Srinagar: A 26-year-old man from the remote Bandipora district here has hand-written the Holy Quran on a 500-metre-long paper scroll — a calligraphic feat achieved through painstaking work over three months.
Mustafa-Ibn-Jameel, a resident of Tulail area of the frontier Gurez in the north Kashmir district, embarked on the project last year.
“It took me two months to arrange for the special art paper for calligraphy. I got that from a factory in Delhi as it was not available in the open market. Then I also got a special calligraphy ink for it,” Jamil told PTI.
Jameel said he then started the calligraphy part — done in Naskh font — which took him three months and the project was concluded in June this year.
“Border designing took about a month. I designed it with about 13 lakh dots. Then the whole roll was laminated,” he said.
Jameel said the project was completed in Delhi with a cost of about Rs 2.5 lakh.
“It was my heartfelt desire to write a Quran copy,” Jameel said, adding, initially he took calligraphy to improve his handwriting. “Then, I started writing a few chapters of the Quran and felt so happy in doing so that it occurred to me that I should use my God-given gift to do something unique.”
The copy of the Quran has 450 pages and each page is 14.5 inches wide, he said.
Jameel said his family was always appreciative of his passion and kept supporting him throughout the project.
He said he wants to pursue his art further and is working on some other projects which he did not want to share yet.
Jameel’s art has won him recognition from the Chennai-based Lincoln Book of Records — an independent NGO initiated to admire and promote hidden talents of the people across the globe.
“I feel so happy to have taken this task and to have completed it. I have put on paper my love for the Quran and calligraphy. You can gauge my passion from the fact that I used to spend about 18 hours a day on it,” he said.
He expressed hope that his feat can inspire youths from Kashmir to take up calligraphy — an art which has over the years been on the wane in the Valley. (With PTI Inputs)
