Calligrapher creates the largest Koran of the world in five years
KABUL - Reuters
The largest Koran is housed in a cultural center, which includes 500,000 books.
An Afghan calligrapher has worked for five years to create the world’s biggest Koran, a bid to show the world that Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage and traditions have been damaged but not destroyed by 30 years of war.The lavish book has pages 2.28 meters by 1.55 meters in size, and has been certified as the world’s largest by the Afghan ministry of Haj and Religious Affairs, according to the Kabul cultural center that houses it. The previous claim to the title was for a two meter by 1.5 meter copy unveiled last year in Russia’s Tatarstan region. The Afghan Koran weighs 500 kg and its 218 pages of cloth and paper, bound inside an embossed leather cover made from the skins of 21 goats, cost half a million dollars to create.
Mohammad Sabir Khedri, the master calligrapher behind the project, worked with nine students on a design that combines gold script with millions of tiny colourful dots, forming highly symbolic decorations around the giant pages. “I wanted to use as many tasteful colors as possible to make this holy book look beautiful,” he said, standing beside his enormous creation in a room built specially to house it. Khedri not only created the masterpiece, he managed to keep it a secret for over two years. It was finished in 2009, but the binding and room to house it were not ready until the start of 2012, when it was finally unveiled.
