The Classical Revival i37 Nishapuri ‘ulamd ’. Al-FarisI also commemorates Khadlja al-Sabuniyya (d. 488/1095), one of Fatima al-Sabuniyya’s sisters, and notes that her father and siblings took charge of her hadith learning. 1 While she too acquired a reputation for piety, she did not attain the rank of her sister Fatima, described earlier in the chapter. The brief biographies of Fatima bint ‘All b. al-Muzaffar, who used to busy herself with teaching children, and Ruhak (d. 491/1098), the daughter of the jurist Abu al-Qasim al-Saffar who attracted students because of her unusual name (which presumably would be featured in the students’ isnads after they heard hadith from her), provide further windows onto the culture of hadith learning." The publicizing of women’s accomplishments through assemblies, dhikr sessions, individual classes, and genres such as biographical works, chronicles, and compilations devoted to women’s learning and teaching (e.g., in the faiva ’id and mu ‘jam al-shuyiikh genres) is significant not just as a marker of the revival of women’s participation in hadith learning. Such developments also reflect the evolving criteria of membership in the ‘ulamd ’ class and its increasingly visible constitution along the lines of kinship networks. Public assemblies and individualized teaching sessions wherein teaching and learning were conducted in formalized and hierarchical terms according to criteria of scholarly standing and seniority were important channels for the socialization of participants into the culture of the ‘ulamd’. Whereas lay people were welcome as students into such forums, generally only those properly qualified as ‘ulamd ’ could actually teach. Biographical dictionaries and chronicles functioned not just as records of individuals and their actions, but equally importantly as documentation of occupational status and demarcation of the boundaries of the ‘ulamd ’ class. An individual’s inclusion in biographical compilations, such as al-Dhahabl’s Siyar A ‘lam al-Nubala ’, often commemorated his/her socialization into the scholarly class. Rituals of initiation and belonging to the scholarly class and the texts that legitimized and glorified their accomplishments breathed 91 al-Sarlfinl, al-Muntakhab, 219. 93 For their biographical notices, see al-Sarlfinl, al-Muntakhab , 420 (Fatima bint ‘All b. alMuzaffar) and 224 (Ruhak). 94 Ahmed El Shamsy, citing the example of Umm Hani’ (1376-1454), a revered transmitter during the Mamluk period, notes that women could not be properly socialized into the predominantly male discourse. The examples studied here reveal that women availed themselves of alternative avenues for socialization into the ‘ulamd ’ class. See El Shamsy, “The Social Construction of Orthodoxy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology , ed. Tim Winter, 97-117 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 103.