64 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam left their mark as transmitters of reports. This chapter concerns itself with women’s participation from the late first/seventh century until the early fourth/tenth century, a period culminating in the compilation of the major Sunn! hadith collections. A survey of these centuries exposes the continuities and ruptures in relation to the era of the Companions. These transformations were largely a result of the growing role of Prophetic sayings in formulating Islamic law and theology. Not all Muslims agreed that these reports reliably preserved Muhammad’s teachings. Nor was there any unanimity about how to determine their authenticity. The resultant debates about the legal value of the reports gave rise, in turn, to criteria that were disproportionately onerous for women. Many women of the Successor generation continued to learn reports about Muhammad under ad hoc circumstances even in an increasingly regulatory environment. Through encounters with Companions, they actively sought instruction in how to practice their new religion. Karima bint Hammam, for example, reports that she heard a woman asking ‘A’isha bint Abl Bakr whether women were permitted to use henna. ‘A’isha responded that it was not forbidden, but that she herself had refrained from it because the Prophet disliked its odor. This is the only hadith that Karima narrates in the selected Sunni compilations, and chroniclers and hadith scholars do not deem her an accomplished transmitter. A lengthier report describes how some other women acquired religious knowledge from the Companions. Ya‘la b. Hakim (death date unknown) reported from Suhayra bint Jayfar (of the Successor generation): We performed Hajj then went on to Medina. We went to visit Safiyya bint Huyayy and met a group of Kufan women in her company. They said, “If you [i.e., the newcomers] want, you can ask [the questions] and we’ll listen, or if you prefer, we’ll ask and you can listen.” We said, “You go ahead and ask.” So they asked her about matters related to women and their husbands and about menstruation. Then they asked her about a beverage made of dates in clay vessels (nabidh al-jarr ).3 4 5 Like Salim’s narrative on learning ablution from ‘A’isha, cited in Chapter 1, Suhayra’s account helps recreate the early environment for 3 Abu Dawiid, Sunan, 4:76, and al-Nasa’I, Sunan , 8:142. 4 Ibn Hajar, Tahdhlb, 12:398. 5 Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6:380, #26857. Ibn Hanbal includes another, briefer version of this report transmitted via a slightly different isnad (see Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6:380, #26854). For the biography of Ya‘la b. Hakim, see Ibn Hajar, Tahdhlb, 11:349. For that of Suhayra, see al-Husayni, Tadhkira, 4:2243, #9926. Nadwi notes other similar encounters that took place when women undertook the Hajj; see al-Muhaddithat, 73-74.