Quran Gallery Blog
Essays written from the printed page
Long-form writing on the Quran, prayer, the pilgrimage and the inner life. Every claim is traced to a named edition, volume and page, and the page opens beside the text.
278 essays28 collections7 languagesevery citation opens the printed page
Collections
Read in order
The essays are filed in series: a pilgrimage walked step by step, the prayer from the first takbir to the salam, a month of fasting from its eve to its end. Start at part one.
- Part 1 → 18 A Journey Through Hajj 18 essays
- Part 1 → 9 A Journey Through Umrah 9 essays
- Part 1 → 8 Prepare for Hajj 8 essays
- Part 1 → 7 Delve Deep: The Goals of Hajj 7 essays
- Part 1 → 7 The Virtues & Etiquettes of Dua 7 essays
- Part 1 → 5 Strengthening Iman Through Dua 5 essays
- Part 1 → 5 Umrah 5 essays
- Part 1 → 4 Fasting 4 essays
- Part 1 → 3 Taste the Sweetness of Dua 3 essays
- Part 1 → 2 Madinah 2 essays
- 17 essays Journey Through Salah
- 11 essays Ruqyah
- 10 essays Before Salah
- 9 essays Pre Ramadan
- 9 essays During Salah
- 8 essays Iman in Ramadan
- 8 essays Palestine: A Quranic Lens
- 5 essays The Hereafter
- 5 essays Morning & Evening
- 5 essays Tasbih
- 4 essays Names of Allah
- 4 essays Istighfar
- 4 essays Etiquettes
- 4 essays Reflecting on the Ayat of Hajj
- 3 essays Virtues of Al-Aqsa
- 2 essays Muharram
- 2 essays Post-Ramadan
- 2 essays Post Hajj
Jumada al-Ula
From the shelves
Journey Through Salah At-Taḥiyyāt: The Greeting of Kings, Redirected The words said in the last sitting of the prayer were not left to worshippers to compose — the Companions tried, and were corrected. What at-taḥiyyāt meant before it was redirected, why "greetings" is plural, and what the commentators actually say about the one clause addressed to someone other than Allah. Journey Through Salah Before the Salām: Ṣalawāt on the Prophet, and a Duʿāʾ of Your Own The last stretch of the prayer, after the taḥiyyāt and before the salām, runs on a taught order: praise, then ṣalawāt on the Prophet, then whatever you yourself need to ask for. Every step of it is named in a hadith you can open, including the one place where the fixed script hands the words back to you. Journey Through Salah Salām: The Words That Release You From the Prayer The salām is not the prayer trailing off — it is the act that ends it, the counterpart to the takbīr that began it. What the words are, how far the head turns, who is actually being greeted, whether one salām or two, and the dhikr the sources place immediately after it. Pre Ramadan The Ten Goals of Ramadan: A Framework for a Month That Changes You Ramadan without a target becomes thirty days of the same routine on repeat. Ten concrete goals drawn from what the tradition names as the month's own priorities, and a way to pick the one or two your year actually needs. Pre Ramadan Shaʿbān Before Ramadan: A Practical Plan to Prepare Your Heart and Habits Shaʿbān is the one month the Prophet fasted almost in full, and the reason he gave was that he wanted his deeds raised up to Allah while he was fasting. Ten concrete habits — from qaḍāʾ fasts to an early zakāh payment — turn the same month into training for Ramadan rather than a countdown to it. Pre Ramadan The Promises of Ramadan: What This Month Actually Gives the One Who Seeks It Ramaḍān is usually described in generalities — a month of blessing, a chance to start over. The sources are more specific than that: named gates, a reward kept off the ordinary ledger, a single night weighed against a thousand months. Six of those specific promises, each traced to the page where it was recorded. Pre Ramadan A Ramadan Timetable That Holds: Building Days Around Prayer, Qur'an, and Restraint Most Ramadan resolutions quietly die by the second week because they were never written down anywhere. A practical way to build a daily timetable around the five prayers, a Qur'an target, dhikr, du'a and your closest relationships — and just as importantly, what to plan to cut out. Pre Ramadan The Gates Are Open: Why Ramadan's Arrival Deserves Celebration, Not Dread Ramadan is not a burden that lands on the calendar once a year — it is a season of mercy the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) told us to welcome with joy. Here is why the gates opening should feel like good news. Pre Ramadan The Journey to Allah: Why Ramadan Is the Fastest Stretch of the Road Every life is already a journey toward Allah, walked well or walked carelessly, but never skipped. This reflection names the three obstacles on that road, the three things a traveler must carry, and why Ramadan is built to cover the distance faster than any other month. Pre Ramadan Six Ways Social Media Steals Your Ramadan: How to Take It Back Before It Starts Research on social media names the mental-health toll; scholars named the spiritual one centuries earlier. Six specific harms it does to the heart, and a concrete Ramadan plan to take your attention back before the month begins. Pre Ramadan Exempted, Not Excluded: What Ramadan Still Asks of a Menstruating Woman A menstruating woman is exempted from prayer and fasting in Ramadan, not from Allah. This piece separates what every school agrees on from the one question that genuinely divides them — reciting the Qur'an from memory — and names what stays open to her without dispute. Pre Ramadan Ramadan and Illness: The Fiqh of the Fast You Cannot Keep and the Worship You Still Can Illness does not cancel Ramadan's mercy — it activates a different part of it. What the Qur'an and two Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī narrations actually say about the fast you may be excused from, the reward that keeps recording itself anyway, and the prayer the Prophet himself made over the sick. Fasting· Part 1 of 4 Lawful at Night, Forbidden by Day: How Fasting Retrains the Appetites The Qur'an permits the same act at night that it withdraws by day, using one word for both rulings. A hadith aims that identical word at the tongue rather than the body, and another explains why: the fast was never really a rule about the stomach. Food is simply the appetite the day can check. Fasting· Part 2 of 4 Fasting Was Never About Hunger: The Purpose the Qur'an Names Fasting is the one act of worship whose purpose is named inside the verse that legislates it: "so that you may attain taqwā." A hadith in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī about false speech shows exactly what it looks like when the outward fast is kept in full and that purpose is missed anyway. Fasting· Part 3 of 4 A Month of Practising Restraint: Fasting as Training in Ṣabr A fast has one moving part: refusing something entirely lawful, on a schedule, until refusal itself becomes practised. What the Prophet's instruction for handling an insult while fasting reveals about why that particular drill was chosen, and what proves whether the training actually transferred. Fasting· Part 4 of 4 Two Meals That Teach Gratitude: The Blessing in Suḥūr and Ifṭār A sip of water at sunset and a few dates before dawn are unremarkable on any other day of the year. In Ramaḍān, the Sunnah names each of them — blessing on one, a counted joy on the other — and in naming them, teaches what gratitude for something ordinary actually looks like. Iman in Ramadan Know Him First: Why Maʿrifah Comes Before Every Act of Worship Worship aimed at a stranger cannot go very deep. The Qur'an issues the command to know Allah before it issues the command to worship Him — this is a walk through why that order matters and four concrete ways to close the gap between the two. Articles Deeds Are Judged by Their Endings: How to Leave Ramadan Well The last nights of Ramadan are not a wind-down. Five habits the early Muslims practiced as the month closed — fearing rejection, asking for acceptance, closing with istighfar, watching for pride, and paying sadaqat al-fitr before the takbir starts. Articles Ayat al-Kursi: The Qur'an's Greatest Verse of Protection A single verse of Surat al-Baqarah is named by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) as the greatest in the Qur'an, and taught as a guard against harm until morning. Here is what the classical sources actually say — and one popular claim about it that took real digging to settle. Articles Twenty Qualities the Qur'an Names, and the Verse Behind Each One The Qur'an does not describe good character as a mood to aim for — it names it, twenty times over, each instruction tied to one exact verse you can open and read for yourself. Every one of those twenty verses, gathered and checked against the text. Articles The Knots on Your Own Head: Why Tahajjud Begins Before You Sleep A hadith locates the real obstacle to tahajjud not in a weak alarm clock but at the back of your own sleeping head, where three knots are tied every night. What actually undoes them, why an honest failed attempt still counts, and what the Qur'an says about the striving in between. Reflections Tadabbur of Al-Fātiḥah, verse one Bismillāh ar-Raḥmān ar-Raḥīm — a single verse, three names of God, and the doorway to every sūrah but one. Articles Two Supplications the Prophet Said Are Never Turned Away A companion's overheard prayer, a prophet crying out from inside a fish, and a phrase the Messenger told his companions to repeat until it stuck: three concrete ways the Qur'an and hadith teach us to call on Allah by His Beautiful Names and His Oneness. Articles The Ledger That Outlives You: Charity and Service in Ramadan A hadith graded ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ by its own compiler on the reward for feeding someone else's fast, a report on the Prophet's generosity "more than the wind that brings rain," and the debt of ṣadaqah that sits closest to home — the relative who still resents you. Checked against the primary sources, page by page.
