Thumbnail size copy of Holy Quran discovered in Canterbury, England

A copy of the Quran the size of a thumbnail and believed to be around 120 years old has been discovered.

A copy of the Quran the size of a thumbnail and believed to be around 120 years old has been discovered.

Raschid Sohawon, the chairman of the Canterbury mosque in Giles Lane, was given the unusual item 40 years ago by a stranger when he was browsing an Arabic bookshop in Finsbury Park. 

But, after recently noticing some of the smudges in the text – which is thought to contain a staggering 84,000 words – he started to wonder just how old it is. 

“It looks handwritten and it’s in very old Arabic,” Mr Sohawon said. 

“I’m not sure how old the language used in it is because nowadays everyone writes Arabic in a standardized way. 

He explained that modern copies of the Quran tend to have 13 or 15 lines of text on each page in order to help people memorize it; whereas in the miniature copy there are 18. 

With its front cover missing and pages yellowing, Mr Sohawon says he is reluctant to flick through it as he fears harming the integrity of the book further. 

He added: “You can’t read it without magnifying it because the text is so small. 

“It’s unlikely, even with a magnifying glass, that people would have read them because I think a pocket-sized edition wouldn’t have taken up much more room and would have been a lot more legible.” 

During the same period, there were also similar copies published in Glasgow by David Bryce and Sons, who produced a series of miniature books.