Is Mnemonics an End in Itself?: Sensory Mnemonic Learning of the Qur’ān in Southwestern Morocco

• Autores: Romain Simenel
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. 4, 2024, págs. 607-628
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Are mnemonic devices an end in themselves as regards meaning? Do memorization techniques serve only memory, or do they have longer-term effects on other aspects of the mind? If so, what are those effects, and what is the role of the body? These are a few questions that are suggested by the ethnographic study of Qur’ān memorization in southwestern Morocco. In the Sous, a Berber region that is known throughout the Maghreb for the Sufi masters it has produced, children, from the age of five, are sent to madrasas each day, where they learn the Qur’ān “by heart.” To do so, they make use of a variety of mnemonic techniques that draw on their imagination as they are guided by the prosody of recitation. The Qur’ānic wooden tablet serves as the medium of the sensorial experience of learning the sacred text, providing the child with space for creativity and reflection. This article proposes to retrace the process of Qu’rān memorization from the recitation of the alphabet to the learning of chanting and writing the sacred text; it will highlight the effects of mnemonics on the acquisition of cultural abilities related to Sufi practices and on metamemory in a bilingual context.