'Save China's oldest hand-written copy of Quran'

By: Khadija Chinese

BEIJING, China: Chinese experts on Islamic studies and ancient book protection have called for immediate measures to prevent the country's oldest hand-written copy of the holy Quran from further damage.

The holy Quran was revealed in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

The 30-volume, 867-page Islamic scripture wrapped in a silk cover is kept in a safe box at the Jiezi Mosque in Salar autonomous county in northwest China's Qinghai province.

According to Xinhua preliminary authentication suggests it was written between the eighth and 13th centuries.

“If the Quran is not meticulously protected, it might decay in 10 years,” said director of religious administration in Xunhua county Ma Qing. “We're in urgent need of funds to build a safer, better ventilated, air-conditioned storeroom for the document.”

The shabby storeroom at the mosque, according to Ma, has a pond next to it and was humid most of the time.

“In fact, some of its pages have already turned yellowish and fragile, and some words are less legible,” he said adding that the text was extremely valuable as it was China's only Quran written by Muslims in Arab countries.

According to legend, the ancestors of the Salar group - one of 55 minority ethnic groups in China - left their homeland in Central Asia in the 13th century with a white camel laden with a Quran to escape inter clan wars. After a long and arduous journey, the white camel disappeared, reappearing the next day in the form of a wellspring.

The scripture was sent to Syria for display at an exhibition in 1954 and praised as a "rarity" in today's world.

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