The Chinguiti Museum and World Heritage
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The twelfth session of the Cities Heritage Festival, hosted this year by the ancient city of Oualata, coincided with UNESCO’s registration of the Mauritanian heritage site on the World Intangible Heritage List. The relationship between the two events is not arbitrary, as it is known that the scientific traditions in the country of Chinguetti (Mauritania and its neighboring regions in the western Sahara) started from the ancient historical cities that the Mauritanian government celebrates annually at the highest level, which are the cities of Oulata, Tichit, Ouadane, and Chinguetti.
Since the seventh century AH, these cities have formed major scientific and religious edifices, and their radiation has extended to all parts of the desert coastal area, and their repercussions have reached the Arab Levant. However, the prohibition was mainly linked to the Bedouin lifestyle prevailing among the inhabitants of the region that is currently called Mauritania.
The only known exception here is Bedouin societies, which usually lack a developed written scholarly culture. The well-known historian Ibn Khaldun used to say, “Science is an urban industry,” and that the Bedouins are the furthest people away from “urban development.” He explained this ruling by saying that they are busy maintaining a minimum living and do not have the practical conditions to engage in learning and studying. What has happened in Mauritania since the beginning of the eleventh century AH is the emergence of a major scientific and literary renaissance in a Bedouin tribal community that made mobile homes in tents. Here it must be noted that the middle Mauritanian society was able to adapt its scientific and educational traditions to the Bedouin community through the system known as the Mahjara.
The prohibition is at the same time an encyclopedic university that includes various knowledge and sciences familiar to the Arab-Islamic heritage, an integrated system of life and social upbringing, and a basic determinant of local social traditions. In terms of educational methods, the Mahbarah revolves around a main sheikh who has a comprehensive encyclopedic culture that enables him to teach the various sciences of interest to his students through a precise gradual system that starts from the texts of grammar, language, and poetic systems, then the biographies and praises of the Prophet, all the way to the specialized lessons of jurisprudence and fundamentalism, in addition to the works of theology and logic. And perhaps the natural and mathematical sciences. While the prohibited system combines individual and group training through wide flexibility in presenting educational material, it is based on memorization, memorization, and memory training, and uses rhyming and summarizing techniques to circumvent the difficulties of reading and researching in an extremely difficult and fragile environment. However, most of the museums (and many of them were spread throughout the country) are available in precious libraries that sometimes include rare manuscripts and books preserved in wooden boxes that are transported on the backs of camels with the Bedouins.
In this context, I point out, for example, that the book “The Necessary in Grammar” by the well-known philosopher Ibn Rushd was found in one of the Mauritanian private libraries (the library of the people of Sheikh Sidiya), and it was verified and published, and it was thought to be lost before the orphan copy of it was found in this library. It moved for a long time in Bedouin settlements before settling in the city of Boutalmit. Similar treasures remain undiscovered in historical cities and in Bedouin and rural sanctuaries. Arab and foreign researchers wondered about the secret of the Mauritanian exception, that is, about the reasons for the success of the prohibitory system in the Shinqeeti Bedouin society. Some of them explained this exception by the continuation of urban scientific traditions in the Bedouin community following the continuous migrations from the caravan towns to the spaces linked to the new trade routes to the east and south.
It is not our concern here to dwell on these historical backgrounds. Rather, it is sufficient to point out that Al-Mahjara was the main point of cultural radiation in the Chinguetti desert, to the extent that some major critics and literary historians considered that the modern Arab poetic renaissance began from Mauritania in the twelfth century AH, and some of them called Mauritania is called “the country of a million poets,” and this term has spread widely.
It goes without saying that the Chinguetti campus has declined significantly in recent years, despite government efforts to preserve it through the formation of a ministerial sector specialized in private education and the establishment of a modern university campus and a higher institute for Islamic studies open to professors and students of the campuses. One of the prominent sheikhs of the Mahjara professors considered that it was organically linked to the Bedouin way of life, and therefore its decline was inevitable with the end of the Mauritanian Bedouin era, repeating sarcastically that Al-Hadari might be an educated intellectual, but he could not keep up with the Bedouin of the world.
*Mauritanian academic
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