Saad Mohammed's intricately decorated, hand-drawn scroll is 700 metres long (2,296ft) - which means, when it is unrolled, it is almost twice as tall as the 381-metre-high Empire State Building.

And up until now, Mr Mohammed, who lives in the town of Belqina, north of Cairo, has funded every centimetre of his passion project.

But he has big hopes for the scroll.

The school drop-out has also handwritten other books

It would take about five minutes to walk the distance covered by the length of the scroll

He believes the scroll is long enough to make it into the Guinness World Records, which has yet to set a record for the largest handwritten Koran.

But in order to achieve his dream and make it into the record book, he needs some help with the cost of entering.

"This Koran is 700 metres long, and of course that's a large amount of paper," he told Reuters TV.

"I self-funded this project for the past three years - and I'm an average person. I don't have assets or anything."

Mr Mohammed has funded every penny of the costs so far

The cost of the paper alone is not insignificant

But he hopes to get help so he can enter the Guinness World Records

(Pics & story : BBC News)