Bilad-Shinq?? (Mauritania) is often portrayed as a preeminent center of classical Islamic knowledge transmission supposedly untouched by modernity. From Sahara to Mecca and from Abu Dhabi to California, bearing the nisba of “al-Shinq??i” often signals strong claims to authentic scholarly and religious authority. While previous scholarship concerned itself mostly with Bilad-Shinq??’s local history and distinctive methods of learning, in this paper, I seek instead to demonstrate how it has become, in less than two centuries, a label and symbolic/representational space of excellence in Islamic knowledge with a truly global reach. I uncover the dynamics of transformation of an Arabo-Islamic cultural world known for encyclopedism, memorization of the core Islamic texts, mastery of the Arabic language, especially poetry and mobility. Drawing on a variety of historical, literary and anthropological sources, the paper historicizes the rise and mythologization of Shinq?? as a peerless center of traditional sacred scholarship. Focusing further on the changing ways in which Shinq??i’s scholars articulated their discursive tradition in different spaces and times since the 19th century, I examine how their label is being today invoked and re-invented by a number of local and global Muslim actors under changing circumstances. Through the exploration of what I call Global Shinq?t, I ambition to illustrate the ways in which Muslim Saharan societies assert their relevance and scholarly authority on a global scale, ultimately documenting how the so-called peripheries of the Muslim world shape central traits of what we have come to identify as global Islam. The somewhat imagined Bil?d Shinq?? emerges in this paper as a global center of learning and religious authority whose reputation is being enacted, performed, reproduced and sometimes contested in various places around the globe, including in Mauritania itself.