A Culmination in Traditionalism i59 records that after this union, ‘All b. Muhammad’s fortunes rose, and he entered into the service of the caliph al-Muqtafl li-Amr Allah (d. 555/ 1160). It is probably in this capacity that he acquired the honorific "Thiqat al-Dawla” (i.e., one who is trusted in the caliphal domains). Like his wife and father-in-law, ‘All b. Muhammad studied hadith with some of the prominent hadith scholars of Baghdad, and his teachers are among Shuhda’s shaykhs as well.4 However, ‘All b. Muhammad lagged behind his wife as a hadith transmitter. Al-SafadI is the only biographer who even mentions that ‘All b. Muhammad studied hadith. In this notice, we learn that he also composed poetry and endowed a Shafi‘I madrasa and a Sufi ribat in Baghdad. 2 Through such philanthropy, he promoted the flourishing of institutional education in this period. Shuhda lived into her early nineties, and at the time of her death she was held in great esteem. Ibn al-jawzl, her student, reports that her funeral prayers were conducted in Jami‘ al-Qasr, one of the large congregational mosques of Baghdad. He notes that the screens (presumably of the women’s section) were lifted during her funeral - a practice that would have allowed women to view her before her burial from their section of the mosque.' A number of Shuhda’s female contemporaries were also praised in the historical sources, but there appear to be none who approximate her fame or her range of talents. She looms large in the chronicles as a woman who fully availed herself of a variety of educational avenues available to Muslim women of the classical period. WOMEN AND HADITH TRANSMISSION IN MAMLUK DAMASCUS Shuhda’s extraordinary career is better understood as part of a broader trend when we turn to Zaynab bint al-Kamal (646-740/1248-1339) and ‘A’isha bint Muhammad (723-816/1323-1413), two muhaddithas who thrived in the suburbs of Damascus. The seventy-two years between Shuhda’s death and Zaynab’s birth were marked by radical transformations in the political order of the central Middle East. In 567/1171, the Ayyubid sultan Salah al-Dln (d. 589/1193) decisively defeated the Fatimids, bringing Egypt back into the Sunni fold and under the nominal 41 These include al-Zaynabi, al-Ni‘ali, and Ibn al-Batir. 42 al-Safadi, al-Wafi, 22:96; Ibn al-Athir, al- Kamil. 11:200; and Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazani, 18:100. 43 Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam, 18:254.