One of the only Korans ever made from silk fabric has been completed in Afghanistan — a feat its creators hope will help preserve the country’s centuries-old tradition of calligraphy. Each of the Islamic holy book’s 610 pages was produced by hand in a painstaking process that took a team of 38 calligraphers and artists specialising in miniatures nearly two years to finish. Bound in goat leather and weighing 8.6 kilograms (19 pounds), the Koran was produced by Afghan artisans, many of them trained at British foundation Turquoise Mountain in Kabul. “Our intention was to ensure that calligraphy does not die out in this country — writing is part of our culture,” Khwaja Qamaruddin Chishti, a 66-year-old master calligrapher, told AFP in a cramped office inside Turquoise Mountain’s labyrinthine mud-brick and wood-panelled complex. With the Koran considered a sacred text, calligraphy is highly venerated in Islam and Islamic art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the only Korans ever made from silk fabric has been completed in Afghanistan — a feat its creators […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n