There's a Qur'ān memorisation technique I spent some time teaching to brother Muhammad whose journey we follow in the Diary of A Hāfiz weekly newsletter.
There's never one method for memorising and reviewing the Qur'ān that works for everybody in the same way. This is why I made this platform. I'm always open to creative new techniques. I wanted someone to try one such technique. I'm going to share what it is and how it turned out.
Practice Recalling not Repeating
Understanding retrieval practice is crucial to quality memorisation of the Qur'ān. The practice of recalling, rather than simply repeating, is essential to memorisation, and this concept applies universally.
When you read something with the intention of memorising it, the neural connections that are stimulated differ from those that are activated during recall. Allowing your brain to practice recalling the information strengthens the neural pathways that are activated when you later attempt to recall it. However, recall practice is only possible once the information has been partially stored in your short-term memory. You would do this by reciting out aloud, or listening to it and getting familiar with it.
After you've done that, you can give your brain a way to start recalling the words without simply reading from the mus'haf.
This is where the method I had Muhammad try comes into action.
However, when I asked Muhammad to try this, I placed certain restrictions on him:
- it was going to be limited to verses that he is not familiar with
- he couldn't listen to the verses beforehand nor recite them
- he would only work on the verses that I gave him
I did this to test the theory of the technique as a base and see what potential the technique holds for Hifdh.
Using the Letter Grid Technique for Hifz
The Letter Grid Technique is little known but nothing particularly new. It's useful for those who want to memorise the Qur'ān with a lot more retrieval practice and those who:
- struggle with a particular verse
- struggle with a particular set of verses
- struggle recalling revision
- want to strengthen hifdh or revision
- those who have focus issues (like brother Muhammad)
So what is the Letter Grid Technique?
You have to sit down with your Mus'haf and have a pen and paper to hand. On the paper, you will create a grid. Each block on the grid represents a single verse and you'll work up to five in a row. It will look something like this:
So this grid would be covering 25 verses and each box or grid represents each verse. What you do in each box is to write down the first letter of each word in the āyah!
So you just take the first letters of that verse and put it in one box. And then go to verse two and take the first letters of the second verse and put it in the second box. And in the third box, I put the first letters of the third verse and the third box and so on. And you will have this grid. What will happen is that you'll start reading the first letters, but your mind will start filling in the words. This would be particularly interesting if you did it based on lines using the 15-lined Mus'haf which can split into 4 parts of 5 lines.
Why is the 5th box coloured? When you get to the fifth verse, you highlight it in a colour. When I get to the 10th verse, you highlight it in a colour. In the 15th verse, you highlight it a colour. This is so your mind is used to the positioning of all of the verses and working on 5 at a time. Instead, you can rely on your brain's ability to see and remember patterns. So as you're reading it, your mind automatically knows, verse five was coloured blue, pink, or green. You can then navigate through the page mentally much easier because when you see verse five it has this colour. You can also vary it with other colours to create any associations linked to meaning.
Now here's what makes this so fun and exciting. Carrying a Mus'haf with you can get complicated - Where do you put it? How do you carry it? What will you do if you break wudū? You could use your phone instead but has its disadvantages too.
With this method, you have to take this grid and put it into a small journal that you keep with you. Now, wherever you are, you can pull it out and review the page. You can create your own entire collection of suwar and ajzā' like this. It could be document that you print out instead. So you just want a glimpse at the entire surah, you can see it in one view on a grid and recall everything without seeing the actual words. And that's it. It's a simple but powerful technique that doesn't take long to start implementing. And you might be surprised at how much your brain likes seeing letters and then filling out the whole word.
What happened when I put this to the test
What I had brother Muhammad do was work on two random verses from two random places under the restrictions I placed for him. Those two verses were:
وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِى كُلِّ أُمَّةٍۢ رَّسُولًا أَنِ ٱعْبُدُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَٱجْتَنِبُوا۟ ٱلطَّـٰغُوتَ ۖ فَمِنْهُم مَّنْ هَدَى ٱللَّهُ وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ حَقَّتْ عَلَيْهِ ٱلضَّلَـٰلَةُ ۚ فَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَٱنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَـٰقِبَةُ ٱلْمُكَذِّبِينَ
16:36
وَإِذْ تَقُولُ لِلَّذِىٓ أَنْعَمَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَأَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِ أَمْسِكْ عَلَيْكَ زَوْجَكَ وَٱتَّقِ ٱللَّهَ وَتُخْفِى فِى نَفْسِكَ مَا ٱللَّهُ مُبْدِيهِ وَتَخْشَى ٱلنَّاسَ وَٱللَّهُ أَحَقُّ أَن تَخْشَىٰهُ ۖ فَلَمَّا قَضَىٰ زَيْدٌۭ مِّنْهَا وَطَرًۭا زَوَّجْنَـٰكَهَا لِكَىْ لَا يَكُونَ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ حَرَجٌۭ فِىٓ أَزْوَٰجِ أَدْعِيَآئِهِمْ إِذَا قَضَوْا۟ مِنْهُنَّ وَطَرًۭا ۚ وَكَانَ أَمْرُ ٱللَّهِ مَفْعُولًۭا
33:37
Why these verses? They are not small and they both have different levels of difficulty. The instructions were to make a box for each verse and start to recall the verse and memorise it. Note down how long it takes and how difficult you find it.
This is what happened.
Memorising Surah an-Nahl, verse 36
The box he wrote was in English. If you can write the letters in Arabic it will be better. He only recited the verse once and that was as he was writing it. But, as he was writing it, he was repeating the words and adding them together in his mind.
This was the box he made:
w l b f k u
r a a A w j
t f m m h A
f s f A f z k
k a m.
Writing this, he was able to recall the verse easily within 1 to 3 minutes perfectly. I told him not to return to it until 2 to 4 hours and attempt recalling it again. He was able to recall half of it looking at the box of letters. That's really good for something that wasn't repeated and memorised properly. This indicated the strength of the technique.
Memorising Surah al-Ahzāb, verse 37
Again, he did this in English but this was a verse that was a lot trickier and he found it difficult to replicate the same success as the previous verse. He wrote:
w l t l l A A a w A a
a 'a z w A w t f n m
A m w t N. w A a
a t; f l Q z m w z
l k l y 'A m h f A
A l Q m w, w A A m
That looks really daunting! Compared to the process with the previous verse, writing this and trying to recall it took him about 10 minutes. That's a lot longer as compared to the other verse. He could recall a third of it four hours later looking at the letters.
First experiment over.
Any technique we can use to improve our memorisation should be utilised where we can. This is definitely an interesting technique. It will help improve your memory by giving you a way to practice.
For those of you that have followed my work over the years will know that I often do experiments with students to test certain concepts, methods and techniques. When asking Muhammad what he thought about his experience, he said:
I think the process would require a bit of work that would replace a lot of the repetition that many memorisation methods use. I think I might continue to experiment with it to see how it can be best used. It might prove to be even better for revision. I think with the restrictions Qari put on me, it may definitely have been harder but I was pleasantly surprised when I did the first verse and how fast I did it. I think it might have been because the words in it were familiar, whereas the second verse had less familiarity.
Brother Muhammad
Watch this space. I'll probably give an update on this soon, in shā' Allāh.
If you want to give this a try, please do let me on how it goes. The more of you that try it, the more real data we'll have on its effectiveness.
May Allāh grant ease and blessing!
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