The Successors 99 generation (known as kbabar al-wahid, pi. akbbdr al-ahad): These constituted the vast majority of baditb, and the opponents of the traditionists decisively rejected basing law and creed on such flimsy evidence. One scholar suggested that no less than twenty witnesses in each generation should have transmitted a tradition before it could be deemed valid. Other scholars demanded that criteria used for testimony ( shabada ) should also be applied to baditb transmission ( riwdya ) to guard against forgeries and negligence. Based on a Qur’anic verse (2:282), jurists equate the testimony of two women with that of one man in many cases. When applied to baditb transmission, such criteria would diminish the probative value of traditions conveyed by single female transmitters. The cases of the Companions Fatima bint Qays and Busra bint Safwan, which I have analyzed in a separate article, reveal how the conflation of the standards for testimony ( shabada ) and baditb transmission ( riwdya ) produced gender-based disparagement of women’s transmission. The cumulative effect of such heightened scrutiny manifests itself in canonical baditb collections, all authored by male scholars. Comparison of the incidence of female narrators in two works of comparable length and scope reinforces the earlier observations. Al-Bukhari, reputed as one of the most stringent compilers, included approximately 7,395 baditb in his Sahib. Abu Dawud, on the other hand, who is not known to have been as strict as al-Bukharl, included approximately 5,270 traditions in his Sunan. Whereas al-Bukharl’s work features approximately 40 women as transmitters, Abu Dawud’s contains close to 170. Similarly, there is a significant difference between these two works with respect to the numbers of women in the various links of their isnads as shown in Figure 4. In terms of the quality of the narrators themselves, the difference between al-Bukhari’s and Abu Dawud’s implied selection criteria becomes pronounced primarily after the Companion generation. In the Companion generation, both compilers cite the baditb of prominent and prolific female Companions, among them the wives of Muhammad, as well as women 108 For an extensive discussion of such reports and a defense of their use in Islamic law, see QadI Barhun, Khabar al-Wahid ft al-TashrV al-Islami wa-Hujjiyyatuhu (Casablanca [?]: Matba‘at al-Najah al-Jadlda, 1995). In contrast to ah ad, reports, those that are transmitted by numerous narrators in each generation are known as mutawatir reports. According to some scholars, there are only a handful of these reports. 9 el-Omari, “Accommodation and Resistance,” 234. 110 See my article “Gender and Legal Authority.” The numbers given here do not account for repetitions of traditions or citations of similar variants in either collection.