Committing the entire Quran to memory produces a hafiz, and it is a mass phenomenon rather than an elite one: millions of people hold roughly 6,236 verses in memory, an enormous number of them children who complete it before adolescence. The method is oral and relational — a student recites to a teacher who corrects, and the teacher recited to their own teacher, giving a chain, an ijaza, claimed back to the Prophet. This means the text has two independent transmission lines, written and memorised, which is a genuinely unusual arrangement among world scriptures and is central to Muslim confidence in its stability. Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, Iran and Pakistan each produce thousands of huffaz a year, and national competitions are broadcast with substantial prizes. The cost is real: full memorisation typically takes several years of daily work, and in some madrasa systems it displaces general education, which is a live argument about children's futures rather than about theology.