142 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam otherwise fractured city.10" As Bulliet notes, in spite of the bitter, destructive strife perpetuated by these factions, they were united in their approach to religious learning. More specifically, it was the uniform approach to the system of the transmission of religious knowledge that maintained the fabric of Nishapuri society even as it was being torn apart by religiopolitical factionalism. Therefore, this discrepancy may only partly be explained by the fact that al-FarisI, the main source for the women’s biographies, was himself a Shafi‘1. Another possible explanation for the disparate rates of Hanafl and Shafi‘1 female participation arises from Bulliet’s study of the ‘ulama ’ elite of Nishapur. He describes the Hanafis of fourth- and fifth-century Nishapur as the more conservative old guard, whose representatives in the ‘ulama ' class espoused rationalism over traditionalism in the derivation of Islamic law. The Shafibs, on the other hand, represented the newly emergent religious elite, one that was more egalitarian in its approach to non- Arabs and more progressive in its social vision. Bulliet hypothesizes that these differences manifested themselves in terms of social organization and an ethos uniquely associated with each of the madbhabs. It may well be that the higher rate of women’s hadith participation among the Shafi‘1 families was due to a more gender-inclusive approach to religious learning espoused by leading Shafi‘1 ‘ulama ’ as represented by Abu ‘All alDaqqaq and Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayrl, Fatima’s father and husband, respectively. In this respect, it is worth reiterating the prescriptive value of al-Sulami’s collection of women’s biographies in his Dbikr al-Niswa alMuta ‘abbidat, a collection for which there is no Hanafl equivalent. The compilation itself may have been intended to legitimize and bolster the 105 For this reason, it would be a mistake to read the absence of Hanafl female transmitters as an extension of an overall Hanafl antipathy toward hadith learning inherited from their Kufan predecessors such that Hanafis of Nishapur would not have inculcated a culture of hadith transmission among their family members. Bulliet, Patricians , 35-46. The growth of AslTarism and the Shafi‘I-Ash‘ari alliance in Nishapur further fueled the animosity of the Hanafi-Mu‘tazill faction. Bulliet points out that the sectarian rivalries in Nishapur as well as in other cities of Khurasan masked deeper social and political rivalries. Before the Shafi‘I-HanafI bifurcation in fourth- and fifth-century Nishapur, the ranks were split roughly along the Kufan-Medinese legal divide. Bulliet, Patricians , 31-33. 107 Roy Mottahedeh in his review of Patricians adopts a more cautious stance regarding the impact of ‘ulama’ factionalism on local life, thereby highlighting that much research remains to be done before conclusive comment on dynamics between groups of ‘ulama ’. Mottahedeh, review of Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History , by R. W. Bulliet, Journal of the American Oriental Society 95, no. 3 (1975): 491-95.