Japanese folding screen depicting a scene from the Tale of the Heike, seventeenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015.
VIEW:
Miscellany
After the death of Muhammad in Medina in 632, the Quran was preserved by followers who memorized its contents. Those who can recite from memory its 78,000 words are known as hafiz or hafiza. There are said to be millions today who have completely memorized the holy text. In 2005 Amina Abdul-Majid, a blind sixteen-year-old Somali, became the first girl to win a Quran recitation competition held in Mogadishu.
Memory is like the moon, which hath its new, its full, and its wane.
—Margaret Cavendish, 1655
