The Hazrat Sultan mosque in Astana has introduced a virtual tour on its website www.muslim.kz/ru/virtual-tour. The option offers virtual guests 3D panoramas of what is inside the biggest mosque in Central Asia.
The name of the mosque, which was first opened in July 2012, means the Holy Sultan and was proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. During the opening ceremony, the head of state presented a full set of a well-known Silver Quran and made it available to the public. The same present was later given to the Moscow Cathedral Mosque at its opening in 2015.
The Silver Quran was created in 2010 by the Moscow Mint of the Ministry of Finance of Russia. The holy book appears to be the absolute copy of the Uthman Quran manuscript dated from the seventh century. The book is made of the highest 999 probe of silver and incorporates 162 pages. This is the biggest manuscript preserved to modern times. Several pages of the similar manuscript are represented in Medina, Saudi Arabia; Cairo, Egypt; Istanbul, Turkey and London, Great Britain.
The original copy is the property of the Russian Federation and is stored in St. Petersburg’s Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Science. The Institute was established by Russian Emperor Peter the Great and was named the Asian Museum.
