CHAPTER 2 The Successors Abu Hisham [Mughlra b. Miqsam (d. ca. 136/753)] reported, “They [i.e., scholars] used to dislike narration on the authority of women except the wives of Muhammad.”1 Abu Bakr al-Hudhall (d. 159/775f.) reported that al-Zuhrl asked, “O HudhalT, do you like hadith ?” He said, “Yes,” and continued, “the manliest of men enjoy it, and the effeminate among them dislike it.”2 The second/eighth century witnessed a contraction in the heretofore unregulated arena of hadith transmission. The first report in the chapter epigraph shows that some scholars came to favor Muhammad’s wives to the exclusion of other women as reliable transmitters. The mere fact of having seen the Prophet no longer conferred sufficient authority on all female Companions to transmit his hadith. And the conversation between al-Zuhri and al-Hudhall in the second report expresses the gender associations that came to characterize this arena. Manly men mastered its challenges while effeminate ones shrank from its hardships. Before women’s widespread exclusion from this domain, however, a few female Successors (the generation immediately after the Companions) 1 Abu al-Qasim ‘Abd Allah b. Ahmad b. Mahmud al-Ka‘bI al-Balkhl (d. 319/931), Qabiil alAkbbar wa-Ma‘rifat al-Rijal (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2000), 1:51. For a biography of Mughlra, see Ibn Hajar, Tabdbib , 10:242^13. 2 al-Khatlb al-Baghdadi, Sbaraf Asbab al-Haditb (Ankara: Dar Ihya’ al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya, 1971), 70. In this section, al-Khatlb al-Baghdadi cites a similar report according to which alZuhrl said, “Only the manliest men engage in seeking out baditb ( talab al-baditb) and the effeminate ones abstain in this regard” (see Sbaraf Asbab al-Haditb , 71). Al-Hudhali is considered an unreliable transmitter. For his biography, see Khalil b. Aybak al-Safadl (d. 764/1363), al-Wafi bi’l-Wafayat (Beirut: Dar Ihya’ al-Turath al-‘ArabI, 2000), 15:202. 63