66 Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam piety attracted students and earned the admiration of chroniclers. In the decades after the Companions, a mere eight women are commemorated in the classical Sunn! collections for narrating more than just one or two badith and for doing so within a relatively broad transmission network. With the exception of Safiyya bint Shayba (d. end of the 90s), these women fall into two categories: (1) those whose knowledge of badith is predominantly linked to a particular female Companion, and (2) those who gained renown as ascetics. The four women in the former category, Zaynab bint Abl Salama al-Makhzumiyya (d. ca. 73/692), ‘Amra bint ‘Abd al-Rahman (d. 98/716), ‘A’isha bint Talha (d. ca. 101/719), and Fatima bint al-Mundhir (death date unknown), followed closely in the footsteps of the female Companions in the nature of their transmission activity. Three others, Umm al-Darda’ al-Sughra (d. ca. 81/700), Mu‘adha bint ‘Abd Allah (d. 83/702), and Hafsa bint Sirin (d. after 100/718), represented new models of female learning and piety as teachers and leaders in the emergent ascetic movement. Within this cohort, each woman’s profile naturally differs because of a host of variables such as her network of teachers and students, her geographic location, and not least, her personality (a variable that is more difficult to ascertain). Here I discuss four of these women.1' By highlighting features common to all of them as well as a few traits unique to some, I document how a few female Successors acquired exemplary reputations in this arena. Their stories, evincing some of the gender-based differentiation that came to characterize badith transmission, also set the stage for the stark decline and near disappearance of women from the historical records in the post-Companion generations up to the fourth/ tenth century. SUCCESSORS WITH KINSHIP-DERIVED PROMINENCE The legal discernment and methodical collection of Prophetic reports evinced by ‘Amra bint ‘Abd al-Rahman distinguishes her among the women whose knowledge was kinship-based. Credited with sixty-six reports on a broad range of topics, ‘Antra benefited from her special access to ‘A’isha bint 1(1 My dissertation details the contributions of each of these eight women and their learning networks. See “Shifting Fortunes,” 122-48. Her biography appears in the following sources: Ibn Sa‘d, al-Tabaqdt , 8:353; Ibn Hibban, Kitab al-Tbiqat (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1998), 2:428; al-MizzI, Tabdhib , 35:241-43; al-Dhahabl, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala’ (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risala, 1981), 4:507-8; and Kahhala, A ‘lam al-Nisa ’, 3:356-57.