Open Quran data is easy to find for the Hafs reading, but almost nothing outside Hafs is open, timed to the ayah and checked, and very few people who publish Quran text give a stranger any way to check it for themselves. Those were the two strongest findings of our research into gaps in Quran technology. For the many Muslims who learn and recite in other readings, such as Warsh and Qalun in North and West Africa, it means that the tools most people take for granted are often simply not there.
Why open Quran data matters
Almost every Quran app and website rests on the same few building blocks. There is the text itself, in a form a computer can read. There are recordings of recitation, and there are timings that say where each ayah begins and ends in each recording, so that an app can highlight the words as they are recited or let a student repeat a single ayah. There are translations, and increasingly there are speech models that can follow a recitation.
When these building blocks are open, meaning that anyone may use them with clear permission and credit, a small team or a single developer can build something useful without starting from nothing. A teacher can make a revision tool for their students, a masjid can build a simple display, and a developer in a country with few Quran apps can make one in a local language.
When the building blocks are closed, or do not exist, each team has to make its own, and most cannot. Some readers are then served well and others hardly at all, and the gap grows with every new app that is built on what happens to be available.
What we looked for
We set out to map where Quran technology still falls short, looking at the text, at audio and timings, at learning tools, at accessibility and at trust. For each area we asked who is already working on it, what has been published openly, and what is still missing for ordinary readers and for the developers who build for them.
The result was a list of ten gaps:
- recordings in the different readings with timings for each ayah
- an open text that anyone can check, with a tool to check it
- learning and checking tools for readings beyond Hafs
- recognition of recitation that works offline in a masjid
- audio first ways of using the Quran offline and on older phones
- access for blind and low-vision readers
- trust, including AI that misquotes the Quran
- spoken translations, and translations into languages that are still missing
- tools for Quranic schools and for children
- the meaning of the Quran in sign language for Deaf Muslims
The most important conclusion was that every one of these gaps is real, and that in every one of them somebody is already doing part of the work. That shaped how we see our own place. Our best role is to work alongside the people already active in each area, to check what exists, and to fill the holes that remain, and there is little to gain from starting again from nothing.
Across the ten, two threads ran through almost everything, and we describe them below.
Almost nothing outside Hafs is open, timed and checked
The Hafs reading is the one used in most printed copies of the Quran around the world, and it is well served by open data. There are digital texts, many recordings, and timings that tie the recordings to each ayah.
For the other readings, the picture is very different. A text may exist in some form, or a recording may be available, but it is rare to find a text that is open to use, recordings timed to each ayah and a record of how any of it was checked, all together for the same reading. Without timings, an app cannot follow along with a recitation or let a student repeat one ayah. Without a record of checking, a developer has no way to know how far the data can be trusted.
This affects the learning and checking tools too. Many of the tools that help a student test their memorisation or follow a teacher’s recitation assume the Hafs reading, because that is the data available to build them. A student who learns in another reading is often left to manage without.
Few publish a way to check their text
The second thread concerns trust. Quran text is copied from one digital source to another, from one app to the next, and most of it arrives with no explanation of where it came from or how anyone could confirm that it is correct. Very few publishers give a stranger a way to check what they have been given.
We tried this ourselves on a small scale. We compared two digital texts of the Hafs reading with a small offline comparison tool that we wrote for our own use, which has 26 tests of its own. The two texts agreed on the letters in all but 2 ayat. After applying 12 rules that set aside harmless differences in the way characters are stored, 94.7 percent of the text was identical. Of the 356 places that still differed, 352 were pause marks, which most likely reflect two different printed copies and not a mistake in either.
That small exercise showed us two things. The first is that careful checking is possible with modest tools, and that most differences, once understood, turn out to be harmless. The second is that without such a check, nobody would know which differences were harmless and which were not. The rules we used are still a draft, the tool has not been published, and we do not claim that either text is free of error.
The rise of AI makes this more pressing. AI systems that write text can produce lines that look like Quran but are not, and an app that cannot show where its text came from leaves its readers with no way to tell the difference. Our article on the questions to ask before you trust a Quran app turns this into six checks that anyone can make.
What this means for readers of Warsh and Qalun
The readings of Warsh and Qalun are recited by a great many Muslims, especially in North and West Africa, and both are taught and memorised with great care. Yet a reader of either will find far fewer apps, recordings with timings and checking tools than a reader of Hafs.
In practice, a student of Warsh may find an app with a Warsh text but no timed recordings, or recordings with no way to follow the text alongside them. A teacher who wants to build a simple revision tool for their class may find nothing open to build it on. A developer may want to help, but has no checked data to start from and no clear permission to use what exists.
The same holds, often to a greater degree, for the other readings. The gap also reaches into accessibility, which we describe in our article on the Quran in Braille. Our desk check there found that nobody has published a Braille key for two of the North African readings.
What we are doing about it
Our research into these gaps is gathered under the Murooah Quran Library. At this stage it is research and private checking, and nothing from it has been built for the public or published. The aim is a set of small tools and data that anyone can check, which never alter the Quran text.
The audience we have in mind is twofold. One part is the developers who build Quran apps and websites and need open, checked data to build on. The other is listeners and students of memorisation and of the readings, especially readers of Warsh and Qalun in North and West Africa.
Alongside the library, our work on the Quran Audio Engine looks at recognising recitation, including which reading is being recited. That work is still research, and we publish no results from it yet. The engine’s promises are that the Quran text is never generated or changed, that recordings never leave the owner’s device through the engine, and that an uncertain answer is never shown as exact.
Because somebody is already working in every one of these areas, we expect most of our contribution to come through checking, partnering and filling holes. Anyone already working on one of these gaps can reach us through our contact page, and each piece of the library will appear on its page once it has been checked.