A statistical analysis of the Qur’an

The basic numbers of the Qur’an: how many surahs, ayaat and words; how many different roots (three-letter bases) and lemmas; and what kinds of words they are.

In the ring chart each colour is one word type: noun, verb or particle. The bar chart shows roots and lemmas alongside those that occur only once in the whole Qur’an.

About half the words (49%) are nouns and a quarter (25%) verbs. Of 4,728 lemmas, 1,958 (41%) occur only once: the Qur’an’s vocabulary is remarkably wide. For roots the share is 24%.

A full profile of any one surah: length, revelation, ayah lengths, themes, words, verbs and persons, rare words, and the most similar surahs.

Choose a surah at the top. The first chart is the length of each of its ayaat; in the themes chart the coloured bars are this surah and the grey bars the Qur’an’s average. Click a “similar surah” to open its profile.

For example, Al-Baqarah spreads across almost all themes, while short surahs focus on one. Similar surahs usually come from the same period and style.

Any two surahs side by side.

Choose a surah on each side. The table gives the basic numbers, the radar the themes, and the bars verbs, persons and style markers (per thousand words).

Try Ya-Sin and Al-Mulk (both Makki, about the Hereafter), or Al-Baqarah and Aal Imran (the most similar pair in the Qur’an).

Where any root appears across the Qur’an.

Type a root or pick one from the list (e.g. صبر, رحم, علم). The bars are its count in each surah (1 to 114), blue Makki and orange Madani; below are its common forms and lemmas.

For example, «ṣ-b-r» (patience) occurs 103 times, more in Makki surahs, while «k-f-r» stands out in the Madinan period. Every root has its own “geography”.

The whole Qur’an in one picture: each vertical line is one ayah, 6,236 lines in muṣḥaf order.

A line’s height is the number of words in the ayah. Blue is a Makki surah, orange a Madani one. Hover over a line to see the ayah number; click to open it.

The early Madani surahs (Al-Baqarah to At-Tawbah) form a dense forest of long ayaat; the final Makki surahs are very short. The longest ayah is 2:282 (128 words), and 28 ayaat are a single word.

The number of words in each surah.

Use the buttons to change the order: muṣḥaf order, by length, or the traditional order of revelation. Blue is Makki, orange Madani. Hover over a bar for details.

The muṣḥaf order roughly follows length: the first 9 surahs hold 34% of all words, while the last 37 (78–114) hold only 3%. Al-Baqarah alone is 7.9% of the Qur’an. In revelation order the short Makki surahs come first and the long Madani ones later.

A map of the Qur’an: each tile is a surah, its area proportional to its length.

Large tiles are long surahs. Colour shows Makki (blue) or Madani (orange). Click a tile to open the surah on Quran.com.

Only 28 Madani surahs cover about 39% of the map, while 86 Makki surahs cover 61%.

A comparison of the surahs revealed in Makkah (before the Hijrah) and in Madinah (after it).

Left: each group’s share of surahs, ayaat and words. Right: a radar chart of seven themes per thousand words; the colour that reaches further in a direction uses that theme more.

Makki surahs are 75% of surahs and 74% of ayaat but only 61% of words, because Madani ayaat are on average almost twice as long (18.5 vs 10.3 words). In themes, Makki surahs use more words of the Hereafter and nature; Madani surahs more of law, faith and disbelief, and tawhid.

How long the ayaat are, and how ayah length changed over the 23 years of revelation.

First chart: how many ayaat have each length. Second chart: each point is a surah in the traditional order of revelation, its height the surah’s average ayah length; blue Makki, orange Madani.

About two-thirds of ayaat have fewer than 15 words. In revelation order the trend is clear: the first 10 surahs average 4.8 words per ayah, the second half of the Makki period 10.7, and the last 10 surahs 17.5. Note: the order is the traditional one used in the 1924 Egyptian standard muṣḥaf; scholars differ on its details.

The three verb forms: past (did), present-future (does / will do) and command (do!).

The first chart is the share of each in Makki and Madani surahs. The second: the rate of command verbs per thousand words in each surah, in revelation order.

Makki surahs use more past tense (49% vs 44%): stories of earlier nations. Madani surahs use more present (46% vs 41%) and commands (11% vs 9%): rulings for ongoing life. The gap is smaller than often assumed, because Makki surahs also have many commands such as «qul». Commands are densest in Al-Hujurat, At-Tur and Sad.

Who speaks and to whom: the rate of first person (I / We), second person (you) and third person (he / they) pronouns and verbs.

The first chart gives the rate of each per thousand words in Makki and Madani surahs. The second: the rate of “We” (first person plural) in each surah in revelation order. Note: “We” is mostly Allah’s majestic “We”, but people saying “we” in stories are counted too.

First-person forms are far more common in Makki surahs: “I” 31 vs 9, and “We” 52 vs 22 per thousand. Madani surahs address “you” more (119 vs 101): direct guidance and law. “We” is densest in Al-Anbiya, Al-Qamar and As-Saffat; “I” in Maryam, Yusuf and Ash-Shu’ara (the prophets’ dialogues).

Markers of style: questions, negations, conditions (if), vocatives (O …), emphasis, and oaths.

The bars are the rate of each marker per thousand words in Makki and Madani surahs. Below are the surahs with the most questions.

Makki surahs have almost twice as many questions (14 vs 8) and more emphasis: stirring hearts and minds, and debating deniers. Madani surahs have almost twice as many conditionals (19 vs 10): “if you do this, then…”, the language of law. Oaths are almost only in Makki surahs. Questions are densest in Ar-Rahman (31 times «fa-bi-ayyi»), Al-Mulk and Al-Waqi’ah.

What kind of sentence each ayah opens with: a nominal sentence (beginning with a noun, e.g. «inna llāha…») or a verbal sentence (beginning with a verb, e.g. «qāla…», «qul…»).

The first chart is the share of each in Makki and Madani surahs. The second: the percentage of nominal openings in each surah, in revelation order. Opening particles such as wa- and fa- are skipped, and sentences with «inna» count as nominal.

Makki surahs open with verbs more often (52%): stories, events, «qāla» and «qul». Madani surahs open with nouns more often (58%): rulings and declarations such as «inna llāha…» and «yā ayyuha lladhīna āmanū». This is an estimate: only the opening of each ayah is examined.

Masculine and feminine nouns; singular, dual and plural; and the ayaat that name men and women side by side.

The first two charts show the shares in Makki and Madani surahs. The cards below are ayaat containing both the masculine and feminine plural of the same word (e.g. «al-muʾminīna wal-muʾmināt»), with the number of such pairs.

About a fifth of nouns are feminine, almost equally in Makki and Madani surahs. Plurals are more frequent in Madani surahs (26% vs 21%), and duals under one per cent. 24 ayaat name men and women in pairs, almost all Madani; the most striking is 33:35 with nine pairs: Muslim, believing, devout, truthful, patient, humble, charitable, fasting and remembering men and women.

The letters of the Qur’an: how often each letter occurs, and the share of “heavy” letters in each surah.

The first chart counts the 28 letters. The second: the percentage of elevated letters (خ ص ض غ ط ق ظ), which give a heavy, full sound, in each surah, in muṣḥaf order. Letter variants are merged (أ إ آ → ا; ة → ت).

Alif is the most frequent letter, then lām, nūn, mīm, yāʾ and wāw, coming from «Allah», the article «al-» and the plural endings «-ūn / -īn». Heavy letters are densest in Al-Falaq (11%), Al-’Asr and At-Tariq, and rarest in Al-Kafirun (1%), whose soft, repeated sound suits its message.

The Qur’an’s most frequent roots, nouns and verbs.

Use the buttons to see roots in Makki or Madani surahs separately. The word cloud holds 120 roots: the bigger the word, the more often it occurs; colour shows the band (top 10, 11–40, 41–80, the rest).

The top roots: «ʾ-l-h» (Allah, 2,851), «q-w-l» (say, 1,722), «k-w-n» (be), «r-b-b» (Lord), «ʾ-m-n» (belief). In Makki surahs «q-w-l» ranks first (dialogue and stories); in Madani surahs «ʾ-m-n» ranks second and «k-f-r» sixth: belief and disbelief are central in the Madinan period.

How strongly seven themes appear in each surah: tawhid, the Hereafter, prophets, law, worship, creation, and faith and disbelief.

Each row is a theme with its own colour; each cell is a surah (1 to 114, scroll sideways). The darker the cell, the more words of that theme per thousand in that surah. Hover over a cell to see the number.

Examples: Hereafter words are densest in Al-Mursalat, Al-Infitar and Al-Qiyamah; creation in At-Tariq, Ash-Shams and Al-Qadr; worship in Al-Kawthar, Al-A’la and Al-Ma’un; and “faith and disbelief” stands out in Ar-Rahman (31 times «tukadhdhibān»). Caution: this rests on selected lists of roots, and in short surahs a few words make a high rate, so treat it as an estimate.

How varied the vocabulary of each surah is.

Each bubble is a surah. Horizontal axis: number of words (log scale). Vertical axis: the percentage of distinct words. Bubble size: words in that surah that occur only once in the whole Qur’an.

Long surahs repeat words, so their variety is lower: this is natural. Among surahs of over 1,000 words, the most varied are Al-Hajj, Al-Mu’minun and Al-Anbiya. The most once-only words are in Al-Baqarah (117), At-Tawbah (80) and Al-Kahf (59).

The ayah endings (fawāṣil): one aspect of the Qur’an’s sound and rhythm.

Ring chart: the ten most common endings across the Qur’an. Second chart: the share of the same endings in Makki and Madani surahs; each colour is one ending.

«-ūn / -īn» ends almost half of all ayaat (49%). In Makki surahs it is 52% and in Madani 40%: Makki endings are more uniform, while Madani surahs have more endings like «-īm / -īr» (ayaat closing with divine names).

In how many ayaat two words (roots) occur together.

Each row is a pair; its length is the number of ayaat that contain both words.

Heaven and earth occur together most (224 ayaat), then belief and disbelief (126), and forgiveness and mercy (91). Patience and gratitude occur together only 4 times, every time as «ṣabbārin shakūr».

Ayaat repeated word for word, and the Qur’an’s most frequent phrases (3 or 4 words).

Each card is a repeated ayah, with its count and places (click to open). In the chart, bar length is how often the phrase recurs.

«fa-bi-ayyi ālāʾi rabbikumā tukadhdhibān» 31 times, «waylun yawmaʾidhin lil-mukadhdhibīn» 11 times, and Ash-Shu’ara’s refrain 8 times. Among phrases: «yā ayyuha lladhīna āmanū» (89), «min dūni llāh» (71), «ʿalā kulli shayʾ» (52) and «āmanū wa ʿamilu ṣ-ṣāliḥāt» (50). Repetition is part of the Qur’an’s teaching and rhetorical style.

How similar the surahs are to each other in vocabulary.

Each cell is a pair of surahs (1 to 114 on both axes); the darker, the more vocabulary they share. Hover to see the surahs and the score. Method: word-profile similarity giving more weight to rarer words (tf-idf cosine).

The most similar pair is Al-Baqarah and Aal Imran, then Aal Imran–Al-Ma’idah and Al-Baqarah–An-Nisa: the long Madani surahs form one family. Among Makki surahs, Al-A’raf–Yunus and Al-An’am–Yunus are close. A dark block of the long surahs is visible in the top corner of the grid.

The disjointed letters (al-ḥurūf al-muqaṭṭaʿāt): the 29 surahs that open with separate letters such as alif-lām-mīm, ḥā-mīm, ṭā-sīn-mīm.

The table lists each surah and its letters; the chart compares these 29 surahs with the other 85.

These 29 surahs hold almost half the Qur’an’s words (48%), and 26 of them are Makki. Their ayaat are a little longer on average (13.5 vs 11.6 words). Scholars hold many views on the meaning of these letters, and many say their meaning is known only to Allah. They are usually followed by mention of the Book or the Qur’an.

The numbers mentioned in the Qur’an, from one to a thousand.

Each bar is a number and its length how often it occurs. The chart shows simple numbers; compound numbers (such as 19, 99, 309, 100,000) are in a separate table below, with their place and what they count.

“One” is most frequent (61), mostly for “one God”. Then “seven” (25: seven heavens, seven ears of grain, seven nights), “three” (21), “two” (20), “ten” (16) and “a thousand” (14). Among compound numbers, 19 occurs once: «ʿalayhā tisʿata ʿashar» (74:30, the keepers of Hell); the largest number is 100,000 (37:147).

Places, peoples, individuals, idols, scriptures, and the names of Paradise and Hell in the Qur’an.

Choose a category with the buttons. Bar length is how often the name occurs; hover to see the surahs where it appears.

The Qur’an names places rarely: Makkah only once (and Bakkah once), Yathrib, Badr and Hunayn once each; Madyan most often (10). Among peoples: the Children of Israel (43), Thamud (26) and ’Ad (24); among individuals Pharaoh (74) and Maryam (34). The five idols of Nuh’s people (Wadd, Suwa’, Yaghuth, Ya’uq, Nasr) appear only in 71:23. The count for «jannah» includes earthly gardens.

How often the names and attributes of Allah occur, and how often each prophet is named.

In the first chart each slice is a name (on a square-root scale because the counts differ so much; hover for the actual number). Second chart: the prophets’ names, most to least.

«Allah» occurs 2,699 times and «Rabb» 975. Among attributes «ʿAlīm» leads (163). Among prophets Musa (136) is named most, then Ibrahim (69) and Nuh (43).

The 25 prophets named in the Qur’an, in traditional historical order.

Each circle is a prophet; its size shows how often the name occurs and its colour the era (early, Arabian prophets, the family of Ibrahim, the Children of Israel, the Final Prophet ﷺ). Click a circle to open the prophet on the prophets page.

The Qur’an tells the stories by lesson, not by date; this is the traditional order used by commentators and historians, and the times of some prophets (Idris, Ayyub, Dhul-Kifl, Yunus, Shu’ayb) are debated. Musa, at the start of the Israelite era, is mentioned most.

How words are distributed across the 30 juz’, and the 15 prostrations of recitation.

Each point in the chart is a juz’. Below are the ayaat of prostration; click to open them.

The juz’ are nearly equal (each roughly 2,300–2,800 words), because they were divided into equal parts for ease of recitation. The largest is juz’ 7 (2,774 words) and the smallest juz’ 30 (2,308).

How long recitation takes: the whole Qur’an, each juz’ and each surah.

Choose a speed: tartīl (slow), tadwīr (medium) or ḥadr (fast). The chart shows the minutes for each juz’, and each surah’s time in the table below changes too.

At medium speed the whole Qur’an takes about 11½ hours and one juz’ about 23 minutes. This estimate uses an average words-per-minute rate; the real time depends on the reciter and on elongations and pauses.

A check, against the actual data, of popular “numerical miracles” shared on social media.

For each claim the table shows what was counted, the result, and whether the claim holds with that method.

Five of six claims hold, but only with a particular way of counting (for example, singular forms only). “Life and death 145 times” does not hold (76 and 50). Such results depend on the counting method, so they are interesting observations, not proofs of the Qur’an.

A complete table of all 114 surahs.

Click a column heading to sort by it (click again to reverse). “Rev.” is the surah’s place in the order of revelation; “Distinct” its number of different lemmas; “Rare” words found only once in the whole Qur’an, in this surah; “Leading root” its most frequent root (other than Allah, say and be).

Save this page’s data to your computer.

Each button creates a CSV file that opens in Excel or Google Sheets.

Teachers and researchers can use it for their own charts, classes or research; please cite the Quranic Arabic Corpus.