138 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam new spirit into older models of feminine piety, thereby establishing exemplars relevant to subsequent generations of women. The activities of Fatima bint al-Hasan al-Daqqaq, Karima alMarwaziyya, and other women of the scholarly elite are part of a historical trend first observed in Khurasan and spreading west toward Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. ‘ The sociopolitical and economic contexts of this trend strongly suggest that women’s increasing participation constituted an important element of the way in which Sunni ‘ulamd ’ of the classical period developed as a social, political, and religious elite. This elite employed the culture of learning to acquire social and political power in a complex historical process profoundly influenced by the fragmentation of ‘Abbasid central authority and the rise of autonomous regional dynasties. Nishapur was one of several major Eastern urban centers that experienced intense competition among those attempting to control it from the late third/ninth century until the early seventh/thirteenth century when the Mongols sacked the city (618/1221). As such, it illustrates how ‘ulamd’ honed their strategies against a backdrop of political, socioeconomic, and military instability. The history of Nishapur’s ‘ulamd ’ is intimately bound up with the city’s rise as a major urban center of Khurasan under the Iranian Samanid dynasty (204-395/819-1005). By the early fourth century, Nishapur had a diversified, prosperous economy supporting a range of socioeconomic groups including the Samanid ruling elite, their military forces, and merchants, traders, craftsmen, and agriculturalists. Most importantly for our purposes, Nishapur was home to increasingly powerful coalitions of Shafi‘1 and Hanafl scholars. As Nishapur’s prosperity and importance grew, so too did rivalry over its control. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Samanids, Slmjurids, Ghaznavids, and Seljuqs deployed a range of military, political, and economic strategies to conquer this city and its environs. The ‘ulamd’ were central to the attempts of foreign dynasties to establish control. Their store of religious knowledge, authority to rule on matters relating to religious practice, and oftentimes charismatic leadership enabled them to command the loyalty of the local population in ways that the foreign ruling elite could not. While ‘ulamd ' had always garnered a measure of control even in times of more centralized ‘Abbasid rule, the 'Abbasid were also accorded their share of 95 This westward trend of engagement with hadith has been treated by Bulliet in Islam: A View from the Edge. Nadwi similarly notes this distinct geographic pattern specifically with respect to women’s participation (see al-Muhaddithat, 254 and 257-58).