Artist spends three years writing out entire Quran on transparent silk pages

Turkish-born Azerbaijani artist Tünzale Memmedzade has won international acclaim for her latest piece, a hand-etched Quran made out of silk that took hundreds of hours over three years to create.

Ms Memmedzade said that she got the idea after learning that although over the centuries the Muslim holy book has been transcribed onto various different materials, including carpet, silk had never been used.

Using the official version of the text used by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs, the artist painstakingly wrote out the entire work, using over 50 metres of material.

The gold-and-black silk Quran is her masterpiece, the 33-year-old told local news, expressing her joy at being the first to complete such an undertaking.

Calligraphy is a major artistic expression in the Islamic world which has developed over the centuries thanks to the art form’s close ties to the Quran. Today, dozens of different scripts exist.