The Successors 103 Medinese, and the Meccans directly from their scholars. 1 1 9 Yahya b. Ma‘In, a well-known and discriminating traditionist, considered a man who limits himself to local scholars and does not undertake rihlas for hadith among the four types of men from whom one cannot expect to garner religious knowledge. 1 In another anecdote, the critic Ibn ‘Adi encounters his dead colleague Ibn al-Mubarak in a dream. “What has God decreed for you?” asks Ibn ‘Adi. Ibn al-Mubarak responds, “He has forgiven me because of the travels I undertook in search of hadith ,”121 The aforementioned account about Jabir b. ‘Abd Allah exemplifies characteristics of the rihla that put such an endeavor beyond the capacity of most women of early Islamic society. Jabir’s story presupposes the wherewithal to undertake a month’s journey alone, the possibility of unmediated contact between himself and ‘Abd Allah b. Anls, and independence from daily domestic obligations. While male badith transmitters with the requisite dedication could follow in Jabir’s footsteps, women faced almost insurmountable hurdles. It is telling that many of the prolific female Successors were distinguished by their ties to prominent female Companions and flourished in the period before the rihlas gained importance. Women such as ‘Amra bint ‘Abd al-Rahman and Zaynab bint Abl Salama were authorities mainly for the badith of female members of their own households, and their range was confined to Medina. Even Mu‘adha al-‘Adawiyya, who established her reputation in Basra as an authority for ‘A’isha’s traditions (originating from Medina), is not known to have traveled to multiple Companions to seek out their traditions. Thus, the accomplished early female transmitters represent the localized reproduction of religious knowledge, precisely the type of transmission that the critic Yahya b. Ma‘In deemed unworthy of “true” badith scholars. The marginalization of women from the rihla can be partly linked to religious constraints on women traveling alone. The Qur’an does not explicitly prohibit women’s travel. Rather, in the first two centuries of Islamic history, the period coinciding with the initial decline of women’s hadith participation, the restrictions on female travel can be traced to hadith or to early legal opinions. For example, in a tradition whose versions circulated in the Hijazi and Iraqi regional centers, a woman is prohibited from traveling without her tnahram (husband, male guardian, 119 al-Baghdadl, Rihla, 46-47. 120 al-Baghdadl, Rihla, 47. 121 al-Baghdadl, Rihla, 47. 122 See, for example, the traditions in Muslim, Sahib, 5:1:87-95.