PM Modi's gift to Supreme Leader of Iran and to President Rouhani

New Delhi, May 24, 2016: The Prime Minister on Monday gifted the Supreme Leader His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei a specially commissioned reproduction of a rare seventh-century manuscript of the Holy Quran attributed to Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph. Written in Kufic script, this manuscript is a prized possession of the Ministry of Culture’s Rampur Raza Library.

The Prime Minister also gifted the Iranian President Dr Hassan Rouhani specially commissioned reproductions of MirzaAsadullah Khan Ghalib’s collection of poetry in Persian,Kulliyat-e-Farsi-e-Ghalib, as also Sumair Chand’s Persian translation of Ramayana.

First published in 1863, Kulliyat-e-Farsi-e-Ghalib is a collection of over 11,000 verses by Ghalib. The reproduction is from a rare copy of the book’s 1867 edition to which some missing pages have been added from a copy of the 1872 edition from Maulana Azad’s personal collection preserved in the library of Indian Council for Cultural Relations in New Delhi.

Translated into Persian in 1715 and copied in 1826, Sumair Chand’s Ramayana is a rare manuscript at the Ministry of Culture’s Rampur Raza Library, and contains over 260 illustrations – possibly the largest number in any hand-written Ramayana manuscript.