A few decades ago, navigation meant paper maps stored in your glove compartment. When GPS devices and smartphones emerged, the obvious next step might have been to digitize those maps; to scan them, store them as images or PDFs, and allow users to pan and zoom.
Instead, modern navigation tools look nothing like paper maps. They automatically detect your location, incorporate live traffic data, provide contextual insights, and reroute you dynamically. You can travel from point A to point B without ever touching the device.
Now consider how we engage with the Quran digitally. We moved from physical mushafs to images of their pages on a screen, still flipping page by page. Some enhancements such as search and audio playback have been layered on, but fundamentally, the experience has barely progressed. We are still changing the medium, not rethinking the experience.
At Tarteel, we are reimagining how Muslims engage with the Quran from the ground up. Doing this well requires solving a problem that most digital products never face: rendering a sacred text with absolute textual fidelity, deep interactivity, and strict spatial consistency, all at once. This post explains why existing digital approaches fall short and how we built a new rendering system to overcome those constraints.
The Tarteel app currently reproduces four published Quran editions, each supporting tajweed coloring, mistake highlighting, hidden words, and precise word-level interaction. All editions are bundled directly into the app without requiring additional downloads. Users experience smooth animation while reciting, accurate spatial consistency, and instant contextual feedback - all without needing to think about the engineering underneath. That invisibility is intentional. When done correctly, the technology disappears, allowing the focus to remain on the Quran itself.
Surprisingly cool
libraford
