Uthman Taha is an internationally acclaimed Arabic calligrapher who has handwritten the Mushaf Al-Madinah, which is the copy of the Qur’an issued by the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an, and thus read by hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Background: Sheikh Taha was born in 1934 near Aleppo, Syria. He developed a passion for calligraphy when very young, but had to wait until he moved to Damascus (where he gained a BA in Shariah at Da­mascus University) before he met the chief calligra­pher in Syria, Muhammad Badawi Al-Diyrani, and the Iraqi calligrapher, Hashim Al-Baghdadi. He then travelled to Istanbul, where he met the most celebrat­ed calligrapher of the time, Hamid Al-Amidi, from whom he received certification.

Copying the Qur’an: The written copy of the Qur’an is known as a mushaf, and it took Taha ap­proximately three years to copy one out. He wrote his first copy in 1970 and in total has written out over ten copies. The most significant one was the one as­signed to him in 1988 by the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an in Madinah. This copy is the one printed by the King Fahd Complex and distributed to millions of pilgrims every year. It is the most common copy of the Qur’an available worldwide. Taha has copied out six different textual variants including Warsh (used in Morocco and Al­geria), Hafs (worldwide), Duri (Africa and Sudan), and Qalun (Libya).