More on inspiring Pashtun leader Badshah Khan and his non-violent red shirt army of Khudai Khidmatgar “servants of god” http://t.co/PCWzF7mV
France suspends military ops in Afghanistan after ANA soldier kills four of their troops, strongest reaction yet to “rogue” ANSF attacks
@abumuqawama re: The Fog of Peace http://t.co/VWChNb82 Seems questionable to say Quetta Shura and Lashkar-e-Taiba share a common purpose?
Our story on the world’s biggest Koran and its calligrapher http://t.co/OsIKAAYm
@Faysal_FreeGaza there are different ways of transliterating the name into the English alphabet; Koran is the Reuters style, not a mistake
Afghan calligrapher creates world’s largest Koran
KABUL (Reuters) – 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 (90 inches) by 1.55 meters (61 inches) 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 centre that houses it.
The previous claim to the title was for a 2 meter by 1.5 meter copy unveiled last year in Russia’s Tatarstan region.
The Afghan Koran weighs 500 kg (1,100 lb) 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 colorful 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.


