Hundreds of participants from Russia and beyond gathered today in Tatarstani capital for the International Islamic Conference "Kazan Basmasi" organized by Tatarstani Muftiyat, Center for Research on Quran and Sunnah and Bolgar Islamic Academy. 

 

The participants of the theological conference will discuss the Kazan edition of the Holy Quran (Kazan Basmasi), its historical value and future and study the possibility of enlisting the Kazan Basmasi in the UNESCO World Cultiral Heritage list.

 

"In order to enter the UNESCO list it is necessary that our Kazan historical Quran, which has had dozens of editions, went through the international Quranic certification.

It will be passed when the examining sccholars express their opinion and will outline ways to do it," one of the organizers of the forum, an Islamic scholar Farid hazrat Salman, said in an interview with TASS.

 

The first printed Koran was published in Kazan in 1803 by order of Catherine II. 

Thanks to the joint efforts of the state and the Tatar clergy, printed versions of the Kazan Quran were widely circulated not only among the Muslims of the Russian Empire, but also the neighboring Muslim states, and later all over the world.

 

Today, however, due to some objective reasons, the geography of the distribution of Kazan Basmasi remains limited to the Republic of Tatarstan, the Russian Federation, the CIS countries and Muslim diasporas from among the CIS countries in the far abroad.