Juz 15

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-Isra 17:1 through Al-Kahf 18:74. It opens with Al-Isra ('The Night Journey') commemorating the Prophet's journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, alongside a code of moral commands. Al-Kahf ('The Cave') then begins with the sleepers of the cave and the enigmatic journey of Moses with the servant of God (Khidr).

Al-Isra's opening verse, commemorating the Prophet's night journey 'from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque' (17:1), is the Quranic anchor for the whole later tradition of the Isra and Mi'raj, the night journey and ascension, and the identification of the 'Farthest Mosque,' al-Masjid al-Aqsa, with Jerusalem rather than a symbolic or heavenly location became standard in the earliest extant commentary literature, though the verse itself names no city. Al-Kahf's Companions of the Cave, who follow in the same juz, closely echo the late antique Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, a resemblance noted since the medieval period and generally read by scholars as evidence of shared late antique storytelling across religious communities rather than direct borrowing in either direction.

Juz 15 opens exactly where An-Nahl ends and carries the whole of Al-Isra, all one hundred and eleven verses, before opening Al-Kahf and stopping just over two-thirds of the way through its one hundred and ten verses. The Night Journey narrative that opens Al-Isra is therefore carried complete within a single nightly recitation portion.

In communities that pace the nightly tarawih prayers of Ramadan at one juz per night, this is customarily the fifteenth night's portion, marking the midpoint of the month for congregations that pace the recitation evenly, though many mosques recite faster to finish early or slower to spread the reading further, and some 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.