The Classical Revival 113 the superiority of oral transmission, its primacy was essentially theoretical. In practice, the written text served on a par with oral transmission to perpetuate the authoritative transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. 1 5 The increased incorporation of women into hadlth circles was an unintended consequence of this evolution in the form of transmission. Written transmission mitigated some of the requirements that had hindered women’s access in the period of decline, namely the emphasis on legal acumen and training and the imperative for traveling (rihla) to hear and learn directly from teachers. 3. The proliferation of ‘ulamd ' kinship networks, correlated with the diffusion of ‘Abbasid political and military authority, also propelled women’s reentry to hadlth transmission. Beginning in the third/ ninth century, ‘Abbasid authority became increasingly fragmented, a process accelerated by the rise of semi-independent dynasties such as the Samanids (204-395/819-1005) and the Ghaznavids (367-583/977-1187). These developments transformed the political, military, and economic fabric of Muslim societies. 1 6 Among other shifts, they led to a strengthening of ‘ulamd ’ family networks that in turn could better withstand the fickleness of political and military arrangements under disparate governing dynasties and that helped safeguard the culture of the scholarly elite. Here, women’s participation was not just about the transfer of hadlth. Their achievements became part of the cultural and social capital that enabled the survival and flourishing of the scholarly elite. While Al-Khatlb al-Baghdadl’s Taqyld al- ‘Ilm is among the clearest testimonies to the scholarly effort to grapple with the relative value of written and oral transmissions. Also see alRamahurmuzl, al-Muhaddith al-Fasil , 363-402 and al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, Ma'rifat ‘Ulum al-Hadith (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1977), 256-61, for their documentation of the debate over the uses of writing in hadlth transmission. See also Michael Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” Arabica 44 (1997): 437-530, for a thorough study of the debates over writing in early Islam. The second volume of Marshall Hodgson’s Venture of Islam is devoted to analyzing these changes from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. My use of the terms “cultural capital” and “social capital” draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s articulation of these concepts. He divides cultural capital into the embodied state (e.g., accumulated habits, cultivation, and dispositions) and the objectified state (e.g., material cultural goods such as art, texts, and technology which represent the achievements of a particular class). Social capital consists of networks and relationships which can be converted into economic advantage for a class (Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”). A detailed application of Bourdieu’s ideas regarding cultural and social capital is his landmark study of contemporary French society, Distinction: A Social Critique of the