JEDDAH: An electronic Qur’an is being introduced at Makkah’s Grand Mosque to help blind and visually impaired Muslims.
Advanced braille-based technology is being used to create the Haramain electronic Qur’an, allowing blind and visually impaired visitors and pilgrims to read and access the verses of Islam’s holy book more easily.
The device, which is nearly six inches long and four inches wide, means users can move smoothly between pages using high-quality braille cells.
“Each cell can accommodate six dotted points, as well as 10 digital keys that allow the users to enter the page number for swift navigation, as well as rotation buttons. They can also scroll the lines on each side of the texts in braille,” Al-Thubyani told Arab News. “This service will be provided very soon. We are nearly finished with preparing shelves for these devices to be at the reach of the sightless worshippers who visit the holy mosque.”
He added that the Grand Mosque offered paper copies of the Qur’an in Braille in addition to the new devices. “Each mus’haf (Qur’an copy) consists of six volumes. We also have booklets in braille tailored for blind children to help them learn about monotheism and the basics of Islam.”
Al-Thubyani said that the project’s first phase, which took nearly 10 months, focused on the Qur’an. There will be another phase in which the elucidations and explanations of the Holy Qur’an will be added using the same technology.
(Arab News)
MADINAH: The Prophet’s Mosque Library in Madinah is seeking to enrich visitor knowledge through its 180,000 books.
The library, which is affiliated with the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, is considered one of the most important places that visitors to the Prophet’s Mosque are keen to visit. It aims to offer people the opportunity to acquire skills and expertise, as well as enrich their knowledge, through its diverse range of books in more than 21 languages.
The library houses around 180,000 books and 71 classifications, most of which are books on the prophetic biography with 86 titles, and other specialist administrations and departments.
It also includes a smart digital library offering computers with e-books. Authorities have allocated a location for the library on the northwestern roof of the second expansion of the mosque.
(Arab News)
Hyderabad’s famed Salar Jung Museum, which boasts the largest one-man collection of antiques and art treasures in the world, is setting up an exclusive gallery for Islamic art.
More than 2,500 rare Islamic artefacts currently displayed in various parts of the museum as well as some that have never been showcased in public will find a place in this gallery. At present, these treasures of Islamic art are scattered over various galleries under Indian, Middle Eastern, European and Far Eastern art collections. The exclusive Islamic art gallery will present all these forms of Islamic art at one place.
The Islamic art gallery was to open much earlier but the work was affected because of Covid-19. The work has been, however, expedited now and the gallery will be ready for inauguration by the end of 2022. The art collection at Salar Jung Museum is so huge and varied that only three other museums in the world — the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum (both located in the United Kingdom) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, — can rival it. Salar Jung Museum is the second-highest revenue-generating museum in India, next only to Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial. The Islamic art gallery is expected to further increase its footfall.
The idea of having an exclusive Islamic art gallery germinated when as many as 413 Islamic artefacts from Salar Jung Museum became the centre of attraction during the ‘Glimpses of Courtly Splendour’, an exhibition of Indian Islamic art held in Sharjah, UAE, in 2009.
Spread over 26,000 square feet on the second floor of the museum’s eastern block, the Islamic art gallery will showcase such artefacts as swords, ceramics, body armours, manuscripts, copies of the Holy Quran, celestial globes, astrolabes, textiles, jades, porcelains and glass objects with Quranic inscriptions and much more. Though most of the objects relate to Islam, some have links to Muslim kings and nobles, poets, writers and historians.
Among the items that will be a feast for the eyes are the oldest folio of the Quran on a parchment in the Kufi script belonging to the ninth century, a copy of the Holy Quran from the 13th century, 365 copies of the Quran in Kufi, Naskh, Nastaliq, Raihan and Thuluth scripts, six astrolabes and celestial globes, salient emblems of Muslim science, a miniature book stand (rehal) in jade with the name of Shams ud-Din Iltutmish (the Delhi Sultanate ruler belonging to the Mamluk dynasty), a fruit knife with a jade hilt and inlaid with precious stones belonging to Queen Nur Jahan, archer rings of Mughal Emperor Shahjahan, which are in dark green jade, and autographed manuscripts with the seal and signature of Mughal emperors Akbar and Aurangzeb.
(Khaleej Times)
Riyadh: Saudi Arabia will build 14,000 km of railway across country and is also preparing a new investment law to address the needs of investors, its Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih said.
“New rail that will criss-cross the kingdom and add to the network we already have,” Mr. Falih told a mining forum in Riyadh. He also said his ministry was working on a new investment law that would address the needs of investors.
The law would be enacted this year, “hopefully sooner”, Mr. Falih said.
Saudi Arabia has also become a challenge for Dubai after it announced last year it would give foreign firms until the end of 2023 to set up headquarters in the country or risk losing out on government contracts.
(The Hindu)