The Koran, dating from the 7th century, is gone and farms lie untended and workshops stand silent in the Iranian village.
"Hundreds of villagers from Negel, in Kurdistan province on the Iraqi border, have held a week-long protest at the village mosque demanding officials hunt down the thieves and return the leather-bound Koran to its rightful home.

’The village is dead without its Koran,’ said one young woman dressed in the all-enveloping black chador."