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Which Juzz’ has the most verses?

One of the first things that anyone learns about the holy Qur’ān is that there are 114 chapters of varying length, with the longest being Sūrah al-Baqarah with 286 verses, and the shortest chapters having just 3 verses. So it’s no surprise to anyone that different chapters can have vastly different numbers of verses.

It is also well-known that the Qur’ān is also divided into 30 parts, and these are generally around the same length, measured in terms of pages. Pages are a more reliable indicator of actual length, or “reading time”, than verses, since verses also vary enormously in length.

But one connection I haven’t seen mentioned enough is the variance in the number of verses per part of the Qur’ān. How does the length of each juzz’ compare with the others in terms of the number of verses it contains? Sure, they all span the same number of pages, but certainly a juzz’ consisting of short verses will have more verses in it will have more verses overall than a juzz’ consisting of longer ones. So which juzz’ has the most verses? We can investigate this.

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Third Person Imperatives in the Qur’an

It’s always been kind of strange to me how a language can accommodate imperatives for other than the second person.

English, of course, cannot do this. You can only command someone who is right there in front of you. “Listen, you! Stay here! Don’t touch this! Have a good day!” The addressee is always “you”, even if that pronoun doesn’t appear explicitly.

Arabic, on the other hand, is one of the languages that does have this feature. You can issue an order to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Not present? No problem. Just use the third person imperative.

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Rajab Supplications in Rhyme

‘Tis the season… of worship, of course.

In honour of the blessed month of Rajab, here are two of the beautiful supplications from the treasure trove of the Ahlul Bayt (AS), inadequately rendered into English poetry.

May the Almighty accept all of the good deeds performed for His sake during this holy month.

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The Qur’an’s Most Flexible Verbs

One cool thing about the Arabic language is that you can take a base “root word” and extract derivative words with related meanings by plugging the letters of the root word into different templates, or “forms”.

I’m not going to get into the details about how this process works here; we can leave that to the linguists. Instead, I’m interested in exploring a specific question: in the Qur’ān, which root verb appears in the most derivative verb forms? In other words: of all the root verbs that appear in the Qur’ān, which one comes in the biggest variety of flavours?

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The Middle of the Qur’an

What is the midpoint of the Qur’ān?

(Ok, so this might be somewhat of an artificial question, depending on how much value you give to the way the chapters in the Qur’an are presently ordered. But I think the question still has value regardless! It’s interesting to be able to pin down where we can say, when reading the Qur’ān from start to finish, that we’ve reached the halfway point.)

So, what is the midpoint of the Qur’ān? Well, it turns out, it depends on how we want to define “midpoint”…

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The Language of the Law

Sometimes, the way that Islamic rulings are presented will depend on the language that they are written in. Here’s a fun example:

In the English translation of Sayyid Sistani’s rulings, we find the ruling: “Dogs and pigs are impure” [Source]. This ruling is simple, to the point, and clear.

In the Persian edition of Sayyid Sistani’s rulings, however, from which the English rulings are extracted and translated, the wording of the same ruling states: “Dogs and pigs that live on land are impure” (emphasis mine) [Source]. 

Wait. Why did it have to specify the ones that live on land? Why did the English translation omit this key point? What kind of dogs and pigs don’t live on land, anyway?

It turns out that, in the Persian language, the phrases that literally translate into English as “sea dog” and “sea pig” are used to refer to the animals that, in English, we know of as “seals” and “walruses” (By the way, we have something similar in English, too: sea horses!).

Now, if the Persian-language ruling said that all animals known as dogs and pigs are impure, then that would mean seals and walruses would be included. So, in order to distinguish between the kind of dogs and pigs that truly are impure and the ones that are not (i.e. the seals and walruses), in Persian, the clarifier “that live on land” (as opposed to the sea) becomes necessary.

Fun, right? Now let’s take a look at another example of a language-specific ruling, one with some interesting consequences. This case is a little more involved, so we will need a little bit of background first…

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Qur’anic Verses in Verses

Let’s start by looking at the very first verse in the Holy Qur’ān.

In the name of Allāh, the Beneficient,
the Merciful. [Al-Fātiḥah, 1:1]

It’s an interesting verse for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons (and perhaps not the first reason that comes to mind) is that this verse actually contains another complete verse entirely inside of it:

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Introducing: PyMentorAI

I love computer programming. I do it for work, for personal projects, and even for fun. I love the feeling of being able to harness the power of technology to do amazing things, like making daunting tasks effortless and accomplishing huge results with lightning speed.

People see me code. Some of them are coders themselves. Many are not. I’ve frequently been told variations of: “It’s so cool that you can do this. I wish I could code. I wish I knew how.“

I never thought I would have a way that I could actually help these people. Although I love to teach, I simply don’t have the capacity to tutor everyone. But one day, I thought: maybe there was something I could actually do. It wasn’t long before the idea of PyMentorAI was born.

PyMentorAI: learning Python can be fun!
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You Never Forgot

I wrote this poem almost ten years ago. It never really made it out into the world until now, but I never truly forgot about it. It’s a small tribute to Imam Husayn (‘a) and his sacrifices in Karbala.

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