Old Manuscript of Quran Returned to Egypt from UK
According to Egypt’s Ministry of Culture, the manuscript includes the 16th part of the Quran, written by Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh Al-Ghuri one of the rulers during the Mamluk era.
The over 500-page manuscript, which is one of the rarest documentations of the era, had been smuggled from Egypt.
Egypt’s Minister of Culture, Inas Abdel Dayem stated in a press release on the weekend that retrieving the manuscript was a part of the ministry’s plan to preserve Egyptian identity and return “what has been lost and stolen.”
Abdel Dayem added that the manuscript is considered the fourth document Egypt retrieves within a year, according to arabic.euronews.
Head of Egyptian National Library and Archives Hisham Azmy said that this one of a kind document was planned to be “sold secretly last October, as the auction house did not announce selling it publicly.”
He added that after providing the proper documents that prove Egypt’s authority over the manuscript, the house approved returning the authentic document to its homeland.
According to Azmy, there are more than 60,000 manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Turkish on various subjects such as religion, arts and sciences kept at the Egyptian National Library and Archives.
