Mauritanian Adventures
“The main priority for student- all Mauritanians- is to memorise Quran, and once this is done, they move on to memorize other text, like grammar, and most notably fiqh.The main Maliki texts studied there are, from the easiest, al-Akhdari, Ibn Ashir, Rissalat of Ibn Abi Zaid, and finally the Mukhtasar of Khalil, which can take up to 7 years to study!
So of course everything is sharply memorised. Thus if you ask a question to a Mauritanian in fiqh, he will simply give you a direct quote from a book he memorized from cover to cover!
To memorize, they use the lawH, the piece of wood they write their lesson on, then repeat it 300 times during the day (I know its mad! They recite aloud on top of that!), just to make sure it is stored in their long term memory.
They meomrise on average 10 poetry lines a day, 6 days a week. Excellent students memorize up to 20 lines a day. Texts vary from 150 to 2 or 3000 lines. They have such a discipline, mashallah!”
Taken from Mauritanian Adventures
