Introduction ii be utilized for meaningful historical inquiry into the first century of Islam.16 Scholars have articulated diverse approaches to testing the authenticity of Muslim tradition. These include assessments of patterns in the provenance and regional circulation of badith, quantitative analyses of transmission patterns, and investigations into the social and historical developments that gave rise to particular traditions. 1 These methods have yielded varying results, with a few studies convincingly dating selected traditions to the first decades of Islam. 1 6 Several scholars have concluded that there is a “genuine core” to which much of Muslim tradition belongs.1 Others have maintained, however, that overlays of forgeries and tampering with the “core” make it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the real from the forged. My own view is that judicious use of badith can yield valuable insights into a range of issues in early Islamic history. Accordingly, I analyze the reports ascribed to early Muslim women to understand the Muslim communal memory of the role of women as transmitters. As such, I am not concerned with decisively establishing whether the women to whom the reports are ascribed actually uttered them. Because the authoritative 16 Two landmark Western studies that are critical of the authenticity of hadith literature are Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies , translated by C. R. Barber and S.M. Stern (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), vol. 2, and Joseph Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959). See also Harald Motzki (ed.), Hadith: Origins and Developments (Burlington: Ashgate Variorum, 2004) for a valuable collection of formative articles in Western hadith studies. 17 A few such studies are as follows: G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance, and Authorship of Early Hadith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Michael Cook, “Eschatology and the Dating of Traditions,” Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 1 (1992): 23^47; and Herbert Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period (Richmond: Curzon, 2000). 18 See, for example, Harald Motzki’s articles “Musannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-San‘anI as a Source of Authentic Ahadith of the First Century AH.,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 50, no. 1 (1990): 1—21, and “The Prophet and the Cat: On Dating Malik’s Muwatta ’ and Legal Traditions,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998): 18-83. 19 For example, Donner in Narratives of Islamic Origins presents an extensive and plausible argument for this view. 20 A similar methodology has been effectively adapted in other recent studies of early female personalities. See, for example, Jamal Elias, “The Hadith Traditions of ‘A’isha as Prototypes of Self-Narrative,” Edebiyat 7 (1997): 215-33; Franz Rosenthal, “Muslim Social Values and Literary Criticism: Reflections on the Hadith of Umm Zar‘,” Oriens 34 (1994): 31-56; Denise A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); and Denise Soufi, “The Image of Fatima in Classical Muslim Thought” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1997).