154 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (d. 22.4/838). There were at least two other women who narrated badlth on al-Zaynabi’s authority: Kamal hint Abl Muhammad al-Samarqandi (d. 558/1163f.) and Tajanna al-Wahbaniyya (d. 5 75/1180). 24 Neither, however, attained the fame that Shuhda claimed toward the end of her life. Shuhda’s transmissions from Ja‘far b. Ahmad al-Sarraj (d. 500/1106), an acclaimed HanbalT badlth transmitter, poet, and jurist, were also vital to her reputation. A prolific author, he was praised by al-Dhahabl for his profound knowledge and expertise in a range of subjects, especially grammar, Qur’anic readings, and poetry." Given his death in the year 500, Shuhda would have been taken to him by the time she was eighteen. Toward the end of her life, Shuhda served as the last living connection to al-Sarraj. As Ibn al-jawzl reports, “the last one to transmit from him was Shuhda bint al-Ibrl. I read his [al-Sarraj ’s] book, the one called Masari' al‘Usbshaq, to her by virtue of her having heard it directly from him.”26 The fact that Ibn al-Jawzi viewed her as a reliable authority for this work (even though she received the certification for it at a young age) signals that she must have learned the compilation later in life. This strategy of a priori certification, counterintuitive by our modern standards, was a salient characteristic of classical badlth transmission and appears to have been promoted with greater frequency during the Mamluk period. Another of Shuhda’s prominent shaykbs was Abu Bakr al-Shashl (d. 507/1114), a leading jurist of the Shafi‘1 madhhab and a successor to Abu Hamid al-Ghazzall’s (d. 505/1111) post in the prestigious Nizamiyya madrasa. Shuhda’s association with him commands our attention at multiple levels.2 In identifying her as someone who transmits from al-Shashl, al-Dhahabl distinguishes her with the honorific (laqab) “the pride of all women” (fakbr al-nisa ’). Indeed, the mere mention of her name in this context is remarkable; the practice of naming only the most prominent students in the biographical notices of leading authorities such as al-Shashl often resulted in the omission of women from these lists. Second, since Shuhda likely acquired certification from al-Shashi in the context of his appointment to the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, their relationship exemplifies 23 Shuhda’s name occurs in the isnad of a published edition of al-Amwab, see Ibn Sallam, Kitab al-Amwal (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr, 1975), 10. 24 For Kamal’s biography, see al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 20:420 and for Tajanna’s, see Siyar , 20:550-51. 25 al-Dhahabl, Siyar , 19:228-31. 26 Ibn al-Jawzi mentions this in the context of his obituary of al-Sarraj; see al-Muntazam , 17:103. 27 For al-Shashl’s biography, see al-Dhahabl, Siyar , 19:393-94.