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”…

Before we begin, a few points about methodology:

• I am not counting the basmalah as a separate verse, except in the case of Sūrah al-Fātiḥah.
• I am counting the words of the basmalah as part of the first verse of every chapter other than Sūrah al-Fātiḥah and Sūrah al-Tawbah. (See below for an example of how the “first verse” looks for Sūrah al-Mujādilah.)
• Wherever it matters, I am using the global standard Uthman-Taha script of the Qur’ān. Some places where it matters include page numbers and the places where the 30 parts of the Qur’ān start and end.

Let’s get started.

With respect to chapters

The Qur’ān has 114 chapters. It might be tempting to say that you have crossed the halfway point of the Qur’ān once you finished half of those chapters, or the first 57 of the 114. This would be at the beginning of chapter 58, when you read:

بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
قَدْ سَمِعَ ٱللَّهُ قَوْلَ ٱلَّتِى تُجَـٰدِلُكَ فِى زَوْجِهَا وَتَشْتَكِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَٱللَّهُ يَسْمَعُ تَحَاوُرَكُمَآ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌۢ بَصِيرٌ

Of course, a simple glance at the Qur’ān will show that the start of Sūrah al-Mujādilah is nowhere near the middle of the book. The midpoint in terms of chapters might have made sense if the chapters were all the same length, or arranged relatively at random with respect to length; as it stands, the chapter lengths vastly vary, and the longer ones are never placed at the end of the book, so this approach never had a chance of giving us what we are looking for.

Let’s try something else.

With respect to parts

The Qur’ān has 30 parts. Unlike the chapters, each part is roughly the same length. So, a good candidate for the midpoint of the Qur’ān would be at the end of the 15th juzz and at the start of the 16th one. In this metric, you have crossed the halfway point of the Qur’ān once you get to the beginning of chapter 18, verse 75 when you read:

قَالَ أَلَمْ أَقُل لَّكَ إِنَّكَ لَن تَسْتَطِيعَ مَعِىَ صَبْرًا

As far as midpoints go, this is a very suitable looking candidate. We’ll see why in the next approach. We’re going to be seeing chapter 18, Sūrah al-Kahf, quite a bit, actually.

With respect to pages

The Qur’ān has 604 pages. It’s very reasonable to say that you’ve reached halfway through the Qur’ān at the end of page 302, as you start page 303. That puts you squarely at chapter 18, verse 84 when you read:

إِنَّا مَكَّنَّا لَهُۥ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَءَاتَيْنَـٰهُ مِن كُلِّ شَىْءٍ سَبَبًا

Interestingly, the 16th part starts exactly at the top of page 302. There’s clearly a close alignment between the distribution of the 30 parts and the pages they start on.

Next, let’s try looking a a more fine-grained division of the Qur’ān.

With respect to verses

The Qur’ān consists of 6326 verses. Like the chapters, the lengths of the verses vary, ranging from very short to very long. For now, suppose they are all more or less equal, or at least, uniformly distributed. Then the middle verse of the Qur’ān would be found after finishing the first 3163 verses of the Qur’ān, and you would pass the halfway point at verse number 3164, which happens to be in chapter 26, verse 187:

فَأَسْقِطْ عَلَيْنَا كِسَفًا مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ إِن كُنتَ مِنَ ٱلصَّـٰدِقِين

This is way off from chapter 18, where the middle part and middle page fell. That’s because most of the shorter verses appear in the latter half of the book, so the middle verse gets skewed closer to the end.

What if we take into account the length of each verse?

With respect to words

It’s actually a little tricky to divide Arabic text into words, compared to English. (We’ve seen this before.) Let’s try the approach that’s most similar to how we conceive of words in English: a continguous block of letters surrounded by whitespace. So, even though something like فَسَيَكْفِيكَهُمُ (meaning “so he will suffice you against them“) consists of several grammatical tokens, it still counts as one “word”.

In this case, the Qur’ān consists of 82,260 words. Then the middle word of the Qur’ān would be found after finishing the first 41,130 words of the Qur’ān, and you would pass the halfway point at word number 41,131, which happens to be the word حُقُبًا in chapter 18, verse 60:

وَإِذْ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِفَتَىٰهُ لَآ أَبْرَحُ حَتَّىٰٓ أَبْلُغَ مَجْمَعَ ٱلْبَحْرَيْنِ أَوْ أَمْضِىَ حُقُبًا

There we are, back in chapter 18! That’s both expected and reassuring.

Note that even though the lengths of the words in the Qur’ān vary a lot, like chapters and verses, the middle word actually does appear somewhere close to the middle of the book. That’s because, unlike the chapters and verses, the words are distributed relatively evenly with respect to length. It’s not like all the shorter words are in the end of the Qur’ān, for example.

Now, what if we want to take into account the fact that not all words are the same length?

With respect to letters

Suppose we strip away all punctuation, diacritics, and whitespaces in the text of the Qur’ān. We end up with 342,808 letters. Then the middle letter of the Qur’ān would be found after finishing the first 171,404 words of the Qur’ān, and you would pass the halfway point at word number 171,405, which happens to be the letter ح in the word أُحْدِثَ in chapter 18, verse 70:

قَالَ فَإِنِ ٱتَّبَعْتَنِى فَلَا تَسْـَٔلْنِى عَن شَىْءٍ حَتَّىٰٓ أُحْدِثَ لَكَ مِنْهُ ذِكْرًا

Once again, back in chapter 18.

What about 18:19?

There is a common belief that the middle of the Qur’ān in the present arrangement happens to fall in chapter 18, verse 19, in the word وَلْيَتَلَطَّفْ, and in particular, the letter ت in that word. Many copies of the Qur’ān highlight this word with distinction, putting it in bold script, raising the font size, and even giving it a special colour!

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any way to justify the claim that this is the midpoint of the Qur’ān. As we saw above, it doesn’t seem to be the middle verse, word, or letter of the holy text. I tried shuffling some assumptions around, such as decision to include the basmalah as a separate verse or not at all, or changing they way I define each word, but nothing seemed to result in giving a midpoint falling in 18:19.

It’s possible that this “midpoint” was measured out by hand, and some counting error came up in this arduous process. I’m not sure what the origin story for this claim is, or how it became popularized. Of course, it might not be an error on their part, and maybe I’m just missing something!

Summary of results

Here are the different verses that can lay a claim for being the “midpoint” of the Qur’ān:

With respect to…	Middle verse	The verse itself
Chapters	58:1	بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ قَدْ سَمِعَ ٱللَّهُ قَوْلَ ٱلَّتِى تُجَـٰدِلُكَ فِى زَوْجِهَا وَتَشْتَكِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَٱللَّهُ يَسْمَعُ تَحَاوُرَكُمَآ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌۢ بَصِيرٌ
Parts	18:75	قَالَ أَلَمْ أَقُل لَّكَ إِنَّكَ لَن تَسْتَطِيعَ مَعِىَ صَبْرًا
Pages	18:84	إِنَّا مَكَّنَّا لَهُۥ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَءَاتَيْنَـٰهُ مِن كُلِّ شَىْءٍ سَبَبًا
Verses	26:187	فَأَسْقِطْ عَلَيْنَا كِسَفًا مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ إِن كُنتَ مِنَ ٱلصَّـٰدِقِين
Words	18:60	وَإِذْ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِفَتَىٰهُ لَآ أَبْرَحُ حَتَّىٰٓ أَبْلُغَ مَجْمَعَ ٱلْبَحْرَيْنِ أَوْ أَمْضِىَ حُقُبًا
Letters	18:70	قَالَ فَإِنِ ٱتَّبَعْتَنِى فَلَا تَسْـَٔلْنِى عَن شَىْءٍ حَتَّىٰٓ أُحْدِثَ لَكَ مِنْهُ ذِكْرًا
Popular opinion	18:19	… فَلْيَنظُرْ أَيُّهَآ أَزْكَىٰ طَعَامًا فَلْيَأْتِكُم بِرِزْقٍ مِّنْهُ وَلْيَتَلَطَّفْ وَلَا يُشْعِرَنَّ بِكُمْ أَحَدًا

The fact that most of these fall in chapter 18, Sūrah al-Kahf, specifically in the range of verses from 60 to 85, gives strong support to the idea that the true “midpoint of the Qur’ān” falls somewhere in this range.