The Holy Quran

Al Islam's Quran section provides access to the complete Quran with 122 translations across 62 languages, 95 tafsir (interpretation) works, and comprehensive metadata. It offers three ways to browse (Favourite, Surah and Parah/Juz), searching and sorting, Go to Verse, a continuous reading screen, recorded recitation, and a verse screen for studying translations, tafsir, transliteration and the words themselves.

Overview

The Quran section is accessible from the bottom navigation bar under Tools. The Quran home screen has three tabs: Favourite, Surah and Parah/Juz.

Content Available

Arabic scripts: 11 ways of writing the Qur'an — the same words, differently spelled and differently drawn Translations: 122 translations across 62 languages Tafsir Works: 95 scholarly interpretation commentaries Transliterations: 6 packs — the sound of each verse in Latin script Recitations: 126 recorded readings by named reciters Verses: 6,236 verses (Ayahs) across 114 Surahs

The Uthmani script, the Tajweed Style transliteration and four recitations are included with the app. Everything else downloads when you choose it, and can be removed from Downloads.

Transliteration packs

Transliteration is not translation. It does not tell you what a verse means; it tells you how it sounds — for readers who are learning to recite, who know the meaning but not yet the script, or who want to follow along in an alphabet they read fluently.

Tajweed Style reads the most naturally of the set and uses no special notation. The rest download on demand, exactly like any translation or tafsir.

Quran Home Screen

Tabbed Interface

The Quran home screen displays three tabs at the top:

• Favourite — the surahs and juz you have bookmarked
• Surah — all 114 surahs
• Parah/Juz — the thirty divisions of the Qur'an

Swipe between tabs or tap one to switch.

Search

A search button at the top lets you search within the current tab. As you type:

• Results narrow as you type

Sorting

Tap the Sort button to arrange content by various criteria.

Surah Sorting Options

• Surah number — numerical order (1–114)
• Surah Roman name — alphabetical by transliterated name
• Arabic name — alphabetical by Arabic
• Revelation order — order in which surahs were revealed
• Total verses — by number of verses
• Total rukus — by number of rukus (recitation units)
• Name translation — by English translation of the surah name
• Revelation type — Makki (revealed in Mecca) or Madani (revealed in Medina)

Each sort option can be in ascending or descending order.

Para/Juz Sorting Options

• Para/Juz number — numerical order
• Para/Juz Roman name — alphabetical by transliterated name
• Arabic name — alphabetical by Arabic
• Total verses — by number of verses
• Total rukus — by number of rukus

Each can be in ascending or descending order.

Cards Display

Surahs and Paras are displayed as cards:

Surah Card Contains

• Surah number — numerical position (1–114)
• Surah name — transliterated English name
• Surah meaning — English translation of the name's meaning
• Surah translation — another name or variant translation
• Revelation order — when this surah was revealed (1–114)
• Revelation type — Makki or Madani
• Total verses — number of ayahs
• Total rukus — number of recitation units
• Arabic names — Surah name in Arabic script
• Bookmark toggle — button to bookmark this surah

Para Card Contains

• Para name — transliterated English name
• Para Arabic name — name in Arabic script
• Total verses — number of ayahs
• Total rukus — number of recitation units
• Bookmark toggle — button to bookmark this para

Bookmarking

You can:

• Toggle bookmarks directly from cards using the bookmark button
• View bookmarked surahs and juz in the Favourite tab

Go to Verse Navigation

At the top-right next to the search bar, the Go to Verse button jumps to any verse. The same dialog is in the Search menu.

Go to Verse Dialog

Tapping it opens a dialog with three tabs:

1. Go by Surah
2. Go by Juz
3. Quick Search

Go by Surah

1. Search the surah — search by surah name or number. While the keyboard is up the list takes the dialog; picking a surah brings the bar back
2. Choose the verse on the bar beneath:
   • Drag along the bar, or tap a point on it
   • Step with the arrows either side; hold one and it speeds up, to tens in a long surah
   • Type the number — what you tap is selected so typing replaces it, and a number past the end of the surah is not accepted
3. Juz boundaries are marked — where a juz begins inside the surah, the bar shows it, and the verse is named with the juz it falls in as you move (2:142 · Juz 2). Al-Baqara shows two: Juz 2 at 142, Juz 3 at 253.
4. No keyboard needed — every verse can be reached with the bar and the arrows
5. Go — the button names the verse it will open

Go by Juz

1. Choose the juz from the grid of thirty
2. Choose the verse within it on the same bar as Go by Surah, counted from the first verse of the juz. Where a surah begins inside the juz, the bar marks it, and the verse is named as you move: the 35th verse of Juz 3 is Aal-i-Imraan 3:1, because Juz 3 opens at 2:253 and Al-Baqara has 34 verses left.
3. Go — the button names the surah and verse it will open

Quick Search

Enter a reference directly:

• Surah:Ayah format — e.g., 2:255 for Ayat al-Kursi
• Global ID — enter a verse ID from 1 to 6,236 to jump directly to that verse
• A juz — juz 3, para 3, or j3 goes to the first verse of that juz

Quick search goes straight to the verse you typed.

Ayah (Verse) Listing View

When you select a Surah, Para, or Juz, you enter the Listing view, which displays verses in a scrollable interface.

How It Works

• Verses are displayed in a scroll-down and swipe-up/down interface
• You can scroll up and down through the verses
• You can open from any point
• You can read continuously without navigating back to lists

Top Information Bar

At the top of the listing, you can see:

• Current Surah number — which surah you're reading
• Current Juz — which juz (30th division) you're in
• Current translation — which translation you're viewing
• Translation number — which translation is selected

Also displayed:

• Ruku indicators — when you've entered a new ruku
• Sajdah indicators — when a prostration (sajdah) occurs

Toggle Translation

A toggle button at the top lets you:

• Turn off translation — read only the original Arabic
• Turn on translation — display translation below or alongside the Arabic

Change Translations

A change translation button lets you:

• Select from 122 translations across 62 languages
• Many languages have multiple translations to choose from
• Download translations — add translations you want to use
• Delete translations — remove translations you no longer need
• Read Arabic only — keep no translation downloaded if preferred

Every row now also says what script the text is written in and where it came from — see How resources are labelled.

Text Customization

You can customize text appearance by tapping the customization button. This allows you to adjust:

• Arabic text appearance — font, size, line height, color, kept separately for each script the Arabic can be written in, and starting on the script you are reading (see Each script keeps its own typography)
• Translation text appearance — separate customization for translation text

The transliteration strip has its own typography too — set in Text Customization as Ayah Transliteration, per language. The strip appears on the Verse Preview screen.

Listening from the Listing View

The surah header inside the Listing view carries Listen to this surah and Save offline. While a recitation plays, the verse being read is highlighted and the page follows the voice, scrolling only when the verse would otherwise leave the screen — so it never fights you if you scroll ahead yourself.

Where the recitation carries word timings, the word being said is marked in the verse as the reciter reaches it, whichever script you are reading — every script divides the Qur'an into the same words. See Recitation.

Copying verses from the listing

Select one or more verses and the selection bar offers Copy, which copies them straight away, and Copy as…, which opens the copy sheet — see Copying and Citing a Verse.

Auto-scroll

The page can move by itself while you read. Tap the auto-scroll button in the top bar — lines with an arrow beside them — and after a three-second count it starts; tap it again, or the × on its controls, to stop. Auto-scroll settings in the ⋮ menu opens the settings without starting anything.

It moves at your reading pace, in words a minute, not at a speed in pixels. Every word on the page counts — the Arabic, and the translation when it is shown — so a long verse is given longer than a short one, and the pace means the same thing at any font size. The Qur'an starts at 90 words a minute; anything from 30 to 400 can be set, by slider, by steps, or from five named paces.

While it runs, the controls sit under the page and name the verse you are on and how long the rest of the surah takes at this pace — ≈ 12 min to the end of Al-Baqara. − and + change the pace, and keep changing it while held down; ‹ and › move one verse back or on; the mode pill switches between the two. After a few seconds the controls tuck themselves into a small button in the corner, and a tap brings them back.

Touching the page is up to you:

• Pause — scrolling by hand pauses it until you press play.
• Pause, then carry on — the default. It pauses while you scroll and carries on from wherever you leave the page a few seconds later, counting down where you can see it, with Stay here beside the number.
• Keep going — scroll ahead or back and it carries on the moment you let go.

And a tap on the moving page pauses it without opening the verse under your finger — turn that off in the settings if you would rather tap through.

It stops at the end of each surah. The listing runs on through the Qur'an, and a reader who opened Al-Kahf to read Al-Kahf should not find themselves scrolling Maryam. The controls say End of Al-Kahf and offer Carry on, which starts on the first verse of the next surah; turn the stop off to go straight through.

Nothing starts it moving but you. Starting a recitation pauses it and says so — two things moving one page would fight, and the recitation is following the voice. Leaving the app pauses it, and so does opening a verse from the listing; coming back finds it paused, one tap from carrying on. The screen is kept on only while the page is moving or about to, never while it waits for you.

The Qur'an and the hadith library keep separate settings, because they are read at different paces. Everything above — mode, pace, the hold, the touch rules, tap to pause, the countdown, easing in, keeping the screen on, tucking the controls away, stopping at a surah's end — is under Auto-scroll settings, with Reset to defaults at the bottom.

The scroll rail

A long list carries a rail at its edge. It appears as the page moves and fades a moment after it stops; take hold of its thumb and the whole Qur'an is a thumb's length away.

It spans the Qur'an, not the page. The rail runs from verse 1 to verse 6,236: drag it to An-Nas and the reading screen opens there.

It says where you would land before you land. Hold the rail and a bubble opens beside your finger with the verse's number, its surah and juz, the verse itself — read from the book, not from the page, so it works for a verse nowhere near the one you are reading — and how far it is from where you started: from 2:30 · 225 verses back.

Every surah is marked along the rail, and crossing one taps under your finger.

And a way back. After a jump, ↩ Back to 2:30 waits a few seconds at the corner; take it and it becomes ↪ Return to 27:35, so a look ahead costs nothing.

A tap on the rail goes to that point. A long press on it opens its settings, which are also under ⋮ → Scroll rail settings: whether it shows always, only while scrolling, or not at all; which side it sits on; whether the bubble carries the text; whether surahs are marked; whether boundaries tap; and whether a way back is offered. One set of settings serves every list in the app.

Surah/Para/Juz Changes

When you scroll to a new Surah, Para, or Juz boundary:

• A notice appears showing the surah, para or juz you have entered
• Your reading continues without interruption

Ways of Writing the Arabic

The Qur'an is one text, and there is more than one way to write it down. The spelling of the Uthmani mushaf is not the spelling of an IndoPak one; the Madinah Mushaf draws letters the way its printers draw them; and the sloped Nastaliq hand most of the subcontinent learned to read is a different shape from the upright Naskh of an Arab mushaf.

These are not translations and they are not editions. The words are identical, and so is their division into words and verses. What changes is the orthography — where a long vowel is written out and where it is a small mark — and the face the text was drawn for.

Choosing one

The script you are reading is named on the page, and tapping its name changes it — there is no setting to go and find.

• On the surah screen, it is the first chip under the title, beside the translation you are reading.
• On a verse, it is the chip directly under the Arabic itself.
• Either screen's ⋮ menu also carries Arabic script, if that is where you looked first.

The sheet lists every script, the ones already on your device first.

Tap one you have to switch to it; tap one you do not to download it. A script is a few megabytes and installs like any other pack.

Which one you start on. A new install opens on Uthmani. It is the orthography most printed mushafs use, and an Arabic reader opening the app for the first time should not have to find a setting before the page is legible.

If you already read here, your page has not changed. IndoPak (Nastaliq) is what the Arabic has always been drawn in, and an update leaves it exactly where it was — along with everything you set for it. Uthmani simply arrives beside it, installed and one tap away.

Where a script needs explaining, the row says so — "Written without vowel marks", "Modern spelling conventions rather than the Uthmani ones" — rather than leaving you to work out why two rows look almost the same.

Tajweed colouring

Madinah Mushaf with Tajweed marks the rules of recitation in the text itself, in the colours a printed coloured mushaf uses:

It is the same Madinah text either way; choosing the tajweed script only adds the colour. Everything else — translations, tafsir, recitation, search — behaves exactly as before.

Nothing else moves

Choosing a script changes how the Arabic is written and nothing else:

• Your translations, tafsir and transliterations stay exactly as they were. They are attached to the verse, not to the spelling of it.
• Search still finds what it always found. Searching is done against one spelling on purpose, so that a verse comes back once rather than eleven times.
• Bookmarks, notes and history keep pointing at the same verses.
• A recitation still follows the words, because every script divides the Qur'an into the same words in the same order.

Every script arrives in a font that can draw it

The eleven scripts are not simply eleven spellings — several of them are written with letterforms that only particular fonts contain. IndoPak in the upright hand is the clearest case.

So each script knows the font it needs, and switching to a script brings that font with it. IndoPak arrives in the one that can render it; the Qur'anic orthographies arrive in a face built for Qur'anic text. You change the script and it simply reads.

A Qur'anic face for the Qur'anic scripts

Uthmani, Imlaei, the Madinah Mushaf and DigitalKhatt are set in Amiri Quran, a typeface made for the Qur'an rather than a general-purpose Arabic one. The difference is immediate beside a printed mushaf: the letterforms are the ones a mushaf uses, and the marks sit where a mushaf puts them.

It draws every mark the Uthmani text uses, across all 6,236 verses. Amiri Quran is also in the font list, so it can be chosen by hand.

A Qur'anic face also reserves room for marks stacked three deep, so it is given a taller line than an ordinary Arabic face would need. Without that the tops would be cut off.

A size means a size

Point size measures the space a letter is drawn in, not the letter itself, and Arabic faces differ widely in how much of that space they use — enough that two faces set at the same number could differ by half again in how large they looked.

Every Arabic face the app ships has been measured, and the size you choose now means the same size on screen whichever face is drawing it. Switching script no longer feels like the app quietly resized the page.

The correction only ever makes text larger, never smaller, so nothing you were already reading has shrunk. It applies to a font you pick by hand as well as to the defaults, and in the hadith sections as well as the Qur'anic ones.

Each script keeps its own typography

A size that reads well in a sloped Nastaliq hand is not the size that reads well in an upright Naskh one, and even two upright scripts can want different room. So the Arabic settings in Text Customization — font, size, line height, colour — are kept per script.

Tune the page for Uthmani and your IndoPak settings are untouched. Switch back and everything you set is exactly where you left it.

When you open Customize Arabic you will see a row of your installed scripts above the preview. It starts on the script you are reading, so what you adjust is what you were looking at. Tap another to tune that one instead.

Whatever you had set for the Arabic before scripts existed stays attached to IndoPak (Nastaliq), which is the script it was set for.

Verse Preview Screen

When you tap on a specific verse, you open the preview screen — a detailed view for studying that verse.

Top Navigation

At the top of the preview:

• Go to Verse button — jump to a different location
• Favorite button — bookmark/save this verse to Collections
• Language selector — change which language/translation you're viewing
• Script icon — open the transliteration sheet to choose pronunciation packs
• More button — access additional options including text customization

Top Bar Navigation

A swipable tabs bar at the top shows:

• Swipable reference tabs allowing you to navigate through verses
• Tap directly to jump to a specific verse
• Swipe rapidly through the tabs to move through verses quickly
• Direct navigation to any verse

Verse Content

Below the navigation bar, the verse content is displayed:

• Quranic verse reference — shown at the top
• Verse text — the actual Quranic verse
• The script, and the recitation — two small chips under the Arabic: the name of the script you are reading, which opens the script sheet, and Recitation, which plays this verse (see Ways of Writing the Arabic and Recitation)
• Transliteration strip — pronunciation lines directly beneath the Arabic, inside the same card (see below)
• Word by word — break the verse into tappable words and study what each is made of (see below)
• Two tabs below: Translations and Tafsir

The Transliteration Strip

Because transliteration answers a different question from translation and tafsir, it does not live with them in the tabbed section below the verse. It sits inside the Arabic card, directly beneath the Arabic text, so your eye moves from the script to its sound without travelling anywhere.

It is not part of the reading stack — it is not reordered with translations and it has no primary. It is simply a set of pronunciation lines attached to the Arabic.

Where it is

2. Al-Baqarah                          2:255
─────────────────────────────────────────────
﴿ 2.255 ﴾  اَللّٰهُ لَاۤ اِلٰهَ اِلَّا هُوَ ۝
─────────────────────────────────────────────
TAJWEED STYLE · English                    ⋮
Allahu laaa ilaaha illaa Huwal Haiyul Qaiyoom

SYLLABIC · English                         ⋮
al-la-hu laaa i-laa-ha il-laa hu-wal haiyul
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Translate    Listen    Ask            Copy

Each pack you have chosen gets its own line, labelled with the pack name and its language, in the order you arranged them.

Choosing packs

Tap the script icon in the top bar — beside the translations icon — to open the transliteration sheet. It behaves like the translation sheet in every respect: search, filter by language, tap to select, tap an undownloaded pack to install it, long-press to delete.

You can select as many as you like. Two are useful together: one that reads naturally and one that breaks words into syllables.

If you don't want it

Deselect every pack and the strip disappears completely — the card returns to exactly what it was, with no empty space where it used to be. It stays reachable from the script icon in the top bar, so turning it off is never a one-way door.

Per-line menu

The ⋮ on each line offers:

• Copy — the line as plain text, markup stripped
• Customize — opens Text Style for transliteration in that language
• Choose transliterations — the same sheet as the top bar icon
• Hide this one — removes just that pack from the strip

Long-pressing the line copies it, the same gesture that copies the verse and the translations.

Word by Word

Beneath the verse and its transliteration sits a quiet control marked Word by word. Tap it and the verse breaks into its own words, each one a chip you can tap.

Word by word                                    Hide
┌──────────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ ٱلضَّآلِّينَ │ │ وَلَا  │ │ عَلَيْهِمْ    │ │ غَيْرِ   │
└──────────┘ └──────┘ └───────────┘ └────────┘

The verse shows where its structure is

Each chip carries a mark beneath it, and the header counts them:

Word by word                                    Hide
4 words · 4 open into a root
┌──────────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ ٱلرَّحِيمِ  │ │ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ │ │  ٱللَّهِ     │ │ بِسْمِ   │
│    ▁▁    │ │  ▁▁  │ │    ▁▁     │ │   ▁▁   │
└──────────┘ └──────┘ └───────────┘ └────────┘

Of the Qur'an's 77,432 words, 50,298 are built on a trilateral root; the others are particles, proper nouns and borrowed words. The marks show which is which before you tap.

What a word opens into

The dictionary form and the stem lead somewhere because Word Roots takes an ordinary word as well as a root, and tells you which root it belongs to — so following one teaches the relationship rather than dead-ending on a count.

Stepping through a verse

The sheet says which word you are on — Word 3 of 4 — and moves to the next or previous without closing. The arrows follow the text: later in the verse is leftward, matching the way the chips are laid out. The comparison a reader actually makes is between a word and the one beside it, and going back to the chips to make it loses your place.

The words are shown in the script you are reading, so this is the same text laid out differently rather than a second text to learn.

Two things are worth knowing:

• Some words have no root. Particles, proper nouns and borrowed words are not derived from a root; their sheet shows the dictionary form and stem where these are known.
• It stays open as you move between verses, so you can read a passage word by word without switching it on again at every ayah.

The sheet describes the structure of a word; for its meaning in context, the translations and tafsir are beside the verse.

Reading the Marked pack

The Tanzil Marked pack encodes how each letter is actually pronounced:

• Underlined letters are long vowels — hold them.
• Dimmed letters are elided or assimilated: the l of "al-" absorbed into a following sun letter, or a final case-vowel that you sound only when continuing into the next word and drop when you pause.
• Italic letters are emphatic consonants.

So alrrahmani tells you the l is written but not said, and the dimming is the point — those are the letters to soften, not stress.

The other packs carry no markup and render as plain text.

Translations Tab

When you tap the Translations tab:

• All available translations are listed as cards
• Each card shows:
  • Scholar name — who created this translation
  • Language name — which language this translation is in
  • Title — name of the translation
  • Content — the actual translation text

Organizing translations:

• Reorder translations — arrange them as you prefer
• Select multiple translations — stack them together
• Scroll through stacked translations — read each one below the others
• Reorder via handle — press the right handle and drag translations up or down
• Click handle for options:
  • Close this translation
  • Customize text for this specific language/translation
  • Move translation up, down, to top, or to bottom
  • Copy the translation

Select translations:

• Language dropdown — select specific languages
• Resource section — choose which translation sets to display
• Translations are stacked and listed below your selections

Tafsir Tab

When you tap the Tafsir tab:

• All available tafsir works are listed as cards
• Each card shows:
  • Scholar name — who wrote this tafsir
  • Language — which language this tafsir is in
  • Title — name of the tafsir work
  • Content — the interpretive commentary

Organizing tafsir:

• Same interface as translations — reorder, stack, select, copy
• Customize text for specific tafsir interpretations
• Select tafsir by language and resource to display

The Reading Stack, in Detail

Both the Translations and Tafsir tabs work as a stack rather than a single selection, and the behaviour is worth stating precisely because it governs how you read. (Transliteration is separate — it is a strip inside the Arabic card, not a member of this stack.)

Several renderings at once

You are not choosing one translation. You tick as many as you want, and each appears as its own card, one below another.

• Read two English translations side by side to compare how each translator handled a difficult phrase.
• Read Urdu and English together.
• Read four renderings of the same ayah at once if that is what a passage deserves.

Arranging them

Each card has a drag handle on the right. Press it and move the card up or down; the stack keeps that order.

The handle also opens a menu for that specific card:

• Close this rendering
• Customize text for this language or translation specifically
• Move up, down, to the top, or to the bottom
• Copy this rendering's text

The primary rendering

With several renderings on screen, one is the primary — the authoritative one that metadata and references are taken from, and that acts as the source text when one specific version is needed.

Where a rendering sits and which one is primary are separate choices. The order is about how you like to read; the primary is about which rendering is authoritative. The app marks the primary rather than forcing it to the top, so you can read a translation first with the Arabic beneath it while the Arabic remains primary.

The badge appears only when more than one rendering is on screen — with a single card the question does not arise.

Choosing none

An empty selection is a real preference, not an error. A reader who works only from their own AI translations can have no published rendering on screen at all; the primary is still carried invisibly underneath so the AI cards always have a source to translate from.

If a translation is removed

Deleting a downloaded translation does not silently rewrite your stack. Your choice is kept and reconciled against what can actually be shown, so re-downloading restores your arrangement rather than making you rebuild it. The same is true of a transliteration pack — delete it and its line drops from the strip, but your arrangement is kept, so re-downloading brings the line back in the same position.

Recitation — Hearing the Qur'an Read

The Quran section carries 126 recitations: complete recorded readings of the Qur'an by named reciters, from Mishari Al Afasy and Abdul Basit Abd us-Samad to Sudais and Shuraym, in the murattal and mujawwad styles.

This is a recording of a qari, not a synthesised voice. It is separate from Listen in the Intelligence row, which reads translations aloud in a machine voice — see Recitation and Listen are different things.

Starting a recitation

On any surah, the header carries Listen to this surah. Tap it and the recitation begins from the first verse.

        سُورَةُ الفَاتِحَة
           Al-Faatiha
           The Opening

  ▶ Listen to this surah    ⤓ Save offline

If you have not chosen a reciter yet, the first tap opens the picker rather than doing nothing.

On the Verse Preview screen there is Listen to this verse, which plays that verse alone.

Choosing a reciter

The picker lists every recitation, the ones you have installed first. Because many reciters appear more than once — three readings by one qari differing only in style, two differing only in how precisely they are timed — every row states the four things that actually differ:

  Mishari Al Afasy — Murattal                     ✓
  Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim · Complete surah
  [WORD BY WORD]  Highlights each word as it is recited

  Sudais Shuraym                                  ⤓
  Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim · Complete surah
  [AUDIO ONLY]  Plays without following the text

Searching and sorting the picker

With 126 recitations to choose from, you usually arrive knowing what you want. A search field sits at the top, and it matches every field the row shows — not only the name:

Beside it, sort: Suggested (installed first, then roughly by how widely known the reciter is), Name, or Timing detail — which puts the recitations the page can follow word by word at the top.

Four filters sit alongside: All, Word by word, Verse timings and Installed.

The three timing levels

This is the distinction worth understanding, because it changes what you see while listening.

Word-by-word highlighting works with every Arabic script, because they all divide the Qur'an into the same words in the same order. The page moves to the verse being recited only when that verse has left the screen and you are not scrolling, so reading ahead is never interrupted.

Installing a recitation

Tap any recitation that is not yet installed and it downloads. What arrives is the timing information, not the audio — a few hundred kilobytes describing where each verse and word falls. The recordings themselves are streamed as they play.

Four recitations are included with the app and need no download at all.

The player

While a recitation plays, a bar sits at the bottom of the reading screen:

  Mishari Al Afasy        ‹ Verse   ⏸   Verse ›   ✕
  Verse 3 · word 2
  ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬─────────────────────────
  0:29                                    261:36
  ‹ Verse   ⏸   Verse ›   [1.15×]   Repeat

• Reciter name — tap it to switch to a different recitation without leaving the page
• Position — which verse, and which word where the pack supports it
• ‹ Verse / Verse › — step back or forward one verse. On the verse screen this moves to that verse and recites it, continuing across surahs — the last verse of Al-Fatiha steps to the first of Al-Baqara
• Speed — tap it to open the speed control; see below
• ✕ — stop

Speed, at whatever precision you want

The speed pill shows the speed you are actually at. Tapping it opens a control covering anything between 0.5× and 2×, reachable three ways because the quickest route depends on what you are doing:

Presets remain as shortcuts. The pitch does not change at any speed — a recitation at 0.75× is slower, not lower.

Speed is remembered. It is how you listen, not part of what you were listening to.

Scrubbing a long recording

Dragging the position bar brings the page with it, however far you go. Al-Baqara's recording runs 4 hours 21 minutes; scrubbing to the ninety-third minute lands on verse 125, and the page walks there and marks the word being said.

The recitation plays while you are reading — follow the voice down the page, repeat a verse, change reciter. Swiping between verses while it plays carries the recitation with you.

Repeat — built for memorisation

Repeat is richer than a music player's because memorising is what people actually use it for.

Saving a surah to listen offline

Beside Listen to this surah is Save offline. Tap it and that surah's audio is downloaded to your device; from then on it plays with no connection at all — on a plane, on the underground, or with mobile data switched off.

  ⤓ Save offline     →     ⟳ 118 of 286     →     ✓ Saved · 84 MB

The button is the same control throughout: it shows progress while downloading, the size once saved, and tapping it again gives the storage back. A download that stopped part-way says Resume, and picks up from where it reached rather than starting over.

From the reciter picker you can also Save all — the complete Qur'an in one reciter's voice. That is usually more than a gigabyte, so the app says so before it starts, and you can stop it at any point and keep the surahs that finished.

The picker shows what each reciter holds on your device and the total across all of them, so storage never accumulates somewhere you cannot see:

  Mishari Al Afasy — Murattal                     ✓
  Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim · Complete surah
  [WORD BY WORD]  Highlights each word as it is recited
  ⤓ 12 surahs saved · 340 MB              [ Remove ]

  340 MB of recitation audio saved on this device

Saved recitations stay inside the app, stored securely. They are not written to your Music folder, your Downloads, or anywhere a file manager can reach, uninstalling the app removes them, and they can also be managed from Downloads. The recordings are shared by their reciters for listening, and a saved surah is kept for exactly that: listening within the app.

Recitation and Listen are different things

Both make sound, and they are not interchangeable.

Only one of them can be heard at a time. Starting a recitation stops a spoken reading, and starting a spoken reading stops the recitation — the app never lets two voices read the same verse at once.

A note on the recordings

The recitations are published by the reciters and archives who host them, and Al Islam streams them from those sources. A surah you save plays from your device, with no connection.

Copying and Citing a Verse

Long-press any part of a verse — the Arabic, a transliteration, a translation or a tafsir — or choose Copy as… on the reading screen, and the copy sheet opens holding everything on screen for that verse, starting on the part you pressed. It shows the text as it will be copied, and every choice changes it in front of you.

The Arabic choices apply only to the Arabic, so a translation's own marks are never touched. Edit lets you change the text before copying; Copy places it on the clipboard, and Share sends it to another app. Quick copy remains one tap.

Intelligence — Translate, Listen and Ask on Every Ayah

Every ayah in the app carries the Intelligence row: Translate · Listen · Ask. These require Premium and run on your own AI provider account under your own key — Al Islam never resells model access, and your keys go only to the providers they belong to — never to us.

The complete guide is in the Intelligence documentation. What follows is how it behaves specifically in the Quran.

Translate

One tap renders the ayah into any language you choose.

• The result appears as a scholar-style card in your translation stack, laid out exactly like a published translation and using the same per-language typography from Text Customization. It sits alongside the published translations rather than in a separate panel, because it is a translation and should read like one.
• Every translation is saved to your Library, attached to the ayah it came from — so the same verse is never paid for twice.
• Duplicates are recognised. Asking again for the same ayah with the same model returns what you already have.
• Asking again costs nothing — a saved translation is served from your device.
• If the underlying text is updated, the saved translation is marked out of date, with one tap to refresh.
• Pin the ones that matter so they stay at the top of your Library.
• Copy or insert — take the text out, or drop it straight into a note.

Translation lanes turn a good combination into a single tap. Save one — Urdu through one service, English through another — and choose it from the reading itself, without opening the routing table. Your last choice is remembered.

Listen

The ayah read aloud in a natural voice — the Arabic, or any translation shown beneath it.

• Voice and speed are yours, adjustable from the player and remembered between visits.
• Speech can have its own provider, separate from what serves translation — useful when one service has the voice you like and another has the renderings you trust.
• Playback continues when you leave the screen, with the player following you through the app.

Note this is a spoken reading of the text, not a recitation by a qari. It is intended for translations and for understanding, not as a substitute for tajwid. For a recorded reciter, see Recitation — that is included with the app and needs no AI provider.

Ask

A conversation about the ayah in front of you, appearing inside the screen you are already reading — nothing to copy out, nothing to navigate away to.

• Threads stream in as they are written.
• Follow-up questions keep their memory, so a conversation builds rather than restarting.
• Answers can be read aloud, copied, or inserted into a note.
• Each ayah keeps its own thread, so moving between verses does not mix them up.

The instructions behind Ask are written specifically for Islamic source material: stay faithful to the text, invent no rulings and no attributions, preserve honorifics, and state uncertainty plainly rather than smoothing it over.

The workspace

For longer study, the same three abilities open into a fuller surface with Translate, Ask and Listen side by side as independent sections.

Because an ayah usually has several versions on screen — the Arabic and its translations — each section chooses its own source. Ask about the Arabic while listening to the Urdu, or translate a scholar's English into a fourth language while the original stays in view.

AI translation slots

A language can be pinned to stay — a slot that lives in your translation stack permanently.

Set a slot to Turkish and every ayah you open arrives with Turkish already beneath it, filling in as you move from verse to verse rather than waiting to be asked each time.

• More than one at a time — Turkish and Malay together, each its own card.
• Automatic or manual — a slot either translates as soon as you open an ayah, or waits behind a Translate button.
• Chainable — a slot can read another rendering's output rather than the Arabic. Produce Turkish from a scholar's English rather than from the original, if that is what you want.
• They work in tafsir too, not only translations.
• They report themselves. A slot never silently disappears; if the connection behind it is deleted, disabled, unrouted, or its source rendering is removed, the card says which.

The distinct states a slot can report — no route, connection missing, connection disabled, source missing, waiting for the slot it is chained to — each need a different fix, which is why they are named separately rather than collapsed into a single error.

Transliteration is not a translation source for slots or lanes. A slot renders meaning into a language; a transliteration carries none. Point slots at the ayah itself or at a published translation.

Your own commands

Beyond translating and asking, you can write your own instructions and run them over any ayah:

Explain the context of revelation for this verse. Give me three lessons and one action for today. List the fiqh points as a numbered list.

Five are included to begin with — Summarize, Key lessons, Explain simply, Deep explanation and Remaster — and each is yours to rewrite or delete. Commands and lanes are managed in the Actions studio.

Please verify

AI output can be fluent, confident and entirely fabricated, including invented rulings and invented attributions. For the Quran specifically, an AI rendering is useful for a language no published translation covers, or for a quick sense of a passage — but the app ships 122 published translations by named scholars precisely because those are the ones to rely on.

AI output is never a religious authority. Verify anything consequential against the published translations and tafsir in the app, or with a qualified scholar. See the limits section.

Navigation Between Verses

From the preview screen:

• Swipe left — move to the next verse
• Swipe right — move to the previous verse
• Swipe rapidly through the top tab bar to move quickly through verses
• Go to Verse button — jump to a specific verse using the same dialog

References & Metadata

Below the verse content and translation/tafsir sections, detailed reference cards display:

Surah References

• Surah name — name in English and Arabic
• Surah number — position in the Quran (1–114)
• Ayah number — which verse this is
• Ayah position within Surah — e.g., "5 out of 286"
• Progress bar and percentage — showing progress through the surah
• Ruku number — which ruku this verse belongs to
• Ruku position — e.g., "3 out of 40 rukus"
• Progress bar and percentage — showing progress through rukus

Global Quran Position

• Global position in Quran — which verse number out of 6,236
• Progress bar and percentage — overall progress through the Quran
• Surah position — which surah out of 114
• Progress bar and percentage — showing how many surahs you've completed

Para References

• Para name — the para's transliterated name
• Para number — which para (1–30)
• Para Arabic name
• Total verses in para
• Total rukus in para

Origin & Revelation Information

• Revelation order — when this surah was revealed (chronologically)
• Revelation type — Makki (Meccan) or Madani (Medinan)
• Total rukus in the surah
• Total ayahs in the surah
• Juz span — which juzs this surah spans across
• Para span — which paras this surah spans across
• Start date — when revelation began (for chronological surahs)
• Other references — additional metadata

Word Roots

Almost every word in the Qur'an grows from a root of three letters, and the same root grows into dozens of words across the text. ر ح م becomes الرَّحْمٰن, الرَّحِيم and رَحْمَة; ق و ل accounts for 1,722 words in 104 different forms. Seeing that is one of the most direct ways into how the Qur'an is put together.

Open it from the reading screen's ⋮ menu, under Word roots, or by tapping the root in any word's sheet.

Finding a root

The screen opens on the roots most of the Qur'an is built from, so it makes sense before you have typed anything.

You can type a root, in Arabic or in the Latin notation scholars use:

• قول or ق و ل — with or without the spaces
• qwl — and case does not have to be right. rHm and rhm both find ر ح م, and the spelling you asked for is listed first

Or you can type an ordinary word, which is what most readers will do:

• رحمن finds ر ح م — and the row says from رَّحْمَٰن, so you can see the connection rather than wonder where the root came from
• الحمد finds ح م د; the definite article does not have to come off first
• کتاب finds ك ت ب

On the keyboard you actually have. Typing Arabic on an Urdu keyboard produces ک and ی and ہ rather than ك and ي and ه, and those are genuinely different letters. The search treats them as the same, along with أ إ آ for ا, ة for ه, ى for ي, and any harakat you happen to type. You should not have to know which keyboard the Qur'an was typed on.

What a root shows

Opening a root gives you a concordance of it:

                    ر ح م
                     rHm

        339 words          47 forms
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Forms
The distinct words this root becomes, most frequent first.

 ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ 57   ٱلرَّحِيمِ 34   رَحْمَةً 21   رَحِيمًا 12   …
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Where it occurs
Tap a line to open the verse.

 1:1     ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ
 1:1     ٱلرَّحِيمِ
 1:3     ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ
 …

• Forms are the distinct words the root actually becomes in the text, commonest first, written in the script you read.
• Where it occurs is every place in the Qur'an, in order. Tap any line and the verse opens.

A root's meanings are best read in context: every occurrence opens its verse, with your translations and tafsir beside it.

Why this is not in Search

Search finds text — a phrase, in a translation or in the Arabic. Word Roots answers a different question: not "where does this sentence appear" but "what else is built from this". The root finds all 339 words in all 47 forms, including the ones that share no visible letters with what you typed.

Text Customization for Transliteration

Transliteration is its own section in Text Style, listed as Ayah Transliteration under the Quran domain. Font, size, line height, letter spacing and colour are set per language, exactly as for translations.

It ships one step smaller than the Arabic above it, because a pronunciation aid should read as support for the verse rather than as a second headline. Raise it if you are reciting from it directly.

The language list is scoped to the languages transliteration packs actually ship in, rather than every language a translation exists in. See Text Customization.

Transliteration in Search

Transliterations are searchable like any other resource, so you can search the Quran by how it sounds rather than how it is spelled in Arabic or what it means — type alhamdu or rabbil aalameen and the verse comes back.

Transliteration is its own source in Search, beside Quran, Tafsir and Hadith. Turn it on in the sources row, and filter it by language or by pack exactly as you would translations. Surah and Juz scoping work too.

Results open the verse in the Verse Preview screen, the same destination a translation result goes to — a transliteration hit is still just a verse.

A few details worth knowing:

• Downloaded packs are searched, and a new one becomes searchable as soon as its download completes.
• The Tanzil Marked pack is searched and shown without its pronunciation marks, so searching for allahi finds it.

How Resources Are Labelled

A translation, a tafsir and a transliteration are all "resources", and every one states four things, so two packs are never confused.

Roman Urdu is a good example. It is Urdu — the words, the meaning and the translator are Urdu — written in the Latin alphabet, so it is listed under Urdu with Latin as its script.

What this means for you

• Roman Urdu now appears under Urdu, with Latin as its script — where you would look for it.
• Devanagari Urdu appears under Hindi, in the script a Hindi reader actually reads.
• Every pack says where it came from. A pack re-spelled from an existing translation carries a badge saying so, and names the translation it was made from. The words are still the translator's; only the letters changed.
• Several renderings of one translator are told apart at a glance by their script.

Generated is not machine-translated

The distinction matters and the app keeps it.

• A generated pack re-spells a human translation into another script. No new meaning is introduced — the wording is the translator's, letter for letter in a different alphabet.
• A machine-translated pack would produce new wording, and the meaning would be the model's.

Nothing in the library is machine-translated. Every meaning you read was produced by a named person; where a pack was generated, it says so and points at the human translation underneath it.

Narrations That Quote This Verse

Open a verse and, alongside its translations and tafsir, the app shows the narrations in your library that quote it.

Drawn as a spread, not a count. The question a verse raises is proportional — is this quoted all over the library, or in one collection many times? — so the card draws one bar with a segment per collection, and says the shape in words: "five narrations, all in one collection" rather than two separate numbers left for you to relate.

The Six Books are drawn solid, the rest hollow. A verse carried across four of the six is a different kind of evidence from one quoted four times in a single late compilation, and that difference should survive a glance.

Each collection then lists its narrations by number, and opens them in the Hadith Library.

Two kinds are shown and the card says which:

The second is the app's identification rather than the compiler's, and it is labelled so rather than presented as though the book had said it.

Verses are quoted very unevenly — a few are cited across dozens of collections and most are not quoted in the hadith literature at all. An empty result is the ordinary answer and not a gap in your library.

This works in both directions: a narration shows the verses it quotes, and a verse shows the narrations quoting it.

Best Practices

1. Use Go to Verse — fastest way to navigate to specific verses
2. Customize per-language — set up typography for Arabic, each translation, and transliteration separately
3. Stack translations — compare multiple translations of the same verse
4. Use tafsir systematically — read classical and modern interpretations together
5. Bookmark important verses — save to Collections for later reference
6. Use search — find verses by reference, content, or how they sound
7. Toggle translation — read Arabic alone when possible for deeper engagement
8. Explore different translations — different translators emphasize different aspects
9. Pair transliteration packs — one that reads naturally and one broken into syllables, together, when you are learning to recite
10. Pick a word-by-word recitation for memorising — seeing each word light up as it is said is the point of the badge
11. Save the surah before you travel — a saved surah plays with the radio off and costs no data
12. Use Repeat verse while learning — seven times through one ayah, then move on
13. Try the script you learned to read in — new installations open on Uthmani, and IndoPak, the Madinah Mushaf and the others are a tap away
14. Turn on the tajweed script while you are learning to recite — the rules are marked in the letters themselves, where you are already looking
15. Follow a word to its root — tap a word, then tap its root, and read every other place the Qur'an builds from it

Common Questions

"Downloading a translation"

Downloads need an internet connection and some free storage space. A download can be started again from the same screen at any time.

"What can I type in Go to Verse?"

Answer:

• Use format Surah:Ayah (e.g., 2:255)
• Or use global ID (1–6,236)
• Check that numbers are valid

"Verse numbering"

Answer:

• Al Islam uses the standard Islamic numbering system
• Different translations may use slightly different numbering
• Check the metadata for the exact position

"Showing the transliteration strip"

Answer:

• Tap the script icon in the top bar of the Verse Preview screen and choose one
• If the sheet is empty, no pack has finished downloading yet
• The strip appears on the Verse Preview screen

"Removing a transliteration pack"

Answer:

• Its line is dropped from the strip automatically, but your arrangement is kept
• Re-downloading it brings the line back in the same position

"Faded letters in a transliteration"

Answer: That is the Tanzil Marked pack showing letters that are written but not pronounced.

• Read them as the cue intends — soften, do not stress
• Switch to the plain Tanzil pack if you would rather read it without the cues

"Searching by transliteration"

Answer:

• Check that the Transliteration source is switched on in the search filters
• Confirm you have at least one pack downloaded — search covers the packs on your device
• Reindex data in the search menu rebuilds search at any time

"Where references and metadata come from"

Answer: Metadata comes from whichever rendering is set as primary, which is a separate choice from stack order.

Fix:

• Set the rendering you consider authoritative as the primary
• The primary is badged whenever more than one rendering is on screen
• See The Reading Stack

"Removing a translation from your device"

Answer: Your selection is kept when a downloaded pack is removed.

• Re-download it and your arrangement returns exactly as it was

"AI translation slot messages"

Answer: A slot says exactly what it needs:

• No route — assign a model for translation in the Intelligence routing table
• Connection missing — the connection it named was deleted; point the slot elsewhere
• Connection disabled — re-enable it from the Intelligence hub
• Source missing — the rendering it reads from left your stack; re-add it
• Waiting for source — it is chained to a slot that has not produced text yet
• Also check the slot is set to automatic rather than manual
• See the Intelligence documentation

"Checking an AI translation"

Answer: Quality varies between providers and models, and classical Arabic is demanding.

• Compare against the published translations in the app — that is what they are there for
• Route translation to a stronger model, or to a dedicated translation service
• Never rely on an AI rendering for anything consequential; verify with a qualified scholar

"Which recitations highlight each word"

Answer:

• Check the badge on the recitation — only Word by word highlights individual words
• Verse timings follows the verse but not the words; Audio only highlights nothing
• Filter the picker by Word by word to see just the recitations that support it

"Changing script keeps your translations"

Answer: A script changes only how the Arabic is written; translations are attached to the verse, not to the spelling.

• Check the translation toggle at the top of the reading screen is still on
• If a translation really is missing, it was removed rather than hidden — reinstall it from Change translations

"Text size after switching script"

Answer: Scripts sit differently on a line and need different room, so the app keeps separate settings for each rather than forcing one of them to read badly. A script you have never opened before is showing you its defaults, not your settings.

Fix:

• Open Customize Arabic and set the size you want. It applies to the script you are reading and leaves the others alone
• Switching back restores the settings you already had

"Choosing a font for a script by hand"

Answer: Each script comes with a font that draws it. If you choose a different font yourself, pick one that includes that script's letters:

• Open Customize Arabic — the script you are reading is selected in the row at the top
• Tap Font and choose one that renders it. Al Qalam Quran covers the IndoPak scripts; Uthmanic covers Uthmani, Imlaei and the Madinah Mushaf
• Or tap Reset to put that script back to the font it shipped with

"Showing tajweed colours"

Answer: The Madinah Mushaf with Tajweed script carries the colours.

• Open ⋮ → Arabic script and choose Madinah Mushaf with Tajweed
• If it is not on your device yet, tap it to download it first

"Words without a root"

Answer: Particles, proper nouns and borrowed words are not derived from a root. Their sheet shows the dictionary form and stem where these are known.

"Finding a root"

Answer:

• Try the plain word instead of the root — رحمن rather than ر ح م. The root is found through the word
• Qur'anic spelling sometimes differs from modern spelling: صَلَوٰة is written with a wāw, so صلاة will not reach it. Open the word from a verse and tap its root instead
• Roots belong to Arabic words, so search with the Arabic spelling

"Playing a single verse"

Answer:

• A single verse plays from a recitation recorded Verse by verse
• Choose a recitation marked Verse by verse from the picker on that screen

"Which saved recitation plays offline"

Answer: Saved audio belongs to the recitation it was saved from.

• Check you are listening with the same reciter you saved — the picker shows how many surahs each one holds
• A surah shown as Resume rather than Saved is only partly downloaded; tap it to finish

Related

• Reminders — a reminder can open a surah, or a single verse
• Downloads — the translations, tafsir and recitations saved on your device
• Intelligence — the full guide to Translate, Listen, Ask, slots and lanes
• Premium — what unlocks the Intelligence features described here. Recitation is not among them; it is included with the app
• Hadith Library — the same reading stack and Intelligence layer, applied to narrations
• Notes — Qalam — validated Quran references, and inserting translations into your writing
• Collections — where bookmarked ayat go
• Search — finding ayat across translations, tafsir and transliteration
• Text Customization — per-language typography for every rendering in your stack, including Ayah Transliteration
• History — what you have read