Iraqi aims to write worlds longest copy of Quran

Hussein al-Kharsan Kharsan says the scroll is to be between 5,500 and 6,000 metres long, or 3.4 and 3.7 miles.His aim, he says, is to set a Guinness World Record.If that happens, it will be another entry on the Islamic holy text, which expressly prohibits the consumption of alcohol, in a record book conceived by the managing director of a brewery.The copy of the Quran was supposed to be shown this year, when Najaf was to be the Islamic Capital of Culture, but that project has been postponed indefinitely amid serial delays and allegations of corruption.It has not however stopped Kharsan, who graduated from Baghdad Universitys college of fine arts, from continuing his work inside a religious school in Najaf, despite pains in his neck and back from long hours of carefully writing out one verse after another.At the beginning, the agreement was to finish the work in six months, on the basis of writing three pages out of 503 pages of the Quran every day, Kharsan said.I succeeded at the beginning and worked for 16 hours a day for more than two weeks until I started suffering pains, he said.The doctor asked me to stop working for about a month but I refused and told him that I work with the blessings of the Quran. Now I take pain-killing pills and work for five hours a day, which means I need about a year to finish.Kharsan, who began participating in Arabic calligraphy competitions when he was just nine years old, writes on four pieces of white paper that are each 1,500 meters long.