User's Guide

Reading, listening to and searching the Quran on quranica.org

Quranica is a place to read the Holy Quran on a phone or a computer: the Arabic text of every verse, English, Persian and Malay translations, a recitation of each verse, a search through the words of the Quran, bookmarks, and a map of all 604 pages of the mushaf. It is free and asks for no account.

1. What is on the screen

• The verses run down the middle of the page, with whichever translations you have switched on underneath each one.
• The frame around the page carries two illuminated corners. In the bottom-right corner are two small medallions: the upper one is the name of the chapter you are reading, the lower one the number of the verse at the top of the screen. Both follow you as you scroll.
• The side bar on the right holds four buttons. Everything the site can do opens from there.
• A play button sits beside each verse, to the right of the text: a small circle with a triangle in it.

2. The side bar

Four words are written vertically down the right edge of the screen. Each opens a panel:

• Quran Explorer — the list of all 114 chapters, the Quran map, and a random verse. This is where you go to open a chapter.
• Search — searches the text of the verses and, if you ask it to, the translations.
• Settings — the language of the site (English, فارسی or العربية), the layout (Classic or Studio), the font of the Quran text, translations, their font size, recitation and bookmarks.
• Contact & More — the contact form, this guide, and a way to support the site.

Above those four is a small button showing one of Auto / Open / Closed. Clicking it moves to the next one. It decides how the side bar behaves:

• Auto (the default) — the bar stays open on a wide screen and folds away on a narrow one.
• Open — always open.
• Closed — always folded away, and a panel only slides out when you click one of the four buttons.

Your choice is remembered in that browser.

The language of the site itself is chosen at the top of Settings, under Language: English, فارسی (Persian) or العربية (Arabic). In Persian and Arabic the side bar and every window read from right to left; the verses and their translations stay exactly as they are.

Just below it, Layout chooses how the page is drawn. Classic is the site as it has always looked. Studio is for reading with fewer distractions: each verse's number stands in the round button beside it, the translations are darker, the corner ornaments are smaller, and the ornament and logo at the top step back into the corner once you start scrolling (they come back at the top of Al-Fatiha). In Studio the verse number is also the play button: point at it, or tap it once on a touch screen, and it turns into the play triangle; press it to hear the verse. Until you have played a few verses in Studio, the numbers slowly turn into the triangle and back. The choice is remembered in that browser.

Then Quran Font chooses the font the verses are written in: Uthman Taha, the site's usual font, or Neirizi, a calligraphic naskh. The choice is remembered in that browser.

3. Opening a chapter

This is what catches most people out: the Search box does not find chapters. It looks inside the text of the verses and the translations, never at the names of the chapters. Typing "Baqara" there finds nothing, because that word is not in the text of any verse. Chapters are opened from the chapter list instead.

There are three ways in:

The chapter list (the easy way)

• Click Quran Explorer in the side bar.
• Under List of Chapters you get all 114 chapters in the order of the mushaf, numbered.
• Click a name and the chapter opens at verse 1.
• The appendix at the end of this guide gives every chapter's Arabic name next to the name the list shows, in case you know one and not the other.

The address bar

The address itself takes a chapter and a verse:

• quranica.org/2 — chapter 2 (Al-Baqara) from verse 1
• quranica.org/2/255 — straight to verse 255 of Al-Baqara (Ayat al-Kursi)
• quranica.org/2/1/ALL — the whole of Al-Baqara in one go

The Quran map

In the Quran Explorer panel, the Map button draws the whole mushaf as 604 small rectangles, one per page. Hover a page (or tap it once on a touch screen) to see the chapter, the verse it starts at and the page number; click it (or tap a second time) to open the Quran there.

4. Jumping to a verse

The verse-number medallion in the bottom-right corner is itself a button:

• Click it and a small box opens; under the box it says what range of verse numbers this chapter has.
• Type a number and press Enter, or click the arrow beside it.
• It moves within the chapter that is open. To reach another chapter, pick the chapter first.

This matters most when you have installed the site on a phone, because there is no address bar there to type a verse number into.

5. Reading on

• Scroll down and the next verses are added by themselves; scroll up and the previous ones are.
• At the end of a chapter a Continue button appears, which brings in the next chapter. Until you press it, reading stays inside the chapter you chose.
• The address in the bar keeps up with where you are reading, so you can copy it, or bookmark it in your browser, and come back to exactly this verse. The browser's Back button works too.

6. Listening to a verse

• The play button sits to the right of each verse. On a computer it brightens when the pointer is over the verse; on a touch screen, tap the verse once to bring it out.
• Click it and that verse is recited. There are three reciters, Mishary Alafasy, Karim Mansoori and Mohamed Siddiq Al-Minshawi; choose one in Settings, under Recitation. Alafasy is chosen until you pick another.
• While it plays the triangle becomes a square; clicking again stops it. Clicking another verse moves the recitation there, so only one verse ever sounds.
• On the first verse of a chapter the Bismillah is recited before the verse itself (in At-Tawba, the isti'adha instead).
• On your first visit the play buttons are drawn faintly rather than waiting to be found, the word Listen appears beside the first verse, and a small blue note points at the button. Once you have played a few verses all of that stops and the buttons go back to appearing on hover.
• The recitation carries on from verse to verse until the end of the chapter. To have it go on into the chapters after it, open Settings and, under Recitation, tick Continue into the next chapter. To hear one verse at a time instead, untick Continue to the next verse (the second option is greyed out while this one is off).
• While you are looking at the verse being recited, the page glides on to each next verse as it starts. Scroll away to read something else and the page stays where you put it; scroll back to the verse and it follows again.
• While the verse being recited is off the screen, a round stop button appears above the chapter name in the bottom corner. Press it to pause; it turns into a play button, which carries on from exactly where the recitation stopped. The small round arrow on its edge points to where the verse is; press it and the page glides back to that verse, and follows the recitation again from there.

7. Translations

• Open Settings. Under Show Translations there are three: English, Persian and Malay.
• Tick one and it appears under every verse; untick it and it goes. All three can be on at once.
• Under Translation Font Size a slider makes the translations larger or smaller, from -40% to +40% in steps of 10. The Arabic text keeps its size.
• The choices are remembered in that browser for your next visit.

8. Bookmarks, and picking up where you left off

In Settings, under Bookmark:

• Start from last read verse — tick this and the site remembers where you stopped and opens there next time.
• Below it are three bookmarks of your own, numbered 1 to 3. Each one shows the verse it holds, such as Al-Kahf 10, or Empty.
• Set, beside a bookmark, stores in it the verse at the top of the page.
• Click the verse's name to go back there.

Bookmarks and settings live in your browser, not on a server. Clearing the site's data, using a private window, or moving to another browser or device starts them over.

9. Search, in detail

Click Search in the side bar. The box at the top of the panel is where the words go; then press Enter, or click the Search button.

What is searched

• Always the Arabic text of the verses.
• Tick Selected Translations and the translations you have switched on in Settings are searched as well. So to search English, switch English on in Settings first, then tick Selected Translations here.
• Chapter names are never searched. See section 3.

Two things that make it easier

• Diacritics do not matter. The search ignores them, so writing the bare letters finds the vowelled text.
• A Persian keyboard is fine. Persian "ک" and "ی" are read as the Arabic "ك" and "ي", so there is no need to install an Arabic keyboard.

The three modes

Under Parameters, one of these is always chosen:

• All Words — verses holding every word you typed, in any order. This is the default.
• Any Word — verses holding at least one of them. This returns far more.
• Exact Phrase — verses holding that exact run of words, in that order.

Two more options

• Match Whole Word — left unticked, a stem also finds the longer words built on it; ticked, only the word exactly as typed. (It is switched off in Exact Phrase mode, where it would mean nothing.)
• Append to previous result — left unticked, each search clears the last one; ticked, the new verses are added to the list already there. It is how you build one set out of several searches.

The results window

• Results open in a large window in the middle of the screen. The total is written at the bottom of it, beside the word results.
• Click any verse in the list and the window closes and that verse opens in the reading page.
• If you close the window and want it back, the See last search result button in the Search panel brings it up again.
• When nothing matches, the window says Nothing Found!.
• At most 2000 verses are returned; a very common word can reach that ceiling.

The pattern bar

Along the bottom of the results window is a narrow strip that marks every verse found as one vertical line, placed where it falls in the whole Quran. One look tells you which part of the Quran a word belongs to.

• Word and Verse decide whether a line is placed by word position or by verse position.
• Set as reference keeps the current pattern in the upper strip, so the next search can be compared against it.

10. A Message from Allah

In the Quran Explorer panel, A Message from Allah picks a verse at random and shows it in the same results window. Click the verse to open it in the reading page.

11. Installing it

Quranica can be installed like an app, so it has its own icon and opens without the browser's bars:

• Android (Chrome): the three-dot menu, then Add to Home screen / Install app.
• iPhone and iPad (Safari): the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
• Desktop (Chrome or Edge): the install icon at the right of the address bar.

There is no address bar in the installed window, so a chapter and verse cannot be typed there. Use the chapter list (section 3) and the verse-number medallion (section 4) instead.

The site needs a connection; the installed version is not an offline copy.

12. Contact and support

• Contact & More then Contact Us opens the contact form: name, email, subject and message. The reply goes to the address you give.
• Contact & More then Donate opens a PayPal page in a new tab, where you set the amount yourself.
• The small Help Us Continue... tab that slides out from the bottom-right corner does the same. It puts itself away after a while, or you can close it with the cross on it.

13. Questions that come up

I search for a chapter and find nothing.

The Search box does not look at chapter names, only at the text of the verses and the translations. Open the chapter from Quran Explorer → List of Chapters, or put its number in the address (quranica.org/36 is chapter 36). The appendix below gives every name.

A phrase I know is in the Quran is not found.

Three things to try: switch the mode to Any Word; untick Match Whole Word; and if you are looking for wording from a translation, switch that translation on in Settings and tick Selected Translations. Diacritics are never needed.

I cannot see a translation.

Settings, then Show Translations, then tick the one you want.

Where is the play button?

To the right of each verse. On a computer it appears when the pointer is over the verse; on a phone, tap the verse once.

My bookmarks are gone.

They are kept in your browser. Clearing its data, a private window, or a different device loses them.

The page looks wrong, or an update has not arrived.

Reload the page once (Ctrl+F5 on a computer; on a phone, close the tab and open it again).

Appendix: the 114 chapters

Each row: the chapter number, its Arabic name, the name as the site's List of Chapters shows it, and how many verses it has.

#	Arabic name	As the site lists it	Verses
1	الفاتحة	Al-Fatiha	7
2	البقرة	Al-Baqara	286
3	آل عمران	Al Imran	200
4	النساء	An-Nisa	176
5	المائدة	Al-Ma'ida	120
6	الأنعام	Al-An'am	165
7	الأعراف	Al-A'raf	206
8	الأنفال	Al-Anfal	75
9	التوبة	At-Tawba	129
10	يونس	Yunus	109
11	هود	Hud	123
12	يوسف	Yusuf	111
13	الرعد	Ar-Ra'd	43
14	إبراهيم	Ibrahim	52
15	الحجر	Al-Hijr	99
16	النحل	An-Nahl	128
17	الإسراء	Al-Isra	111
18	الكهف	Al-Kahf	110
19	مريم	Maryam	98
20	طه	Ta-Ha	135
21	الأنبياء	Al-Anbiya	112
22	الحج	Al-Hajj	78
23	المؤمنون	Al-Mu'minoon	118
24	النور	An-Nur	64
25	الفرقان	Al-Furqan	77
26	الشعراء	Ash-Shu'ara	227
27	النمل	An-Naml	93
28	القصص	Al-Qasas	88
29	العنكبوت	Al-Ankabut	69
30	الروم	Ar-Rum	60
31	لقمان	Luqman	34
32	السجدة	As-Sajda	30
33	الأحزاب	Al-Ahzab	73
34	سبأ	Saba	54
35	فاطر	Fatir	45
36	يس	Ya Sin	83
37	الصافات	As-Saaffat	182
38	ص	Sad	88
39	الزمر	Az-Zumar	75
40	غافر	Ghafir	85
41	فصلت	Fussilat	54
42	الشورى	Ash-Shura	53
43	الزخرف	Az-Zukhruf	89
44	الدخان	Ad-Dukhan	59
45	الجاثية	Al-Jathiya	37
46	الأحقاف	Al-Ahqaf	35
47	محمد	Muhammad	38
48	الفتح	Al-Fath	29
49	الحجرات	Al-Hujurat	18
50	ق	Qaf	45
51	الذاريات	Adh-Dhariyat	60
52	الطور	At-Tur	49
53	النجم	An-Najm	62
54	القمر	Al-Qamar	55
55	الرحمن	Ar-Rahman	78
56	الواقعة	Al-Waqi'a	96
57	الحديد	Al-Hadid	29
58	المجادلة	Al-Mujadila	22
59	الحشر	Al-Hashr	24
60	الممتحنة	Al-Mumtahina	13
61	الصف	As-Saff	14
62	الجمعة	Al-Jumua	11
63	المنافقون	Al-Munafiqun	11
64	التغابن	At-Taghabun	18
65	الطلاق	At-Talaq	12
66	التحريم	At-Tahrim	12
67	الملك	Al-Mulk	30
68	القلم	Al-Qalam	52
69	الحاقة	Al-Haaqqa	52
70	المعارج	Al-Maarij	44
71	نوح	Nuh	28
72	الجن	Al-Jinn	28
73	المزمل	Al-Muzzammil	20
74	المدثر	Al-Muddathir	56
75	القيامة	Al-Qiyama	40
76	الإنسان	Al-Insan	31
77	المرسلات	Al-Mursalat	50
78	النبأ	An-Naba	40
79	النازعات	An-Naziat	46
80	عبس	Abasa	42
81	التكوير	At-Takwir	29
82	الإنفطار	Al-Infitar	19
83	المطففين	Al-Mutaffifin	36
84	الإنشقاق	Al-Inshiqaq	25
85	البروج	Al-Burooj	22
86	الطارق	At-Tariq	17
87	الأعلى	Al-Ala	19
88	الغاشية	Al-Ghashiya	26
89	الفجر	Al-Fajr	30
90	البلد	Al-Balad	20
91	الشمس	Ash-Shams	15
92	الليل	Al-Lail	21
93	الضحى	Ad-Dhuha	11
94	الشرح	Al-Inshirah	8
95	التين	At-Tin	8
96	العلق	Al-Alaq	19
97	القدر	Al-Qadr	5
98	البينة	Al-Bayyina	8
99	الزلزلة	Az-Zalzala	8
100	العاديات	Al-Adiyat	11
101	القارعة	Al-Qaria	11
102	التكاثر	At-Takathur	8
103	العصر	Al-Asr	3
104	الهمزة	Al-Humaza	9
105	الفيل	Al-Fil	5
106	قريش	Quraysh	4
107	الماعون	Al-Ma'un	7
108	الكوثر	Al-Kawthar	3
109	الكافرون	Al-Kafirun	6
110	النصر	An-Nasr	3
111	المسد	Al-Masadd	5
112	الإخلاص	Al-Ikhlas	4
113	الفلق	Al-Falaq	5
114	الناس	Al-Nas	6