Note 59 — HISTORY OF NASSAR, THE SON OF KHOJA HUMAYUN, THE MERCHANT OF BAGHDAD. (continued 2)

Copies of the Kurán are always very beautifully written and often illuminated with great taste and splendour, and are very costly. Poor Shoayb may, however, have been induced to select a Kurán out of the robbers’ booty rather from motives of piety than from any desire of gain.—I may mention that, although the art of printing is now practised both in Persia and Turkey, copies of the Kurán are still multiplied (or were so till very lately) by handwriting, from a superstitious notion that the impure materials employed in printing would profane the sacred text.