Sacred causes: Preserving ancient copies of the Holy Qu’ran

A man in Lahore has preserved several ancient manuscripts of the Holy Qu’ran, some of which are more than 600 years old. The collection also includes a lightweight, rare version of the holy book written on rolls of cloth with gold ink. Asif Rafi, a young resident of Lahore, belongs to a family that has been preserving and binding ancient and ageing copies of the Holy Qu’ran for three generations. They have manuscripts which are three to four hundred years old and have been kept with great care.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Rafi said that his grandfather, Muhammad Bashir Ambalvi, used to preserve ageing copies of the Holy Qu’ran. “Oftentimes, very old or shaheed copies of the holy book undergo the natural wear and tear process, therefore, my grandfather used to replace the affected pages with new ones,” he said. “He would copy the calligraphic style of the original copy when rewriting the verses on a new page.” The manuscripts were then bound and placed in the Qu’ran Mahal of Sufi Barkat Ali Ludhianvi in Salarwala, Faisalabad. “My grandfather used to request people to hand him over very old or shaheed copies of the Qur’an which he could preserve. During the preservation of the ancient manuscripts, he used to make sure that the same type of paper was obtained.”

Rafi added that the tradition of writing the Holy Qu’ran by hand is diminishing over time as there are modern printing presses which can print and publish thousands of copies of a draft after receiving approval from the government. As for handwritten copies of the Qu’ran, they are and verified by Huffaz. “My grandfather wrote a Holy Qu’ran weighing 50 maund, a process which took him five years. The services of many other writers were also obtained,” Rafi explained. This unique version of the Holy Qu’ran is saved in the Qu’ran Mahal in Faisalabad.

That apart, Rafi also has a small copy of the Holy Qu’ran written on a cloth roll. “This Qu’ran is written with gold ink and weighs only one tola. Since the manuscript is more than 600 years old, the first few shaheed paras are missing,” he said. “In the past, whenever a Muslim king went for a war or any other dangerous mission, he would tie this copy of the Qu’ran on his arm. This is a rare manuscript that may not exist anywhere else in Pakistan.”

Asif Rafi added that due to the acute shortage of people who can preserve the Qu’ran, Pakistani Muslims either drown their shaheed copies in a river or take it to a designated place set up by the Punjab government for recycling. “The manuscripts which we have saved are the most important asset of our lives and we will not give it to anyone,” he said. “We will pass it on to our children and the tradition will continue from generation to generation.”