Quran Trace, worth it? 👍🏼 or 👎🏼
The Diary of A Hāfiz - Issue #95
Bismillāh al-Rahmān al-Rahīm
Assalāmu ‘Alaykum!
Hope you’re all doing well. Allah grant ease and blessing. I’ve been reviewing some products this week and making updates to tools, and there’ll be plenty more to come in shā’ Allāh.
Requesting your prayers,
- Qāri’ Mubashir
🔗 READ
The Best Books To Learn Tajweed And Quran (8 min read)
Seeing so many books though, presents a problem. You don't know what book you should go with. A lot of books are complicated while others are oversimplified. Every teacher has a different approach to teaching and will prefer different books. Every book has a different approach and is often copy-paste jobs of other works. I do believe there's a space for something that should cater to the youngsters of our time.
That's why I'm going to share what I've found to be the best available resources in English to date (2024).
Quran Trace: Is The Handwritten Traceable Method Worth It? (7 min read)
Although my experience with Quran Trace has been brief, I'm excited to share my initial impressions with you. I've previously introduced the concept of traceable Qurans, but I've never experienced one of them before. With various versions available worldwide, it can be challenging to navigate your options. That's where I come in.
I aim to consolidate all the necessary information and make this the only thing you need to read about the Quran Trace. Ultimately, I hope to help you decide whether it's a worthwhile addition to your Quran memorisation journey.
Get an exclusive 10% discount.
📖 THE DIARY OF A HĀFIZ
This is where we try to learn by watching others memorise. A roundup reporting the progress of a brother and a sister in their pursuit of memorising the Qur'ān:
Muhammad, 36, still on Surah an-Nisā’
Background: After forgetting what he memorised (half the Qur'ān) and kept struggling to start again. So he decided to share his diary and mission with us. After 19 weeks of struggle, he finally started. It took him a few months to do a few Juz’. He’s a few months away from having a years diary complete.
What he accomplished last week (1 year, week 21):
“Keeping in line with what I said last week, I have been trying to get back onto consistency since not being well. So I’ve been working on a page a day and I need to stick to this now. No changing back and forth to different things, although, if I can’t do a page one day, I will do half a page. I’ve learnt how important it is to be consistent. Constant changing and chopping does no good. So over the week I’ve started the 6th again and been doing a page a day. Revision wise, it wasn’t good, I got lazy and didn’t even finish 1 juz’ - so that needs work this week!”
Halima, 47, school teacher
Background: A 47 years old Black American Muslim school teacher. She has 3 adult children who are in university and grad school, Alhamdulillāh. She began memorizing the Quran about 5 years ago. It's been on and off with different teachers and motivation levels. She was inspired as a child to memorize Quran but my family lacked the access to a madrassah due to financial costs. She is the oldest of eight children. As a child she had never read more than the last ten surahs. Later in life, she rekindled her connection with Allah swt, and began taking tajwid classes in 2011, then finished her first reading of a khatam of Qur'an to her teacher in tajwid, from then her hifz struggles eased a bit. Currently, she is memorizing Surah al Maidah with Ustadha Sofia.
Week 9:
يَاحَيُّ، يَا قَيُّومُ، بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيثُ، أَصْلِحْ لِي شَأْنِي كُلَّهُ، وَلَا تَكِلْنِي إِلَى نَفْسِي طَرْفَةَ عَيْنٍ أبدا
"O the Ever-Lasting, O the Sustainer and Protector of all that exists. I seek aid through Your Mercy; correct for me all my matters and do not entrust me to myself even for the blink of an eye, ever." Prophetic dua
Allahu Allahu the damage was severe. The storm laid bear all the weaknesses in our foundation. A leak in the original house piping system, which backed up to flood part of the house during the storm. It would take quick action to remove the bookshelves and lay down a new wall of towels to keep the water from doing more damage. All was laid to bear this week with my hifz as well. Due to the poor quality of the revision of Surah Maidah or lack of reciting the surah from memory daily resulted in weakened hifz from the beginning of the Surah. All the hard work of memorizing was for naught. It slowly disappeared over these last several weeks. It would take a new plan to fix these weak portions, over several hours each day. Allahu Allah! I kept shaking my head in disbelief as I prepared to recite to my teacher. Oh, Allah have mercy on me, do not leave me to my own weak devices ever! I need Your Help, Your Mercy, and Your Protection from myself. I revamped my efforts and doubled down on my schedule. I wrote out a plan and opened my hifz planner. Recording daily what I get done and what time I do it so I can have an accurate account of what is happening and what needs to be reinforced. Several experts came to the house over the week, one such expert had a special listening device to assess which pipe was leaking under the concrete without breaking the surface. And another expert dug into the cement to repair it. Just as I need to get down to the business of protecting my hifz, it's a serious affair that will take extraordinary effort for some of us. We pray for Allah to keep us steadfast and grant us wisdom on the journey. Amin. This weekend I began hifz of Surah al Anam and I have implemented a system of review recently starting from al Baqarah-al Maidah. Duas.”
👉 If you have any questions, just drop a reply to me and I'll feature the questions and answers in relevant issues.
Allāh grant us all success and ease on this path!
⚒️ MOTIVATION, TIPS & TOOLS
I’ve been sharing stories of elders that have memorised the Quran on the Facebook page. A lot of motivation!
⭐ COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS & UPDATES
🎉 What’s new / recent 🎉
Join the community groups (WhatsApp / Telegram)
[NEW] I have added a new question type to the Hifz Tester (and also been getting plenty of great feedback from you)
[NEW] I have also updated some of the Hifz planning tools.
[NEW] The Hifz Buddy Finder database now has over 70 people and it’s growing fast.
📢 📢 Requests
1️⃣ My request is also on-going, share your usual hifz schedule with me. Please fill in the Form. (I have had several which I will add online soon)
2️⃣ Those of you that are teaching or have an institute can get listed on the Teachers directory.
If you have anything to add, have hifz stories, want to share your own journey, have tips, have teachers, have anything you want to add to the weekly emails, do let me know.
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Brought to you by Qāri' Mubashir.