Women’s Education
Among the many problems confronting Muslims today, one of the most critical is the question of “the status of women in Islam.” Serious effort to understand this issue in depth, and to seek a sound solution, is still lacking. When a problem arises, it is necessary to find its solution, for human nature, as created by God, cannot endure living long with unresolved issues. If we do not offer solutions from the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, then people will adopt un-Islamic solutions. The rapid acceptance of such alien solutions among Muslims shows why apostasy is spreading so quickly among our younger generation, and why, at the very least, their conviction in the truth of Islam and its capacity to guide in the modern age is weakening.
The root cause of this apostasy, hypocrisy, and weakness of faith is the absence of a proper grounding in the fundamentals of the religion for Muslim men and women alike. Islam is the religion of ʿubūdiyyah (servitude to God), and servitude cannot stand without knowledge. Ignorance is incompatible with obedience and submission. We commonly stress the importance of educating men, and furnish arguments in favour of it; but those very same arguments apply without distinction to the education of women. Education raises a person from narrow limitations and enables them to use the capacities God has endowed them with. That women are also recipients of those capacities is conclusive proof that they too are to employ them, and to rise to the higher levels of knowledge and certitude.
The Qurʾān makes no distinction between men and women in respect of education. The Messenger of God (upon him be peace) encouraged women strongly in this matter and made arrangements for their instruction. The outcome was that from the time of the ṣaḥābiyyāt onwards, over many centuries, there were thousands of women scholars, prominent in ḥadīth, tafsīr, fiqh, and other disciplines.
Many women among the ṣaḥābiyyāt, tābiʿāt and later generations attained distinction in ḥadīth and fiqh. A considerable number of them even issued fatwās. People came to them to learn ḥadīth and fiqh. Some recited ḥadīth from their memorisation; numerous ḥadīths survive only through women’s transmissions. Entire lines of jurisprudential rulings in the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī and other schools are built on narrations that go back exclusively to women. Al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī stated that a quarter of the rulings of Islam rest on women’s narrations. There is no other religion in which women played so great an intellectual role in its formative period.
Another fact which must be publicised is that among men there were hundreds who fabricated ḥadīths or lied about them, whereas the historians and authorities on transmitters, such as al-Dhahabī, have testified that there is no woman accused of fabricating ḥadīth. There is no doubt that women generally studied and transmitted ḥadīth solely out of eagerness for the religion and the desire for the good pleasure of God and His Messenger. In their devotion to ḥadīth, they set astonishing examples. Fāṭimah bint al-Munajjāʾ al-Tanūkhiyyah (d. 714/1314) taught Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and other collections in the mosques and madrasahs of Damascus, later moving to Egypt at the invitation of its rulers. She lectured in palaces, mosques and colleges until the very day of her death—while teaching Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī at the age of 89. Her copy of Bukhārī is still preserved in a library in Turkey.
As for women’s engagement with Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the most authentic manuscript of this book is attributed to a woman: the copy of Karīmah al-Marwaziyyah (d. 464/1072), known as the Nuskhat Yūnīniyyah. It was printed in Cairo at the command of Sulṭān ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II and became known as the Nuskhat Sulṭāniyyah. Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī and al-Samʿānī studied Bukhārī under her. That manuscript has been published in the edition verified by Shaykh Zuhayr Nāṣir. Moreover, women’s chains of transmission for Bukhārī are the highest in isnād.
Typically, in the ijāzah of Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband, Nadwah, and other institutions, there are 20 or more links back to al-Bukhārī. But through ʿĀʾishah al-Maqdisiyyah (d. 814/1411), there are only 14 links between myself and al-Bukhārī, who died in 256/870. Over nearly 1,200 years, only 14 intermediaries—this is the utmost height of transmission.
From the earliest times, the leading aʾimmah of ḥadīth and fiqh narrated extensively from women. Two of al-Bukhārī’s teachers, Muslim b. Ibrāhīm al-Farrāhīdī and Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī, narrated from seventy women in Baṣrah alone. Al-Samʿānī listed 68 women teachers. Ibn ʿAsākir included biographies of 80 female teachers in his Muʿjam al-Shuyūkh. Many others, like al-Mizzī, Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Barzalī, al-Dhahabī, al-ʿIrāqī, Ibn Ḥajar, al-Sakhāwī, and al-Suyūṭī, had numerous women teachers. Ibn al-Najjār, who wrote a supplement to al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh, narrated from 600 men and 400 women—that is, 40% of his teachers were women, and perhaps the true proportion was higher, since knowledge of women’s lives was often less well recorded.
Whole works survive only through women’s narrations. For instance, al-Ṭabarānī’s al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr, in 25 volumes, is preserved by transmission through Fāṭimah al-Jawzdāniyyah (d. 524/1130).
In fiqh too, women had a distinguished place. Imām Abū Ḥanīfah and Imām Mālik, may God have mercy on them, followed the fatwās of women in several matters. After the ṣaḥābiyyāt, notable women jurists include ʿAmrah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ḥafṣah bint Sīrīn, Muʿādhah al-ʿAdawiyyah, Umm al-Dardāʾ, and Fāṭimah bint al-Mundhir b. al-Zubayr. An important Ḥanafī work, Tuḥfat al-Fuquhāʾ by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, was so well mastered by his daughter Fāṭimah that she had memorised the entire book. One of al-Samarqandī’s distinguished students, the jurist al-Kāsānī, sought her hand in marriage. Al-Samarqandī replied that his daughter was a jurist of rank, and that al-Kāsānī had not yet attained her level. He instructed him to write a commentary on his work, and if he approved it, he would consent to the marriage. Al-Kāsānī accordingly authored Badāʾiʿ al-Ṣanāʾiʿ, which was accepted, and the marriage was concluded. Historians wrote: sharaḥa tuḥfatahu wa-tazawwaja bintahu. Later, the ruler of Aleppo invited al-Kāsānī to teach there. His students, such as Ibn al-ʿAdīm, reported that when al-Kāsānī could not answer a question in class, he would excuse himself, return later with the answer—having consulted his wife Fāṭimah. About his Badāʾiʿ al-Ṣanāʾiʿ, Rashīd Aḥmad Gangohī said that it is the best book in the Ḥanafī school. Thus, the best book in the school was written in order to marry a woman, and that woman was herself the greater jurist.
From the Prophet’s time for many centuries, women customarily participated in study circles held in mosques, and also conducted such classes themselves. In the three most sacred mosques—al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, al-Masjid al-Nabawī, and al-Masjid al-Aqṣā—women delivered lessons attended by both men and women, often in large numbers, including scholars, ḥadīth specialists, jurists and judges. Several women lectured in the Ḥaṭīm at the Kaʿbah; in Madīnah, ḥadīths were heard from women beside the Prophet’s grave. One such scholar was Fāṭimah al-Baṭāʾiḥiyyah (d. 711/1311), a teacher of al-Dhahabī and al-Subkī. She would sit near the blessed head of the Prophet, rest against the wall when tired, and at the end of class, write permissions of transmission in her own hand for all present. In al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, from Umm al-Dardāʾ onwards, women’s lectures continued for centuries, often drawing audiences in the hundreds.
Beyond these three mosques, women taught in other mosques, madrasahs, and colleges. In Damascus, the greatest scholar of his time would lecture under the Dome of the Eagle in the Umayyad Mosque; ʿĀʾishah bint Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 814/1411) was formally appointed there as lecturer in ḥadīth, with a regular salary.
Among her students were the two leading ḥadīth experts of the time: Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. Ibn Ḥajar received from her authorisation in nearly seventy works.
Some younger scholars ask why I strive so earnestly for women’s education and rights. The answer is simple: it is the responsibility of scholars that whenever the commands of the Qurʾān and Sunnah are distorted, obstructed, or prevented from being applied, they should remove that distortion and prepare the way for implementation. Women’s basic human and Islamic rights are given by God and declared by His Messenger (peace be upon him). To struggle for those rights is the duty of the whole community.
The injustices being committed against women today, and their deprivation of the rights God and His Messenger granted them, have obvious and severe consequences: not only are women turning away from Islam in large numbers, but many men are also led into apostasy through them. Failure to recognise this reality has weakened the leadership of the scholars.
Above all, our negative attitude towards women is proof of our ingratitude and neglect of their great contributions. Addressing the women of Islam, Iqbāl expressed it so movingly:
Bring forth the dawn out of our night,
And teach anew the people of insight the Qurʾān.
You know well that the passion of your recitation
Has transformed the destiny of ʿUmar.
—
Disclaimer: This article was translated by AI. Original post: https://t.me/DrAkramNadwi/6959
