160 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam control of the ‘Abbasid caliphate. This victory was soon followed by the reconquest of Acre and Jerusalem from the Crusaders. These triumphs were offset by continuing military engagements with the Crusaders and with the more menacing and destructive Mongol invaders from Central Asia, who not only decimated armies in their path but also annihilated settled populations and urban infrastructures in their westward advance. Ultimately, a force led by the Mongol conqueror Hiilegii sacked Baghdad and terminated even the semblance of ‘Abbasid control in this area. The advance of the Mongols was checked in 658/1260 by Baybars, the leader of the Mamluks, a dynasty that had come to power a decade earlier first supplanting the Ayyubids in Cairo and then expanding to other areas of the central Middle East. Yet the lives of our two Mamluk muhaddithas reveal little, if any, negative impact on their participation due to the Mongols or the Crusades. Rather, over the course of Shuhda’s life and thereafter, traditionalist culture had become entrenched as a means of unifying Sunnis across the socioeconomic, legal, and theological spectrum and was embraced by Ayyubids and Mamluks as well. The success of traditionalism in turn led to the remarkable culmination of women’s hadith education during the late classical period. The Mamluks conquered Damascus, the provenance of Zaynab and ‘A’isha, in 659/1261. By the eighth/fourteenth century, the city was fully incorporated into their domain as a crucial economic and administrative center.’14 In the mid-eighth/fourteenth century, the decline of the Mongol threat and the victories against the Crusaders led to the transfer of military activity farther north to Aleppo, a development that consolidated the civilian functions of Damascus.4 Reorganization of state finances and investment in urban infrastructure increased regional economic stability, which in turn created a hospitable environment for intellectual endeavors. In the tradition of their Seljuq and Ayyubid predecessors, the Mamluks continued to endorse 44 The social history of Damascus under the Mamluks is explored in greater detail in the following sources: El2, s.v. “Dimashq;” Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190-1350 ; and Ira Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 45 Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 20. Adding to the prosperity of Damascus, Tankiz, the Mamluk governor of Damascus (711-39/1311-38), initiated a period of “unequaled splendor and expansion” by endowing schools, mosques, and other institutions. Approximately forty institutions were constructed or renovated under his rule (Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 22). See also Joan E. Gilbert, “Institutionalization of Muslim Scholarship and Professionalization of the 'Ulama ' in Medieval Damascus,” Studia Islamica 52 (1980): 106-7, for a discussion of the expansion and rise of Damascus as an educational center in the centuries preceding Zaynab bint al-Kamal’s life (468-658/1075-1260).