Conclusions 189 dictated by cultural and religious norms, further constrained their participation. The confluence of these factors resulted in the precipitous decline in women’s hadith transmission as evidenced in their minimal representation in the sources during this period. The noteworthy pattern of initially widespread transmission on the part of women followed by a sharp decline has significant implications for the dating of traditions ascribed to women. Notwithstanding my assertion (in the introduction) that it is impossible to conclusively confirm or deny the historicity of individual isnads that feature early women, my data make a strong argument for the early dating of traditions ascribed to women. As I have shown in Chapter 2, female participation in hadith transmission fell into disfavor, and women began to be increasingly marginalized around the end of the first century. In this context, it is important to emphasize that the badlth studied here have doctrinal, ritual, and legal significance for Muslims." Therefore, forgers would logically select narrators who could in fact claim authority in the milieu in which they were operating. In the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, women’s presence was so marginalized that there would be little incentive to forge an isnad with a female authority during that period. Only ‘A’isha and Umm Salama, the most prominent wives of Muhammad, appear to have claimed enough narrative authority to override the effects of women’s marginalization as badlth transmitters. Although it is possible that many badlth on the authority of ‘A’isha and Umm Salama originated in the second/eighth century or thereafter, it is less likely that other women served as a desirable locus for forgeries in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries.2 3 4 It is important, however, to differentiate between the dating and authenticity of traditions ascribed to female Companions and Successors. The 2 This is with the exception of traditions in the categories of eschatology and the virtues and vices of Companions, which are deemed suspect genres even by the standards of many traditional Muslim scholars. 3 Although the other wives of Muhammad may have claimed a level of prestige similar to that of ‘A’isha and Umm Salama, their low level of participation as compared to these two wives reveals that they were not remembered as prolific transmitters of Muhammad’s practices. 4 In this vein, it should be mentioned here that the doctrine that confers collective immunity from error on all the Companions in their narration of hadith ( ta'dil al-sahaba) was not articulated in the sources before approximately the late third century. It can thus be eliminated as a possible explanation for the interpolation of female Companions in isnads forged in the second and third centuries. My statement about the early dating of women’s traditions is not intended to entirely exclude the possibility of second-century or later forgeries in the name of women. Rather, I intend to highlight a general principle that false attribution of hadith to women after the first century was far less likely.