Srinagar, Aug. 18 -- On a summer morning in Kilshey, a small refugee village tucked deep in the Gurez valley of Bandipora district, a man sits at a long wooden desk, bent over a stretch of creamy art-grade paper that seems to unroll endlessly across the room. His fingers are smudged with black ink, his eyes narrowed with focus, his body hunched but steady despite hours of stillness.

This is Mustafa ibni Jameel, a self-taught calligrapher who has spent much of his young life in quiet devotion to an ancient craft. And in front of him lies what he claims is the world's longest handwritten Hadith manuscript: a scroll that stretches 1.3 kilometres when unfurled in its entirety.

For now, only 108 meters of this mammoth work have been laminate...