What to Do After Noorani Qaida: From Reading to Reciting
What to do after Noorani Qaida: how to move on to the mushaf, which surahs to read first, the new marks you will meet and when to add tajweed.
After Noorani Qaida, the next step is to move straight on to the mushaf. Start with al-Fatihah and the short surahs of Juz 'Amma, read slowly from the page with a teacher listening, learn the handful of new marks the mushaf uses, and add tajweed rules one at a time while your reading becomes fluent.
Finishing the qaida is a real milestone, and it often comes with an odd anticlimax. You open a mushaf and the page looks smaller and busier than the book you have just finished. That gap is normal, and it closes with the right next steps. This guide is for adults and older children who have completed the qaida or a similar primer. It covers how to tell you are ready, what changes on the page, which surahs to read first, how to practise, when to add tajweed and where hifz fits in.
How do you know you are ready to leave the qaida?
You are ready to leave the qaida when you can read a fully vowelled word you have never seen before, smoothly and without spelling it out letter by letter. Finishing the last page is not the test; reading new words with confidence is. Run through these five checks with your teacher before you put the qaida away.
Five readiness checks
- 1
Unfamiliar words come out whole
You can read a new word in one go, rather than sounding each letter and then joining them.
- 2
Sukun, shaddah and tanwin are instant
You no longer pause to work out what a mark means; your tongue simply does it.
- 3
Long vowels have the right length
You hold the madd letters (alif, waw and ya) for their full length and keep short vowels short.
- 4
Close letters stay distinct
Pairs such as ح and ه, or س and ص, sound clearly different when you read them aloud.
- 5
Your teacher agrees
Someone who has heard you read regularly confirms you are ready. Your own ear is the last to notice a weak sound.
If two or more of these are still shaky, spend a little longer on the qaida's final lessons, which mix every rule together. Time spent there now saves a great deal of correcting later. If you need a reminder of what those lessons cover, see the Noorani Qaida beginner's guide.
Why does the mushaf look harder than the qaida?
The mushaf looks harder than the qaida because the print is smaller and denser, and it uses a few marks that most qaidas never teach. There are also two main print styles. Mushafs printed in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh (the Indo-Pak style, common in many UK mosques) look different from the Madinah (Uthmani) style printed by the King Fahd Complex and used across most of the Arab world. The words and the recitation are the same; only the handwriting and some of the marks differ.
Here are the marks that most often stop a new reader in a Madinah-style mushaf, with real examples from surahs you are likely to read first. The examples are taken from quran.com's Uthmani (Madinah) text.
| Mark | Example | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Small hollow circle over alif, waw or ya | ءَامَنُوا۟ (103:3) | The letter is written but never pronounced: āmanū |
| Small upright alif above or after a letter (the dagger alif) | ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ (1:3) | Read a long "aa" even though no full alif is written: ar-rahmān |
| Small waw after a ha | لَّهُۥ (112:4) | Lengthen the ha into a long "u": lahū |
| Alif with a small head (alif wasla) | قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ (112:1) | Skip it when you join from the word before: qul huwa-llāhu |
| Small head of kha over a letter | قُلْ (112:1) | A sukun. Everyday Arabic print often shows the sukun as a small circle, so do not confuse it with the hollow circle in the first row, which means a silent letter |
In an Indo-Pak mushaf some of these marks look different or are left out (the alif wasla, for example, is usually written as a plain alif without its small head), so ask your teacher to show you the equivalents in your copy. Stop signs, juz markers, the sajdah sign and the other marks above the line are explained in the symbols on the Qur'an page. You do not need all of them on day one; learn each one when it appears in the passage you are reading.
Which surahs should you read first after the qaida?
Read al-Fatihah first, then the short surahs of Juz 'Amma, because they are short, you hear them in prayer, and each one is a complete unit you can finish in one sitting. Al-Fatihah comes first because it is part of every prayer, as the Prophet ﷺ said in a hadith recorded by al-Bukhari. Juz 'Amma, the 30th and last juz', runs from Surah an-Naba' (78) to Surah an-Nas (114): 37 surahs, most of them under a page.
| Stage | What to read | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Al-Fatihah and the last ten surahs (al-Fil to an-Nas) | Reading every word from the page, slowly, plus a few unfamiliar lines each session |
| 2 | The rest of Juz 'Amma, working back towards an-Naba' | Longer ayat, the new marks, steady pace |
| 3 | The opening pages of Surah al-Baqarah, a small portion each day | Reading text you have not heard many times |
| 4 | Steady daily reading through the mushaf | Fluency, tajweed rules and regular review with a teacher |
Surah al-'Asr makes a good first test of the new marks. It is only three ayat long, and the third ayah contains the silent circled alif four times, along with the dagger alif and the alif wasla:
وَٱلْعَصْرِ ﴿١﴾ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ ﴿٢﴾ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ ﴿٣﴾
“By time, indeed, mankind is in loss, except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.”
ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟
āmanū wa 'amilū
(those who) believed and did (righteous deeds)
Each word ends in a waw followed by an alif with a small circle. The waw is read as a long "u"; the circled alif is silent. The same circled alif appears twice more in the ayah, in وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ (wa tawāsaw).
How should you practise reading from the mushaf?
Practise reading from the mushaf in short daily sessions, aloud and slowly, with your finger under each word, and read the same passage several times before moving on. Speed comes from accuracy repeated, never the other way round. Allah revealed the Qur'an to the Prophet ﷺ in portions over many years:
وَقُرْءَانًا فَرَقْنَـٰهُ لِتَقْرَأَهُۥ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِ عَلَىٰ مُكْثٍ وَنَزَّلْنَـٰهُ تَنزِيلًا
“And [it is] a Qur'an which We have separated [by intervals] that you might recite it to the people over a prolonged period. And We have sent it down progressively.”
Your own reading can grow the same way: small portions, read carefully, built up over time. A simple daily session looks like this.
A 15-minute reading session
- 1
Warm up on yesterday's passage (3 minutes)
Read it once aloud. It should feel easier than it did yesterday; if it does not, read it again before anything new.
- 2
Read today's new lines (6 minutes)
Five to ten lines, finger under each word, out loud. Stop at any mark you do not recognise and look it up.
- 3
Read the new lines again (3 minutes)
The second reading is where hesitations show. Mark any word you stumbled on with a light pencil dot.
- 4
Record one ayah (3 minutes)
Record a single ayah on your phone and listen back while following in the mushaf. You will hear slips you missed while reading.
Bring your pencil dots to your next lesson so your teacher can go straight to the words that gave you trouble. For more on structuring the days between lessons, see how to practise the Qur'an between lessons.
When should you start learning tajweed?
Start learning tajweed as soon as you can read words smoothly from the mushaf, because the final lessons of the Noorani Qaida already introduce the first rules, and those rules are easiest to build on while they are fresh.
Take one rule at a time, and apply each one to the surahs you are already reading before adding the next. What is tajweed? maps out all the rule families and what the scholars say about learning them. The order below is a sensible one for most learners, though a teacher of your choice may adjust it to your particular mistakes.
| Order | Topic | Why at this point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Makharij (where each letter is pronounced) | Every later rule depends on clean letters |
| 2 | Nun sakinah and tanwin (four rules) | They appear on almost every line, and the qaida's last lessons touch on them |
| 3 | Meem sakinah (three rules) | Short and closely related to the nun rules |
| 4 | Madd (lengthening) | Fixes the most audible timing mistakes |
| 5 | Qalqalah (five letters) | Easy to hear and quick to fix |
| 6 | Heavy and light ra and lam | Needs good makharij first |
| 7 | Waqf and ibtida (stopping and starting) | Becomes important as you read longer passages |
Should you start hifz straight after the qaida?
You can start memorising short surahs straight after the qaida, but keep reading practice going alongside it, because hifz built on shaky reading carries the mistakes with it into every revision. A good balance for most beginners is a few lines of memorisation a day plus the reading session above, with reading taking the bigger share until it feels comfortable. When you are ready to make hifz a proper goal, how to memorise the Qur'an: a beginner's method sets out a daily system.
What if reading still feels slow and difficult?
Reading that still feels slow and difficult after the qaida is normal, and it is not wasted effort. The Prophet ﷺ gave special encouragement to exactly this reader, in a hadith narrated by 'Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her):
الْمَاهِرُ بِالْقُرْآنِ مَعَ السَّفَرَةِ الْكِرَامِ الْبَرَرَةِ وَالَّذِي يَقْرَأُ الْقُرْآنَ وَيَتَتَعْتَعُ فِيهِ وَهُوَ عَلَيْهِ شَاقٌّ لَهُ أَجْرَانِ
“One who is proficient in the Qur'an is associated with the noble, upright, recording angels; and he who falters in it, and finds it difficult for him, will have two rewards.”
يَتَتَعْتَعُ فِيهِ
yatata'ta'u fīhi
he falters in it, stumbling over the words
The word describes a reader who hesitates and trips over the words as he reads. The hadith promises this reader two rewards: one for the reading and one for the struggle. It is a description of exactly where you are now, and it is not a lesser place.
What speeds things up most is someone listening to you: talaqqi, reading directly to a teacher who corrects you. The Permanent Committee of scholars, quoted on IslamQA, said that the best way to learn proper recitation is to read to a shaykh who is qualified in Qur'an recitation, even travelling to find one, and only if that is not possible to learn from others and from recordings (IslamQA 3175). If you do not have that ear yet, you can find a Qur'an teacher of your choice to hear you read from the mushaf each week and tell you which tajweed rule to take on next.
Key takeaways
- After Noorani Qaida, move straight on to the mushaf rather than waiting until you feel perfect.
- You are ready to leave the qaida when you can read unfamiliar vowelled words smoothly, without spelling them out.
- Start with al-Fatihah and the short surahs of Juz 'Amma, then work back to an-Naba' and on to the opening of al-Baqarah.
- Learn the few new marks in your mushaf, such as the silent circled alif in ءَامَنُوا۟, as you meet them.
- Add tajweed one rule at a time, starting with makharij and the rules of nun sakinah and tanwin.
- Read a little every day, aloud and slowly, and have a teacher listen to you regularly.
Further reading
My Tijarah
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