Another interesting article from the Turkish press. It’s encouraging to see the Chinese government embracing Islam’s long history in China and using the state’s assets to preserve this history, after the damage done to Islam during previous hard-line communist government in China.
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=national&alt=&hn=23431
China granted 440,000 yuan ($54,000) to save the country’s oldest (from the 13th century) handwritten copy of the Koran, which is under a risk of erosion and decay.
The handwritten Koran was sent to Syria for display at an exhibition in 1954 and was praised as a “rarity.” Ma Weimin, deputy director of the Qinghai Bureau of Cultural Relics, said the fund will be used to prepare a replica of the exiting Koran for public display and to have a vacuum treatment for the original copy. The 700 year-old silk-covered Koran is currently protected at the Jiezi Mosque in the Salar Autonomous County of Xunhua in Northwest China’s Qinghai Province.
According to China Daily news, the 700 year-old Koran consists of 30 volumes and 867 pages. Six Islamic scholars and ancient book experts were sent to the Jiezi Mosque to examine the oldest handwritten Koran in China in October 2004. During this examination, the experts identified that the storeroom at the mosque was often humid because of a small lake near the mosque. The official said some of its pages were yellow and fragile, and some parts were difficult to read. They warned if necessary protection was not provided, the Koran could decay in 10 years. Reportedly, a special air conditioned room was under construction to protect the handwritten Koran and other Islamic materials. According to local stories told in China, the ancestors of Salar group, one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, left their homeland in the Central Asia due to a war between different clans and settled in the Xunhua region 700 year ago. The stories indicate these Muslims, who escaped from war, brought the Koran with themselves to Xunhua. According to official estimates, there are 30,000 mosques and approximately 50,000 imams in China. About 40 million Muslims live in China.
