The first Quran to ever be made from silk fabric has been finished in Afghanistan.
To complete the masterpiece, 38 calligraphers and artists worked for almost two years to finish all of 610 pages of the Islamic Holy book.
Bound in goat leather and weighing 8.6 kilograms (19 pounds), the Quran was produced by hand in a painstaking process.
Turquoise Mountain, the creator, began work in 2006 in Kabul with the aim of preserving ancient Afghan craftsmanship.
"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.
The Holly book will be kept in a specially made hand-carved walnut wooden box to protect its delicate pages from the elements at Turquoise Mountain's offices, which are in the restored Murad Khani, a historic commercial and residential area in Kabul's oldest district.
There Turquoise Mountain has trained thousands of artisans with the support of Britain's Prince Charles, the British Council, and USAID.
