Alhamdulilah, I was able to memorize Surah Al Baqarah (the longest surah in the Qur’an- 48 pages) using the memory palace technique. I don’t speak Arabic, but I did spend a lot of time studying the word-to-word meaning of the verses. Even if you know the meaning of a couple of words from the verse, you can usually make a picture in your head of what that verse is about, and then associate it with that location in your memory palace. You don’t need to learn the Arabic language as a whole to memorize the Qur’an. The Qur’an is a finite number of words, and those words repeat often. Surah Al Baqarah contains roughly 80% of the vocabulary found in the Qur’an, and it’s just 1/15th of the whole Qur’an, lengthwise.
I memorize by pages rather than rubs (quarters), so each page is a room, and each juz is a house. Surah Al Baqarah required 3 houses, because it spans the first 2 juz and part of the 3rd. It’s useful when my Qur’an teacher tests me by asking me from a random verse and I have to recite what comes after that.
I still need to repeat the verse over and over when first learning it, so I get the flow and tajweed (recitation rules) down. Once I have a handle on the verse, I put it in its place in the memory palace.
Since it’s a foreign language to me, I’d find it much harder to retain the order of the verses unless I have some context of the meaning of what I’m saying. I know many people do memorize it that way, but I would personally find it very difficult.
Of course, as Muslims, we believe there are blessings in memorizing and reciting the Qur’an even without understanding. But ultimately it’s a book of guidance, so it’s up to us to reflect on the meanings also.
