120 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam authority, the corollary principle that the hadith canon was effectively closed after the compilation of the two Sahib collections gained currency among hadith scholars. Explicitly articulated in the seventh/thirteenthcentury manual of Ibn al-Salah, the idea was resisted even then at a theoretical level, but practically speaking, it accurately described the reality of hadith transmission in the classical periods The acknowledgment of the authority of these collections in turn had implications for the transmitters of traditions. Among the many important consequences of the works of these six compilers, the ones most relevant to this analysis are (1) the effect of canonization on the social uses of hadith and (2) hadith learning gaining purchase as cultural and social capital. During the pre-classical/formative period, prior to the collection of authoritative hadith compilations, aspiring hadith students had to meet criteria more stringent than those of the classical period. As discussed in Chapter 2, in this pre-classical milieu, comprehension of the legal application of hadith and critical knowledge of traditionists ( ‘ilm al-jarb tea 7ta'dil) were necessary for accomplished hadith transmitters. Before the acceptance of a hadith canon, transmitters could more easily introduce previously unknown hadith into the corpus of widely circulated traditions. By the late third/ninth century, however, the compilation and widespread dissemination of authoritative hadith lent stability to the field, safeguarded against forgeries, and rendered it superfluous for transmitters of the works to be legal scholars and critical traditionists themselves. As Eerik Dickinson has astutely observed: When a later scholar transmitted an authentic hadith also found in one of the great collections, the authenticity of the hadith was entirely based on the declaration of the earlier compiler and not on the transmission of his more recent counterpart. Thus, the modern transmitters of hadith were in such cases entirely removed from the equation.4' 40 Ibn al-Salah, Muqaddima, 19. Zayn al-DIn al-‘lraql (d. 806/1404) and Ibn Hajar al‘Asqalanl are among those who disagreed with Ibn al-Salah’s assertion that it was no longer possible to add to the “canon.” See Zayn al-DIn al-‘lraql, al-Taqyid wa ’l-Idah li-md ‘Utliqa wa-Ughliqa min Muqaddimat Ibn al-Salah (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Kutub alThaqafiyya, 1991), 27—29, and Ibn Hajar al-‘AsqalanI, Nukat 'ala Kitdb Ibn al-Salah (Riyad: Dar al-Raya, 1988), 1:270-72. 41 Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn al-Salah al-Shahrazuri and the Isnad,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 122, no. 3 (2002): 481-505, at 488. It is important here to emphasize the distinction between ascertaining authenticity and upholding accuracy in transmission. Whereas determination of authenticity required specialized knowledge of the traditionists and the transmitted texts, accurate transmission hinged more on a person’s reliable oral or written reproduction of a text, a task in which women excelled during the classical era.