Read the Qur'an, surah by surah

Seven verses forming a single address to God: praise, then a request to be shown a straight path, described by who walks it and who does not. AALAMIN Editor

Two hundred and eighty-six verses, the longest surah by both verse and word count. AALAMIN Editor

Two hundred verses, much of them addressed to or about the people of the Book — carrying the accounts of Mary and of Jesus, and taking its name from the family of Imran, named at verses 33 and 35. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and seventy-six verses, most of them law addressed to a community: orphans and their property, marriage, and how the estate of someone who has died is divided — taking its name from the women who are its recurring subject, and closing on a ruling about what a man's sister receives if he dies childless. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and twenty verses of covenant and law: what may be eaten, how oaths bind, the rules of pilgrimage, and what a community owes to the agreements it has entered — taking its name from the table of food the disciples ask Jesus to bring down. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and sixty-five verses arguing for one God against the practices of Mecca: animals dedicated to idols, prohibitions nobody was given, and Abraham watching a star, a moon and a sun each set and rejecting them in turn — taking its name from the cattle set aside in those dedications. AALAMIN Editor

Two hundred and six verses of prophets in sequence — Noah, Hud, Salih, Lot, Shu'ayb, and Moses at length — each sent to a people who refuse him, framed by the account of Adam and Iblis that follows the disconnected letters it opens with. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-five verses on Badr and what followed it: how spoils are divided, how a fighting force should conduct itself, and how treaties are kept and ended — taking its name from the question that opens it, put to the Prophet about the spoils, and answered before the fighting itself is described. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and twenty-nine verses opening with a declaration of immunity toward idolaters with whom a treaty had been made, and four months given to travel freely. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and nine verses on revelation, resurrection, and the charge that this was invented — answered by a challenge to produce a chapter like it. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and twenty-three verses of prophets and the peoples who refused them, told at greater length than almost anywhere else: Noah and the son who will not board, Hud, Salih, Abraham's visitors, Lot, Shu'ayb, Moses. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and eleven verses given almost entirely to one story, the story of Joseph, who is named from verse 4 onward and whom the surah is named after. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-three verses reading signs off the ordinary world — iron in the earth, water running in channels of different sizes, the same rain falling on different soils — set against demands for a miracle. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-two verses on messengers sent speaking the language of their own people, and what those peoples answered. AALAMIN Editor

Ninety-nine verses: Iblis refusing to bow and granted a reprieve until an appointed day, Abraham's guests, and Lot's people at dawn. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and twenty-eight verses that read as an inventory of what has been given: cattle, rain, the sea, the stars for navigation, night and day, and the bee — instructed to take from every fruit and to bring out a drink of varying colours in which there is healing. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and eleven verses: It opens with a journey by night between two places of prayer, and closes with an instruction to give praise. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and ten verses holding a run of narratives: young men who take refuge in the cave this surah is named for, a man with two gardens, Moses travelling with a servant of God, and a traveller called only by a name none of the four renderings translates — closing with the sea running out before the words of the Lord would, and an instruction to say that the speaker is only a mortal like those he addresses. AALAMIN Editor

Ninety-eight verses, a sequence of accounts of named figures — among them Zachariah and John, Mary and Jesus, Abraham, Moses and Aaron — taking its name from Mary, named at verse 16. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and thirty-five verses given over to Moses, from the fire seen at a distance on the road to everything that follows: the staff, the hand, Pharaoh, the magicians who prostrate and will not recant, the sea, and the calf made in his absence. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and twelve verses of prophets in quick succession, most given only a few: Abraham among the broken idols answering that the largest one did it, Job calling out, the man of the fish crying out in the darkness, Zachariah, the woman who guarded her chastity, David and Solomon judging a field of crops. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-eight verses on the rites of pilgrimage and the sanctuary itself — the call that brings people on foot and on lean camels from every distant pass — set among warnings about the Hour. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and eighteen verses that open by naming what makes believers successful and close on the moment a man asks to be sent back and is refused. AALAMIN Editor

Sixty-four verses, taking its name from the verse at 35 that likens God's light to a lamp in a niche, lit from an olive tree neither of the east nor of the west. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-seven verses quoting the objections put to the Prophet — that he eats food and walks in markets, that an angel was not sent with him, that this was not revealed all at once — and answering each. AALAMIN Editor

Two hundred and twenty-seven verses, seven messengers in sequence — Moses, Abraham, Noah, Hud, Salih, Lot, Shu'ayb — each account closing on the same two-verse refrain, so the pattern is itself the argument. AALAMIN Editor

Ninety-three verses, most of them Solomon: the language of birds, the hoopoe returning with news of a queen who worships the sun, the throne brought before the eye can blink, and the floor of glass she mistakes for water. AALAMIN Editor

Eighty-eight verses on Moses before he is a prophet: the basket on the river, the household that raises him, the man he strikes and kills, the flight to Madyan, the years of work for a bride price, and the fire on the mountain on the road back. AALAMIN Editor

Sixty-nine verses asking whether people are left to say they believe without being tested. AALAMIN Editor

Sixty verses that open with disconnected letters and then on a defeat — the Romans beaten at the edge of the known world, and a statement that within a few years they will win. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-four verses built around a father's advice to his son, quoted directly: do not associate anything with God, be grateful, be moderate in your walk, lower your voice — the harshest of voices is the braying of a donkey. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty verses on the making of things and the answering for them: the heavens and the earth in six days, man from clay and then from a despised fluid, and the angel of death. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-three verses on the siege of Medina and the confederates who withdrew, and then on the household: the marriage that ended adoption as a way of making kinship, the instruction to call adopted sons by their fathers' names, and the terms on which the Prophet's wives were to be addressed. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-four verses: Solomon's death, unnoticed by the jinn working under him until a creature of the earth eats through his staff. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-five verses opening with praise to the maker of the heavens and the earth - the word this surah is named for - who appoints the angels as messengers with wings. AALAMIN Editor

Eighty-three verses turning on things offered as evidence — a city that denied the messengers sent to it, the dead earth revived, the night stripped from the day, the sun running its course — and closing on bones long rotted and the question of who revives them. AALAMIN Editor

One hundred and eighty-two verses: ranks of angels, and then prophets one after another, each closing on peace be upon him — Noah, Abraham, Moses and Aaron, Elias, Lot, Jonah. AALAMIN Editor

Eighty-eight verses: David judged by two litigants who climb the wall of his chamber, Solomon distracted by horses until the sun sets, Job told to strike the ground with his foot for water. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-five verses arguing that religion belongs to God alone, against the claim that intermediaries bring people nearer. AALAMIN Editor

Eighty-five verses centred on a man in Pharaoh's own family who has kept his faith hidden, arguing for Moses' life in front of the court and choosing at the end to entrust his affair to God. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-four verses: a book whose verses are set out in detail, offered to people who say their hearts are covered and there is a barrier between. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-three verses describing revelation as it arrives — behind a veil, or by a messenger, or as inspiration — and religion as one thing established for Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus alike. AALAMIN Editor

Eighty-nine verses answering the objection that a prophet ought to have come with wealth, or from one of the two great towns. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-nine verses on a night in which every wise matter is made distinct, and a smoke that will cover people and be called a painful punishment. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-seven verses ending with every nation kneeling, called to its own record, and told that this book of Ours speaks about you in truth — because We were having transcribed what you were doing. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-five verses: Jinn who arrive while the Qur'an is being recited, listen, and go back to their people as warners; and a man who tells his parents he cannot believe in being brought out of the earth. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-eight verses on fighting and the conduct of it: the binding of captives, the ransom or release afterwards, and the warning that turning away invites replacement by another people. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-nine verses opening on a victory given, the word this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Eighteen verses about conduct between people. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-five verses arguing resurrection from the ordinary: rain, gardens, tall palms with clustered fruit, a dead land revived. AALAMIN Editor

Sixty verses: Winds, clouds, ships and angels apportioning, sworn by in sequence before the argument begins. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-nine verses opening on the Mount, an inscribed book on unrolled parchment, the frequented house, the raised roof and the swollen sea — and then a series of questions with no answer offered, asking whether they were created from nothing, or created themselves, or own the treasuries of their Lord. AALAMIN Editor

Sixty-two verses opening with an oath by the star, and saying that the speaker's companion neither errs nor speaks out of his own desire. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-five verses: The moon split, and the argument that this is continuing magic. AALAMIN Editor

Seventy-eight verses built on one returning question — which of the Lord's bounties will you deny — standing in exactly thirty-one of them, and moving through made things: the sun and the moon, the two seas that meet, the two gardens, before closing by blessing the name of the Lord. AALAMIN Editor

Ninety-six verses on a day that must come, when people are sorted into three kinds: those of the right hand, those of the left, and the foremost, who are brought near. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-nine verses: Iron sent down, in which there is great might and benefits for people, named beside the scales and the book as things given so that people might uphold justice. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-two verses opening with God having heard a woman who argued with the Prophet about her husband and complained to God - the dispute this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-four verses on the expulsion of a tribe from Medina, their houses ruined by their own hands, and the division of what was left so that it would not circulate only among the rich. AALAMIN Editor

Thirteen verses on migrating women arriving from Mecca and being examined, on families divided by belief, and on the instruction that God does not forbid kindness and justice toward those who did not fight you over religion or drive you out. AALAMIN Editor

Fourteen verses that put a question to believers directly, in the second of them: why do you say what you do not do. AALAMIN Editor

Eleven verses on Friday: leave trade when the call is made, and return to it afterwards. AALAMIN Editor

Eleven verses on the people who say the right words and swear to them, and who are described standing there like propped-up timber. AALAMIN Editor

Eighteen verses named for a day given a commercial word: the day of mutual loss and gain, when what each has actually accumulated becomes visible. AALAMIN Editor

Twelve verses on divorce done in a way that can still be undone: count the waiting period, do not turn women out of their houses, do not let them leave, because something may happen afterwards that nobody expected. AALAMIN Editor

Twelve verses treating openly, in revelation, an oath made in the Prophet's household and a secret told and passed on. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty verses turning to made things as evidence: death and life as a test, seven heavens without flaw, birds held up in the air. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-two verses opening on the pen and what they inscribe, sworn by in answer to the charge of madness. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-two verses: The inevitable — a word repeated three times before anything is said about it. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-four verses answering a questioner who asks for the punishment to be brought on, with a day whose measure is fifty thousand years, and with a description of man as anxious — distressed when evil touches him and withholding when good does — from which those who pray are excepted. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-eight verses, almost entirely one man's report of his own work: calling by night and by day, in private and in public, and the sound of people putting their fingers in their ears and pulling their garments over themselves. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-eight verses opening with a company of jinn who listened to a recitation and reported what they had heard - the hearers this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty verses addressed to a man wrapped in his cloak and told to stand at night, half of it or a little less or a little more, and to recite in measured tone. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty-six verses: the other cloak — arise and warn, magnify your Lord, purify your garments. AALAMIN Editor

Forty verses swearing by the day of resurrection and by the self-reproaching soul, and answering the man who asks when it will be with a description of the eye dazzled and the moon eclipsed. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-one verses on man, when he was not a thing worth mentioning, and then made hearing and seeing and shown the way. AALAMIN Editor

Fifty verses: Winds sent forth, scattering, separating and delivering — and then ten passages, each ending with the same sentence: woe that day to the deniers. AALAMIN Editor

Forty verses opening on a question — what it is they are asking one another about — and answering with the announcement this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-six verses sworn by those who drag out and those who release, before the question of what happens after the bones are decayed. AALAMIN Editor

Forty-two verses opening on a rebuke in the third person before it becomes the second: he frowned and turned away, because the blind man came to him. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-nine verses: the sun wound round, the stars fallen, the mountains moved, the seas set alight — and, placed among those without change of tone, the infant girl buried alive asked for what sin she was killed. AALAMIN Editor

Nineteen verses on the sky cleft, the stars scattered, the graves overturned, and a soul knowing what it sent ahead and what it left behind. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty-six verses opening on those who take full measure when they receive and give less when they give; the whole diagnosis is a thumb on a scale. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-five verses on the sky splitting and the earth flattened and emptying itself of what is in it, both described as listening to their Lord and doing what is right for them to do. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-two verses containing the people of the ditch, who sat by a fire they had made and watched what they were doing to the believers — named and left there, without the story that would explain them. AALAMIN Editor

Seventeen verses on the night-comer, the piercing star, and the statement that there is no soul without a keeper over it. AALAMIN Editor

Nineteen verses: praise the name of your Lord the Most High, who created and proportioned, and destined and guided. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-six verses on two faces on the same day: one humbled and labouring and drinking from a boiling spring, one pleased with its effort in a lofty garden where no ill speech is heard. AALAMIN Editor

Thirty verses sworn by dawn, ten nights, the even and the odd — and then three peoples: Iram of the pillars, Thamud who carved the rocks in the valley, and Pharaoh of the stakes. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty verses sworn by the city, and by a father and what he begot, and then the claim that man was created in hardship. AALAMIN Editor

Fifteen verses and fifty-four words: eleven oaths in a row — sun, moon, day, night, sky, earth, and the soul and how it was proportioned — before a single sentence about success and failure. AALAMIN Editor

Twenty-one verses on night and day and the making of male and female, and then two efforts described in parallel: the one who gives and fears God and believes in the best, whose way is eased toward ease, and the one who withholds and considers himself self-sufficient, whose way is eased toward hardship. AALAMIN Editor

Eleven verses and forty words: the morning brightness and the night when it is still, and then the sentence that gives the surah its occasion — your Lord has not taken leave of you, nor has He detested you. AALAMIN Editor

Eight verses and twenty-seven words: did We not expand your breast for you, and remove the burden that weighed on your back. AALAMIN Editor

Eight verses and thirty-four words: the fig and the olive, Mount Sinai and this secure city, sworn by before the statement that man was created in the best of moulds and then returned to the lowest of the low — with an exception for those who believe and do righteous deeds. AALAMIN Editor

Nineteen verses opening with an instruction to read or recite, qualified by whose name it is to be done in, and taking its name from what verse 2 says man was made of. AALAMIN Editor

Five verses, all of them about one night, the night this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Eight verses turning on a clear evidence that came - the evidence this surah is named for - after which those who had been given the Book divided among themselves. AALAMIN Editor

Eight verses on the day the earth is shaken and tells what it knows, the quaking this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Eleven verses opening with oaths by charging horses - the chargers this surah is named for - which strike sparks, raid at dawn and cleave through a host. AALAMIN Editor

Eleven verses on a striking day this surah is named after, when people are like scattered moths and the mountains like carded wool. AALAMIN Editor

Eight verses on a rivalry over increase that occupies people until they reach the graves - the competition this surah is named for. AALAMIN Editor

Three verses and fourteen words, the second fewest words of any surah in this canon: an oath, then that man is in loss, except those who believe, do right, and urge truth and patience on one another. AALAMIN Editor

Nine verses against one figure: a slanderer who gathers wealth and counts it and thinks it will make him last, and the fire that closes over him in outstretched columns. AALAMIN Editor

Five verses recalling what was done to the owners of the elephant, which this surah is named for: a plan brought to nothing, birds, stones of baked clay, and an end like stubble eaten down. AALAMIN Editor

Four verses about one people, named after them, and their caravans of winter and summer: they are told to worship the Lord of this house, who fed them against hunger and made them safe from fear. AALAMIN Editor

Seven verses describing one who pushes the orphan away and does not urge the feeding of the poor. AALAMIN Editor

Three verses and ten words, the fewest words of any surah in this canon. AALAMIN Editor

Six verses framed as an instruction beginning 'Say'. AALAMIN Editor

Three verses: when God's help and the victory come and people enter the religion in numbers, the addressee is to praise his Lord and ask forgiveness. AALAMIN Editor

Five verses naming one man in the first verse — Abu Lahab — and declaring against him and against his wife. AALAMIN Editor

Four verses and fifteen words: a command to declare the oneness of God, that He neither begets nor is begotten, and that there is none like Him. AALAMIN Editor

Five verses, a request for refuge with the Lord of the daybreak against evils named one at a time. AALAMIN Editor

Six verses asking for refuge with the Lord, the King and the God of mankind, against a whisperer whom the closing verse places among both jinn and men. AALAMIN Editor