Traditional Quran learning, enriched by modern technology
Quran recitation taught with the precision of a teacher
Makharij is an AI platform for Quranic learning. Awwal, our first app, is the foundation Qaida course for children. It listens and corrects like a Qari: sound by sound, at every practice, wherever your child is.
Every milestone verified by a qualified Qari
Baa + zabar → "ba"
Sound-level, not word-level
Each letter, vowel mark and length is judged on its own. That is where children's mistakes live, and where word-level recognition is blind.
Tajweed-aware
The same letter is judged differently after a madd, before a qalqala, under a tashdeed. Rules are applied in context.
Verified by Qaris
No child advances on the software's word alone. Qualified reciters confirm milestones, and every review trains the next model.
Why Makharij
Recitation learnt in childhood is set for life
"That was a ت, not a ط. Once more."
What a Qari says a thousand times. What Makharij says every time.
A good Qari corrects a child a thousand times before a letter settles into place. Most families cannot get that: there is no teacher nearby, or the teacher is there for the lesson and nowhere near the practice.
Online classes help, but a child practises far more than a teacher can listen. The mistakes made between lessons, a ت pronounced like a ط, a short vowel stretched into a long one, go unheard, and they set. By the time a teacher catches them, they are habits.
We believe every child deserves careful, patient correction in those formative years, whatever their family can reach. That is why our first product is designed with children at its heart.
The platform
Closer to what an in-person teacher gives a child, at every practice
Makharij assesses recitation at the level of individual sounds: each letter, each vowel mark, each rule of tajweed as it is applied. That is what lets it give a child the specific correction a good teacher gives in a one-to-one lesson, for every attempt, every day.
Apps that check whole words miss the mistakes that actually shape a recitation. Makharij is built to hear them, and to say exactly what to change.
It is made for children and the parents who want their daily practice to count, and for the madrasas and schools that teach them. Older learners and adults can use it just as well, but every design decision starts with a young child.
- Children
- Parents
- Madrasas and schools
- Families abroad
First product
Awwal أوّل
Listens and corrects like a Qari
Based on the same traditional syllabus that has been in practice for decades, our foundation Qaida course takes a child from recognising each letter to reading with the basic rules of tajweed.
Awwal follows the sequence used by Qaida primers worldwide, including the widely taught Noorani Qaida: single letters, letters in joined form, the short vowels, tanween, long vowels and madd, sukoon, qalqala, tashdeed, and the rules of noon saakin and meem saakin.
For each item the child says the letter name, the vowel mark, and then the sound itself, so the app can tell whether a mistake is in recognition or in pronunciation, and correct the right one.
- Hears the vowel, not just the letterA بَ said as "bay" instead of "ba" is caught, because that is the mistake children actually make. Every letter, vowel mark and length is checked separately.
- Hear it from a Qari, then try againWhen something needs fixing, the app plays the Qari's recitation of that exact sound so the child hears what it should be, and then listens again.
- Three parts, one itemLetter name, vowel mark, then the sound, so the app knows whether to correct recognition or pronunciation.
- Progress that a Qari has signed offNo child advances on the software's word alone. A qualified reciter confirms each milestone.
- Designed for childrenAwwal is designed with children at its heart: short sessions, patient repetition and progress a child can see. Nothing depends on reading English or Urdu.
- Equally suitable for eldersAdults who never had the chance to learn, or who want to correct how they recite, get the same sound-by-sound feedback, privately and at their own pace.
- بَzabar / fatha
- بِzer / kasra
- بُpesh / damma
How it works
From a child's voice to a correction, in one pass
The child recites. The platform separates the recording into its sounds, compares each one with expert recitation, applies the relevant tajweed rules, and returns feedback a child can act on. Human Qaris review progress at milestones, and every review makes the system better.
The child recites
On a phone or tablet, one item at a time, with the letter shown and heard first.
The recording is split into sounds
A speech model trained on Quranic recitation separates each letter, vowel and length, and compares them with expert reciters.
Tajweed rules are applied
Each sound is judged in its context: after a madd, before a qalqala, under a tashdeed.
Feedback, then another try
The child hears what to fix, hears the Qari say it correctly, and tries again.
Qari Feedback
At every milestone a qualified Qari confirms progress, and the AI learns from every review.
The child's progress is verified by a human Qari at each milestone. Those reviews become the ground truth that trains the next version of the models.
What we're building on
Rooted in tradition. Preserving what matters. Innovative learning.
Rooted in the deen
Built by and for a community that takes Quran education seriously. Reference recitation comes from qualified Qaris, not from generic speech data.
Designed for children
Every decision is made around how children actually learn and stay engaged: short sessions, patient repetition, feedback they can hear, progress they can see.
Privacy first
Children's voices are sensitive data. Recordings are used only to assess and improve recitation feedback, stored with controlled access, and never shared or sold.
Verified by teachers
No child advances on the software's word alone. A human Qari confirms each milestone, and the AI learns from every review.
Technology
Built on speech AI, trained for recitation
Word-level speech recognition cannot tell a good بَ from a bad one. Makharij is built to.
The platform is built on a self-supervised speech foundation model, fine-tuned on a proprietary corpus of Quranic recitation recorded from children and expert Qaris. It recognises the individual sounds of Arabic rather than words, which is what makes mispronunciation detection possible at all.
On top of the recognition layer, a tajweed rule engine interprets each sound in its context, so the same letter is judged differently after a madd, before a qalqala, or under a tashdeed.
Models are trained on cloud GPU infrastructure and served from a cloud-hosted assessment service; see Infrastructure below.
Recordings from children are stored in-region with controlled access and audit logging, are used only to assess and improve recitation feedback, and are never shared or sold. Our full privacy policy for the app will be published with the app.
Model architectures, training data and evaluation methods are proprietary and described only in general terms here.
Infrastructure
Built to run in the cloud, from the first recording to the last correction
Nothing in Makharij runs on the child's device except the app. Recording, assessment, storage and learning all happen on cloud infrastructure, so every practice session benefits from the latest models and every review by a Qari improves the next one.
Training
Speech models are trained on GPU compute in the cloud, on a corpus of Quranic recitation that grows with every verified milestone. Training runs are repeated as the corpus grows, so the platform needs elastic access to accelerators rather than a fixed machine.
Assessment
When a child recites, the audio is sent to a cloud-hosted assessment service that runs the speech model and the tajweed rule engine and returns feedback within the practice session. The service scales with the number of children practising at the same time, which peaks in the evenings and during Ramadan.
Storage and data
Recordings, labels, Qari reviews and learner progress live in cloud object storage and managed databases, kept in-region with controlled access and audit logging. The labelling and Qari review tools that produce our training data run on the same infrastructure.
Why cloud
A platform that learns from its users has to be able to retrain, redeploy and scale without rebuilding. Cloud infrastructure is what makes the data flywheel practical: more verified recitation, better models, better feedback, more families.
Roadmap
One assessment engine, a full path of Quranic study
Each stage builds on the same sound-level recitation assessment, so a child who starts with Awwal can stay with Makharij through Nazra, Tajweed and Hifz. Every stage runs on the same cloud infrastructure, so new courses ship as new models and content, not new systems.
Awwal
Letters, vowels and the basic rules of tajweed.
In development
Nazra
Fluent reading of the Quran with feedback on every ayah.
Planned
Tajweed
Advanced rules, with corrections tied to the rule being broken.
Planned
Hifz support
Memorisation practice with recitation checked as it is recalled.
Planned
About
Founded to give every child a patient teacher
Taimoor Haider — Founder
Taimoor is a software architect with 20+ years of experience building distributed systems, most of it on high-performance in-memory data infrastructure used by enterprises worldwide. He started Makharij out of a concern he shares with many parents: that careful Quran teaching is still out of reach for too many children, not because teachers don't exist, but because access to them is unreliable.
Makharij is based in Islamabad, Pakistan, and works with a small team of technologists and qualified Qaris who record reference recitation and verify learner progress.
Questions
What parents ask us
Is the app available now?
Not yet. Awwal is in development and being tested with a small group. Register for early access and we will invite you as testing widens.
Who is it for?
Children first: the lessons, the pace and the feedback are designed for them. Older learners and adults are welcome too, and the assessment works just as well for them.
Can a young child really use it?
Yes, with a parent alongside at first. Sessions are short, every item is heard and shown before the child tries it, and nothing depends on reading English or Urdu.
Does Awwal need an internet connection?
Yes. Your child's recitation is assessed on our servers, so the app needs a connection while practising. Lessons and the Qari's reference recitation are small, so it works on ordinary mobile data.
How is my child's voice data handled?
Recordings are used only to assess recitation and improve the feedback, are stored with controlled access, and are never shared or sold. The full privacy policy for the app will be published with the app.
How can I stay updated?
Register your interest below, or write to us at info@makharij.ai.
Early access
Be the first to try Awwal
Parents of children learning to recite, and the madrasas and schools that teach them, can register interest now. We invite early families in small groups as the app reaches testing.