongside memorisation rather than before it.

How do I keep Juz Amma once it is finished?

Recite it in your prayers on a fixed weekly rotation so that every surah is heard at least once a week. Any surah that fails in prayer goes back into daily revision until it holds.

Start Juz Amma with a teacher who will check the surahs you already know

The first job in Juz Amma is not new memorisation but an honest hearing of the surahs you already carry, and that is what the first lesson in our one-to-one Hifz programme is for. To begin, book a free one-to-one trial class and recite whichever short surah you know best; the teacher will show you what to fix and where to start.