Request for Rare Quran Uncovers Minnesota Tie
By Tad Vezner, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Jan. 4–Rep.-elect Keith Ellison wanted a Quran upon which to swear his oath to national office today. So he left a message with the head of the Library of Congress’ Rare Books and Special Collections division.
A man who, it turned out, happened to be born and raised in the district Ellison will represent in Congress.
“It was completely coincidental,” said Mark Dimunation, who in 1998, at the age of 46, assumed responsibility for the largest collection of rare books on this half of the globe: An 800,000-volume collection that contained an English-translated, 18th-century Quran once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president and a collector of books in all topics and languages.
“I didn’t so much leave Minnesota as pursue my career elsewhere,” Dimunation said.
Proud to be born and raised in St. Anthony and a 1970 graduate of St. Anthony Village High School, Dimunation received a B.A. in history from Northfield’s St. Olaf College in 1974. He went on to get a master’s in history from the University of California-Berkeley and instead of finishing up a doctorate assumed care of the university’s rare book collection. “I thought I was being clever, and ended up having a whole new career,” Dimunation said.
He went on to care for the rare book collections at Stanford University and Cornell University, before the Library of Congress job opening reverberated across the industry.
While he claims not to know exactly why he was hired, he admitted that at first his responsibilities appeared overwhelming.
“I guess I just wasn’t prepared for the enormity of the collection … the seriousness of the job, the sense of responsibility,” Dimunation said. “Everywhere I turned, I saw books I’d never seen in my entire career, that I’d only read about, some of them the only copies in the entire world.”
The collection dates back to the age of papyrus; its European-bound works begin with a vellum-printed Gutenberg Bible, one of three known to exist.
“I’m drawn more toward personal items,” Dimunation said: “The small grammar of Abraham Lincoln, (when he was) teaching himself how to write.” Or the diary of a mother and daughter who followed Susan B. Anthony around the country as she campaigned for suffrage.
“There are books that are quite modest that changed the world,” Dimunation said. “Not (a bad gig) for a kid from Minnesota.”
Dimunation himself will walk Jefferson’s Quran across the street to the Capitol and bring it back after Ellison’s ceremonial swearing-in today.
An English translation of the Arabic, the two-volume, leather-bound Quran was published in 1764 in London, a later printing of one originally published in 1734.
It was acquired in 1815 as part of a more than 6,400-volume collection that Jefferson sold for $24,000 to replace the congressional library burned by British troops during the War of 1812.
“It was a real bargain,” Dimunation said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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