22 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam the Companions, it is vital to distinguish the classical Sunni orthodox position, which, after the fourth/tenth century, promoted the view that hadith preserved the exact words of Muhammad, from the more realistic concession of many earlier transmitters and hadith critics who appreciated the futility of trying to reproduce Muhammad’s words verbatim.'’ In the earliest decades of transmission, the concern was more with accurately preserving meaning ( riivaya bi’l-ma'na) rather than the exact words of Muhammad’s pronouncements ( riivaya bi’l-lafz). This historical perspective permits a deeper appreciation of the extent to which men and women of the earliest generations were engaged in crafting the historical memory of Muhammad and his community. For this chapter, I draw on the biographies of 112 female Companions and the traditions ascribed to them.1 Each woman’s contribution to the hadith corpus is in some way linked to her personal experience in the first Muslim community (umma). Some of the women are prolific, and biographers dwell on their celebrated roles. Others are more obscure and recognized only through their narration of one or two traditions. When evidence from hadith narratives and in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period , ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., 308-16 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Al-Hasan b. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-RamahurmuzI (d. 360/971) provides an overview of this discussion among early authorities and summarizes the views of leading scholars with respect to the importance of conveying the meaning of a report (irrespective of whether the transmission was verbatim). He reports that al-Shafi‘I (d. 204/820), for example, accepted the non-verbatim transmissions of those who were learned in Arabic and had legal understanding (fiqh) because he was confident that they could convey the meaning with fidelity. He adds that this tended to be the majority view among early scholars as well as among several Companions. See al-Muhaddith al-Fasil bayna al-Rawi wa ’l-Wa ‘i (Beirut: Dar alFikr, 1971), 530-31. 9 See also Jonathan Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 23, for similar observations about the aims of early hadith transmission. Although there is no definitive fist of Companions, male or female, there have been attempts by classical Muslim authors and contemporary academics to compile a count. Ibn Hajar recorded the names of 1,545 women out of a total of 12,304 Companions. This number reflects the editor’s enumeration in the 1977 edition of Ibn Hajar’s al-Isaba fi Tamyiz alSahaba , ed. Taha Muhammad al-Zaynl (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyat al-Azhariyya, 1977), vols. 12-13. Ruth Roded in her modern study of women in Muslim biographical collections arrived at the number 1,232 after sifting through Ibn Sa‘d’s al-Tabaqat, Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr’s (d. 463/1071) al-Isti‘ab fiMa ‘ rifat al-Ashab , and Ibn Hajar’s al-Isaba (see Women in Islamic Biographical Collections [Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994], 19, footnote 22). Not all of those named in these lists are known for transmitting hadith. As outlined in the introduction, this chapter deals with the controlled set of all female Companions who narrate in the canonical six Sunni collections and selected works attributed to their authors as well as women who narrate in the Muwatta ’ of Malik b. Anas, the musnad collections of al-Humaydl and Ahmad b. Hanbal, the Sunan of al-Dariml, and the Sahih of Ibn Khuzayma.