Al-Muhaddithat:

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Al-Muhaddithat

• Female Scholars of Hadith

Nicolle Johantgen Josy Sable
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History

• The influence of women in the transmission and
  interpretation of hadith is extensive, and dates
  back to the earliest transmissions which occurred
  immediately following the death of the Prophet.
• Muhadditha female scholar of hadith.
• (Muhaddithatplural)

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The first Muhaddithat

• Muhammeds wives acted as the first female
  transmitters of hadith and were accorded a great
  deal of reverence and respect as spiritual
  leaders.
• The greatest number of hadith transmitted by a
  women are attributed to Aisha, who narrated at
  least 2,200 individual hadith, mostly on the
  topic of the personal life of the Prophet. Some
  scholars attribute up to one-fourth of existing
  hadith to her.
• She is known as The Mother of the believers for
  her closeness to the Prophet and her tireless
  work recounting stories of the Prophet and
  explaining Muslim traditions.

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Compilation

• For over 100 years after the death of Muhammad,
  individual hadith were preserved through oral
  transmission.
• This led to many disagreements between individual
  hadith and led to the necessity of collecting
  them in written form.
• Economic advancements in the Abbasid period
  fostered the development of the Ulema, or
  scholarly class whose members undertook the task
  of studying hadith.
• Many such texts were compiled on the authority
  of female transmitters.

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Verification

• Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be
  trusted as authentic and which had been invented
  for political or theological purposes.
• They developed a system known as the science of
  hadith, which scrutinizes the isnad, or chain of
  transmissions, for each tradition.
• Each narrator and listener in every isnad must
  conform to a long list of qualifications for the
  hadith to be considered legitimate.

Many well-known male scholars were accused of
inaccurate reporting and even fabrication in
their transmissions of hadith. It is interesting
to note that no muhadditha has ever been accused
of such an offense.
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The Study of hadith

• The belief of spiritual equality between men and
  women which is central to Islam made spiritual
  scholarship available to women in an otherwise
  patriarchal and repressive society(Surah 3335).
• However, generally only women from wealthy
  classes with educated (usually male) relatives
  had the means available to acquire an extensive
  spiritual education.
• Hadiths were passed down orally from teachers to
  students, who would later learn the meaning of
  the traditions they memorized.
• Many hadith scholars began their training at a
  very young age, sometimes receiving ijizas
  (certificates of memorization that allowed
  scholars of hadith to transmit the work to
  others) as young as 1-5 years old.

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Women as teachers of hadith

• The Ijiza system allowed for the direct transfer
  of authority between teacher and student.
• Women excelled in faithfully interpreting and
  transmitting hadith selections, and because of
  the authority passed on to them from their
  teachers, were able to teach men.
• Female students of hadith most commonly taught in
  their later years, although they may have studied
  side by side with men all of their lives.

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Significance

• Many of the most renowned scholars among men have
  depended on, and praised the scholarship of their
  women teachers. The women scholars enjoyed
  considerable public authority in society, not
  exceptionally, but as the norm.
• Recent scholarly attention to the histories of
  the Muhaddithat have revealed that there were at
  least 8,000 of them in the 1,400 years following
  the death of the Prophet.
• Every major collection of hadith lists the names
  of many women as immediate authorities of its
  transmissions.

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Aisha bint Abu Bakr

• Aisha was born in 614 and died in 678. She was
  considered Muhammads most beloved wife, and one
  of the first converts to Islam. She outlived him
  by 46 years.
• This gave her the opportunity to become a
  respected source of wisdom and veracity to the
  surviving leaders and Caliphs.
• She also had a greater ability to do this based
  on both her upbringing (as a Jahila woman) and
  her status as wife of the Prophet.
• She narrated 2210 hadith. All but the the last
  hadith on your sheet were narrated by Aisha.

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Umm al-Darda

• Died in 704 were not sure when she was born,
  but she was old enough to have known those who
  were companions to the Prophet.
• She held a key position in the hadith movement
  and was highly respected. She was described by
  men who worked with her as a traditionalist,
  virtuous, pious, and intelligent.
• She taught in both Damascus and in Jerusalem. She
  had both male and female students, among them
  some of the most highly respected scholars of the
  time.
• She was so well-loved that the jurist of the time
  who was most highly regarded in Damascus would
  still listen to her speak in order to learn.
• She also had many hadith originating from her
  authority.

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Zaynab bint al-Kamal

• Zaynab was born in the mid 13th century and died
  at the age of 94. She lived most of her life in
  Damascus.
• She received her first Ijiza at the age of one,
  and continued to collected a large amount of them
  until she reached age 12.
• She most likely had an uncle who helped her into
  the scholarly world, and who arranged her Ijiza
  certificates. We do know that he attended them
  with her and took notes for her.

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Zaynab bint al-Kamal

• Zaynab transmitted one major work that is still
  used today, and at least 10 surviving minor ones.
• Like so many other woman scholars, especially
  after the advent of Islam, Zaynab didnt begin
  teaching until her 70s, when she was at an age
  where she could more appropriately be around men.
  She taught both men and women.
• Zaynab taught until she died she was still
  teaching at 94!

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Aisha bint Muhammad

• Aisha was born in the earlier part of the 14th
  century and died at age 94.
• She was a student of Zaynab late in Zaynabs
  life. She received her first Ijiza at the age of
  four. She came from a long line of hadith
  scholars, though it is unknown who in specific
  helped her along.
• She transmitted around 20 known works, including
  several still-used and well regarded ones.
• She began teaching in her 60s, for the same
  reason as Zaynab. She had a large number of well
  known and well thought of students, and also
  taught until she died.

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Muhaddithat

• Often had male family member to bring her in to
  hadith study.
• Often regarded more highly than male peer
  scholarsperhaps in the same way that women today
  have to be better at, for example, mathematics.
• Have been studied before! Though male Islamic
  scholars are becoming more interested in the
  Muhaddithat, most of the information about Zaynab
  and Aisha bint Muhammad was found in several
  biographies written over the centuries.
• Arent rare. Though they werent as numerous as
  the male hadith scholars, there were still 8,000.

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Bibliography

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•  
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•  
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