112 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam follows, I introduce three decisive trends and discuss them in detail in the course of this chapter. REASONS FOR THE REVIVAL 1 . In the last quarter of the third/ninth century, the growing acknowledgment of a baditb canon, marked by the widespread acceptance of collections such as the Sahibs of al-Bukharl and Muslim, lent stability to the field of baditb transmission. This development effectively closed the “gates of baditb discovery” and paradoxically opened the field to the participation of nonspecialists in the transmission of baditb literature. Women, who were previously excluded due to rigorous standards for critical transmission, benefited from this more inclusive atmosphere. 2. Until the early second/eighth century, baditb transmission was primarily oral, and writing served as an adjunct to memory. Between the second and third centuries, the relationship between oral and written transmission in baditb learning evolved perceptibly. By the fourth/tenth century, written transmission of baditb was prevalent and writing and orality became complementary and often equivalent methods of safeguarding authoritative transmission. Though some scholars continued to insist on 15 For a thorough analysis of the processes and impact of the canonization of baditb, see Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007). The Sahih movement is also treated in a more summary fashion in the following works: Muhammad Abdul Rauf, “ Hadith Literature - 1: The Development of the Science of Hadith ,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., 271-88 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 2:237-43; and Siddlql, Hadith Literature, 43-75. 14 For further analysis of this development, see Paul Heck, “The Epistemological Problem of Writing in Islamic Civilization,” Studia Islamica 94 (2002): 85-114. Heck notes that prior to the stabilization of hadith in the form of the six canonical collections (ca. mid-third century), writing was used in hadith circles as an aid to memory and not in place of memorization as it evidently came to be within a century after the promulgation of the canonical six books. This does not preclude the written compilation and circulation of works such as al-Jami’ fi al-Hadith of Ibn Wahb (d. 197/813). Rather, the pedagogy of hadith transmission focused more on accurate memorization to preserve the tradition rather than on writing (Heck, “Epistemological Problem of Writing,” 98). See also Gregor Schoeler, Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, trans. Shawkat M. Toorawa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) and Hirschler, Written World in the Medieval Arabic Lands for more extensive analyses of the development of the cultures of reading and writing in early and classical Muslim societies.