“How long will it take me to memorize Surah Al-Mulk?” is one of the most common questions people ask before they start. It depends on two numbers: how long the surah is, and how much you can memorize well in a day. The table below does that arithmetic for 20 popular surahs at three common paces.
Looking for reading time instead? See how long it takes to recite Al-Baqarah, Al-Kahf, Ya-Sin and Al-Mulk, or every surah, timed.
Read next: how long it takes to memorize Surah Al-Mulk, worked out line by line with real recitation times. If you want reading time rather than memorization time, see how long it takes to read each surah.
The table
Lengths are in lines of the standard 15-line Madani mushaf (604 pages), counted from the mushaf layout itself. Surah headings and the bismillah line aren’t counted, since there’s nothing to memorize there. The day counts are for new memorization only, assuming you memorize every day.
| Surah | Ayat | Lines | 5 lines a day | ½ page a day | 1 page a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Ikhlas | 4 | 2 | 1 day | 1 day | 1 day |
| Ad-Duha | 11 | 5 | 1 day | 1 day | 1 day |
| Al-A’la | 19 | 8 | 2 days | 2 days | 1 day |
| Al-Ghashiyah | 26 | 11 | 3 days | 2 days | 1 day |
| Al-Fatihah | 7 | 7 | 2 days | 1 day | 1 day |
| Al-Fajr | 30 | 16 | 4 days | 3 days | 2 days |
| An-Naba | 40 | 20 | 4 days | 3 days | 2 days |
| Al-Muzzammil | 20 | 20 | 4 days | 3 days | 2 days |
| Al-Insan | 31 | 26 | 6 days | 4 days | 2 days |
| Al-Jinn | 28 | 28 | 6 days | 4 days | 2 days |
| Al-Mulk | 30 | 33 | 7 days | 5 days | 3 days |
| As-Sajdah | 30 | 43 | 9 days | 6 days | 3 days |
| Ar-Rahman | 78 | 45 | 9 days | 6 days | 3 days |
| Al-Waqi’ah | 96 | 47 | 10 days | 7 days | 4 days |
| Al-Hashr | 24 | 51 | 11 days | 7 days | 4 days |
| Ya-Sin | 83 | 84 | 17 days | 12 days | 6 days |
| Maryam | 98 | 107 | 22 days | 15 days | 8 days |
| Al-Kahf | 110 | 169 | 34 days | 23 days | 12 days |
| Yusuf | 111 | 200 | 40 days | 27 days | 14 days |
| Al-Baqarah | 286 | 711 | 143 days | 95 days | 48 days |
| Juz Amma (An-Naba to An-Nas) | 564 | 271 | 55 days | 37 days | 19 days |
A few notes on reading it:
- 5 lines a day is a third of a page. It’s a sensible pace for beginners, children, busy adults and anyone whose Arabic reading is still slow.
- Half a page a day suits people with fluent reading and a regular daily slot of 30 to 45 minutes.
- One page a day is the pace of many full-time hifz students. It’s possible part time, but only if revision still gets done. More on that below.
- Al-Fatihah is seven ayat on the seven lines of the decorated first page, and most people already know it. If you want to make sure yours is correct, see learning Al-Fatihah properly.
Already memorized some of these? Test your hifz on the surahs you’ve finished, so you know the earlier ones are still solid before you add another.
Add time for review
The table counts days of new memorization. Real plans need some extra days:
- Take one or two days a week with nothing new. Use them to recite everything so far from memory. If you memorize Ya-Sin at half a page a day with a weekly review day, 12 days becomes about two weeks.
- Add a consolidation day at the end. Once you’ve reached the last ayah, spend a day reciting the whole surah several times before you call it done.
- Expect the first week to be slower. Your speed improves as you get used to the routine, the reciter and the layout of the mushaf.
So a fair rule of thumb: take the table number and add about 25 percent.
Why some surahs go faster than their length suggests
Page count isn’t everything.
- Familiarity. If you’ve heard Ya-Sin or Al-Mulk recited for years, much of it is already half-memorized. Surahs you’ve never heard take longer.
- Rhyme and refrain. Ar-Rahman repeats one ayah 31 times and Al-Mursalat repeats one ten times, which makes them faster per page once you’ve learned where each refrain falls.
- Stories. Narrative surahs like Yusuf and Al-Kahf have a natural order you can follow. Surahs of rulings, like much of Al-Baqarah, have less of a story to follow and take longer per page.
- Similar passages. Surahs that share phrasing with others you know need extra time to keep apart. See how to memorize similar verses without mixing them up.
Free tool
Pick any surah and get a dated plan at the pace you choose. Open the hifz plan generator →
Picking your pace
The best pace is the one you can hold for months without your revision falling behind. To see the whole-Quran totals at each pace, try the hifz calculator. A useful test: after two weeks, can you recite everything you’ve learned so far without the mushaf? If yes, keep going or speed up slightly. If not, slow down before adding more. Our guide to how much Quran to memorize each day covers this in more detail.
As a starting point:
- First surah after the short ones: 5 lines a day. Al-Mulk or An-Naba are good choices.
- After a month of steady progress: try half a page.
- Only move to a page a day if you have at least an hour daily and a solid revision routine.
The whole Quran
At the same three paces, 604 pages works out to about five years at 5 lines a day, a little over three years at half a page, and about 20 months at a page a day, before review days. Our article on how long it takes to memorize the Quran goes through what changes those numbers.
Revise what you finish
Finishing a surah is only the start. Whatever pace you choose, plan for daily review of everything you’ve completed. The Quran Memorizer daily review handles this automatically: it rotates through the surahs you’ve finished and brings the pages you hesitate on back sooner.
