20 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam wealth of explicit details and subtexts, this report is an invaluable resource that extends our understanding of early baditb transmission beyond the often sparse, formulaic data provided in Arabic biographical dictionaries and chronicles. Combining information from the available sources yields a panoramic view of female baditb participation. This chapter focuses on the female Companions, the most influential women of early Islam. Their lives constitute the templates upon which successive generations of Muslim women modeled their piety and service to Islam. Muhammad’s decisions in their cases are the basis for myriad rulings. The female Companions are remarkable in yet another respect. In shaping the narrative of baditb reports, they author texts that eventually become secondary scriptures for Muslims.1 2 While both male and female Companions narrate baditb, women’s contributions are especially noteworthy because their voices are comparatively muted in early and classical Muslim legal discussions. In speaking of authorship of baditb by the Companions, I draw on Muslim collective memory and communal understanding of their roles. The historicity and authenticity of attribution of individual narratives are of secondary importance to the fact that Muslim tradition itself assigns these roles to the Companions and in so doing creates an extraordinary space for women’s public religious participation. Two examples elucidate how women’s authorial voices function in baditb reports. In the first, the narrator simply repeats words attributed to Muhammad: Salma Umm Rafi‘ said, “The Messenger of God said, ‘A house without dates is like a house without food.’”3 In the second, the narrator may weave the dramatic backdrop for her story for a strikingly different effect. Khawla bint Tha’laba said, “I swear by God, that He, most High and Majestic, revealed the beginning of Surat al-Mujadila with respect to me and Aws b. Samit. I was with him, and he was an old man who had become ill-tempered and easily vexed. He came to me one day, and we argued about something. He got angry and said, “You are to me like my mother’s back” [i.e., he forswore sexual relations with her]. He went off and spent some time with his people. Then he came back and wanted to be intimate with me. I said, “No way. By God, in whom I put all my trust, you will not come to me after what you said until and 1 For a more detailed discussion of the scriptural value of hadith, see Aisha Musa, Hadith as Scripture (New York: Palgrave, 2008). 3 Muhammad b. Yazld b. Maja, Sunan (Cairo: Dar al-Hadlth, 1994), 2:1105, #3328.