148 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam an entry point into isnads: a channel for instant pedigree and universally valued “lineage” that connected transmitters to the time of the Prophet and his community. The devotion of the Seljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk to this pursuit attests to the appeal of badlth transmission for nonspecialists. Nizam al-Mulk transmitted badlth in Marw, Nishapur, Rayy, Isfahan, and Baghdad and held dictation sessions in Jami‘ al-Mahdl as well as in his own madrasa in Baghdad. Acknowledging his limitations as well as his motivations, he stated, “I know that I am not well suited for riwaya, but I want to bind myself to the caravan of the haditb of the Prophet of God (lakinni urldu an arbuta nafsl ‘aid qitdr al-naql li-hadith rasiil Allah).”* Haditb transmission was thus compelling to diverse sectors of society: Arabs and non-Arabs, recent converts and lifelong Muslims, and the rulers and the ruled. It appears an unremarkable truism that women’s badlth participation flourished as a result of the triumph of traditionalism as orthodoxy. Yet the fact that women did participate and excel in a traditionalist milieu was not historically inevitable. Another likely scenario might have been the further marginalization of women in the conservative social environments often associated with the formation of orthodoxies across religious traditions. It is a paradox, then, that traditionalism can be credited with the reenlistment of women as religious scholars in the classical Muslim world. Examining the selected mnbaddithas within their political, social, and religious contexts elucidates how traditionalism supported women’s badlth participation. I first consider the impact of this ideology in the case of Shuhda and present a reconstruction of her scholarly career in Baghdad in the late fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries. I then transition to Damascus, where Zaynab bint al-Kamal and ‘A’isha bint Muhammad flourished in the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries. Their careers are largely archetypal, and I focus on different aspects of their accomplishments. In so doing, I aim to fashion a collective portrait that illuminates the histories of numerous other female haditb scholars and also to convey some of the exceptionality of each of these women. Ta’rikb al-Madaris , 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1990). See also Stephen Humphreys, “The Expressive Intent of the Mamluk Architecture of Cairo: A Preliminary Essay,” Studia Islamica 35 (1972): 69-119. For further analyses of urban elites’ support for traditionalism through badlth transmission, see Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo , and Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus. 8 Ibn al-jawzl, al-Muntazam , 16:304.