INFLUENTIAL WOMEN IN
ISLAMIC HISTORY
Islam
placed paradise under the feet of women when they became mothers; they became
the reason why fathers would enter paradise, and were also made such an
integral part of a husband’s faith that without honouring his wife, his faith
remained incomplete. It was with this newly acquired status that women soared
high and made their distinguishing mark in history, so as to not be left behind
when the greats of Islam were glorified, writes FAIZA GULZAR.
As the shrill cries of a newborn filled a Makkan
household, the father would feel a chilling sensation run down his spine even
as he is informed of the birth of a daughter. He could not fathom a worse fate.
“He hides himself from the
people, because of that which is announced to him. Shall he keep it with
disgrace or bury it (alive) in the dust?”
So he slips away in the
dark to stash his baby girl in a deep grave never to see, or hear, her again.
This was Arab society before 621 CE, where a female wasn’t even worth keeping
alive. Even if she did live, it
would be a life without any opportunities – indeed, a living death. And then,
in the Year of the Elephant, came Muhammad, may peace and the blessings of
Allah (swt) be upon him, as a mercy to mankind and a light
for humanity. He made men realize that they had to fear a day ‘when the female infant buried alive shall be asked about the sin
for which she was killed’ [2] and on that day, every perpetrator of this
evil shall have to account for this heinous act.
Islam arrived as guidance
for all mankind and as a catalyst in the lives of women, transforming their
status overnight. Rights of women, a concept previously unheard of – or even
thought about – were being upheld and protected. From being just a mere
commodity in the households, wives became a source of dignity. The Companions
saw the Prophet (saws)’s love for his daughters and
his warm behaviour with them and were stunned at the fact that it was even
possible to show females such affection.
The Prophet (saws) taught them that there is no difference in the
worth between believers on the basis of gender. Both enjoy the same rights and
duties to learn and teach. Women have the same duty as men to restrain
themselves and others from evil and encourage themselves and others towards
good. Islam placed Paradise under their feet when they became mothers; they
became the reason why fathers would enter paradise, and also such an integral
part of a husband’s faith that without honoring his wife, his faith remained
incomplete. It was with this newly acquired status that women soared high and
made their distinguishing mark in history, so as to not be left behind when the
greats of Islam were glorified.
Muslim women, contributed
to the legacy of Islam as scholars, jurists, rulers, benefactresses, warriors,
businesswomen, and legal experts. The Prophet’s household was looked up to by
all his Companions as a beacon of guidance. His wife, Khadija (ra), who was more than his confidante and
companion, a wealthy businesswoman and trader, supported him morally and
financially when he was granted prophethood; Aisha bint Abu Bakr (ra), transmitted expanses of knowledge from him,
became a great jurist and scholar; Umm Salama (ra)’s counsel was
accepted by the Prophet himself, at the time of the treaty of Hudaibiyyah;
Hafsa (ra), daughter of Umar ibn Al-Khattab was the first
person to be entrusted with the written Qur’an after the death of her father.
The contribution of women
in the preservation of ahadith has
been great indeed. A survey of the texts reveals that most of the important
compilers of ahadith from the earliest
period received many of them from women teachers, as the immediate authorities.
Ibn Hajar studied from 53 women; As-Sakhawi had ijazas from 68 women and As-Suyuti studied from
33 women, a quarter of his shuyukh.
In the fourth century, we
find Fatima bint Abdur-Rehman, known as As-Sufiyyah on
account of her great piety; Fatima grand-daughter of Abu Dawud of Sunan fame; Amat al-Wahid, the granddaughter of
the distinguished jurist al-Muhamili; Umm al-Fath Amat As-Salam, the daughter
of the judge, Abu Bakr Ahmad; Jumuah bint Ahmad, whose classes were always
attended by reverential audiences.
Fathima bint al-Hasan ibn
Ali Ad-Daqqaq al-Qushayri was a hadith scholar
of the fifth and sixth centuries, who was celebrated not only for her piety and
mastery of calligraphy, but also for her knowledge of ahadith and the quality of the isnads (chains of narrators) she knew. Even more
distinguished was Karimah al-Marwaziyyah, who was considered the best authority
on the Sahih of Al-Bukhari in her own time. Abu Dharr of
Herat, one of the leading scholars of the period, attached such great
importance to her authority that he advised his students to study Sahih under no one else because of the quality of
her scholarship. Among her students were Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi and Al-Humaydi.
Fatima-bint-Muhammad,
known as Shahdah, the Writer, received the proud title of Musnida Asfahan (the great hadith authority of Asfahan). She founded a Sufi
lodge which her husband endowed most generously. Her lectures on Sahih al-Bukhari were attended by a large crowd
of students and many even falsely claimed to have been her students.
Well-known as an authority
on Sahih al-Bukahri is Sitt al-Wuzra, who, besides
her mastery of Islamic law, delivered lectures on the Sahih in Damascus and Egypt. Likewise, Umm
al-Khayr Amat al-Khaliq is regarded as the last great hadith scholar of the Hijaz.
In seventh century
Damascus, there was Umm al-Darda, a prominent jurist whose students included
Abdul Malik ibn Marwan, the then Caliph himself. She used to teach hadith and fiqh, at the
mosque. Ilyas-ibn-Mu’awiyah, an important scholar of the time and a judge of
undisputed merit, considered her to be superior to all the other hadith scholars of the period.
Aisha bint Sa’ad bin Abi
Waqqas was a jurist and scholar and also the teacher of the renowned scholar,
Imam Malik, the founder of the Maliki School of Fiqh.
Sayyida Nafisa, the great granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad (saws), and daughter of Hassan bin Ali bin Abu Talib ,
was a teacher of Islamic Jurisprudence, whose students travelled from faraway
places and one of them was Imam Shafi’i, another great scholar, and founder of
the Shafi’i School of Fiqh. She
financially sponsored his education for him.
Ashifa bint Abdullah was
the first Muslim woman to be appointed by Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab as market
inspector and manager. Amra bint Abdurrehaman was one of the great scholars of
the eighth century who was a jurist, a Mufti, and a
scholar of ahadith. During the time of Caliph
Umar bin Abdul Aziz, she was considered a great authority on traditions related
by A’isha (ra), the wife of the Prophet (saws). Among her students was Abu Bakr ibn Hazim, the
celebrated judge of Madina who was ordered by Caliph Umar bin Abdul Aziz to
compile all the ahadith on her authority.
Aisha bint Muhammad ibn
Abdul Hadi in Damascus was a scholar who taught many prominent Muslim male
scholars and also possessed the shortest chain of narrators back to the Prophet
Muhammad (saws). She taught Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, the greatest
scholar of her time. Fatima al-Batayahiyyah, was a distinguished elderly woman
of the eighth century who taught her students the celebrated works of Sahih al-Bukhari for days on end in the Prophet’s
mosque itself.
In the ninth century, there was Fatima al-Fihriyya in
Fez, Morocco, who founded the al-Qarawwiyyin mosque.[3]
Established in the year 859, the Qarawwiyyin mosque,
through which Arabic numbers became known, and used, in Europe, had the oldest
and possibly the first university in the world and is still functioning.
Students travelled here from all over the world to study Islamic studies,
languages and sciences.
Fatima of Cordoba was a tenth century librarian who
oversaw 70 public libraries containing 400,000 books. In the eleventh century,
was Banafshaa’ ar-Rumiyya, who restored schools, bridges and public housing for
homeless women in Baghdad.
After them were Abidah
al-Madaniyya, Abdah bint Bishr, Umm Umar Ath-Thaqafiyyah, Zaynab, the
granddaughter of Ali ibn Abdullah ibn Abbas, Nafisah bint al-Hassan ibn Ziyad,
Khadijah Umm Muhammad, Abdah bint Abdar Rahman and many other women who
excelled in delivering public lectures on ahadith .
Abidah started out as a slave owned by Muhammad ibn Yazid. She learned a large
number of ahadith and related
10,000 ahadith on the authority of her Madani teachers.
When she was given by her
master to Habib Dahhun, the great hadith scholar
of Spain, on his visit to the holy city of Jerusalem, he was so impressed by
her learning that he freed her, married her and brought her to Andalusia.
Zaynab bint Sulayman, by
contrast, was a princess by birth. Her father was a cousin of As-Saffah, the
founder of the Abbassid dynasty, and had been a governor of Basrah, Oman, and
Bahrain during the caliphate of Al-Mansur. Zaynab, who received a fine
education, acquired a mastery of ahadith and
gained a reputation as one of the most distinguished women scholars of the time
also counted many important men amongst her pupils.
In the twelfth century,
there was Shuhadah bint Ahmad al-Ibrii, who studied in Baghdad with prominent
scholars of ahadith and became a great
scholar and jurist herself and was well-known as the ‘Pride of Women.’ Zainab
bint Kamal taught more than 400 books of ahadith in
some of the most prestigious academic institutions in Damascus and exhibited
exceptional patience which won the hearts of her students. There was Fathima
bint Muhammad al-Samarqandi, a jurist who advised her more famous husband on how
to issue Fatwas. More recently, in the
nineteenth century, history saw the growth and success of Nana Asma’u of
Nigeria; a poet, teacher, scholar and advisor to her father.
Women who stand out as rulers include: Arwa al-Sulayhi,
an eleventh century Yemeni who ruled for 71 years and was known as the Noble
Lady; and Sultana Shajarat al-Durr, who took control of Egypt after the death
of her husband in the thirteenth century.
Dhayfa Khatun, the niece and daughter-in-law of Salah al-Din
al-Ayyubi, after the death of her son, King Abdul Aziz, became the queen of
Aleppo and ruled for six years.[4] During her reign, she faced threats from the
Crusaders, Khuarzmein, Mongols and Seljuks. In addition to her political and
social role, she even sponsored education in Aleppo where she founded two
schools.
Sitt al-Mulk was a Fatimid princess from Egypt, whose
expert administration was in accord with Islamic laws.
Queen Zubayda, wife of the ninth century Caliph, Harun
Ar-Rasheed, is famous for her contributions building water resources and guest
houses for pilgrims along major routes leading to Makkah. She was an
intellectual who expressed her political views in public and even supported
poets and writers regardless of their religion, religious scholars and the
needy. The famous Zubayda spring in the outskirts of Makkah still carries her
name.
Closer home in India we had Razia Sultana, the only
female to sit on India’s throne in Delhi for four years in the thirteenth
century. Firishta, an eighteenth century historian, writes: “…Razia, though a
woman, had a man’s head and heart and was better than 20 such sons.”
Hurrem Sultan (1500CE),
also called Roxelana, was enslaved in the Crimean Turks raids on Ukraine,
during the reign of Yazuz Sultan Salim and was presented at the Ottoman palace
to King Suleyman, who later married her. She is the founder of a number of
institutions which include a mosque complex in Istanbul which is home to
a Madrasa and a public kitchen; cifte hamam (double bathhouse for both men and
women), two schools and a women’s hospital. She also built four schools in
Makkah and a mosque in Jerusalem.
Amina was the queen of Zazzua, a province of Nigeria, in
the sixteenth century. At the age of sixteen, she became the heir-apparent to
her mother. Amina chose to learn military skills and emerged as the leading
warrior of Zazzua cavalry. In her reign of 34 years, she expanded the
territory to its largest size ever. Her main focus was on forcing local rulers
to accept vassal status and permit safe passage to Hausa traders. She is
credited with popularizing of the earthen wall fortifications which became
characteristic of Hausa states since then. She ordered the building of
defensive walls around each military camp that she established. Later towns
grew within these walls and many of them are still in existence and are known
as Amina’s walls.
There was a family of women who ruled over Bhopal from
1819 to 1924, the last of who was Begum Kaikhursau Jahan. This family was
reputed for improving the railway, waterworks, a postal system and transport
lines in the vicinity.
Muslim women ensured that
they left behind a legacy when it came to intellectual and academic feats.
Sutayta al-Mahamili, a mathematician lived in the second half of the tenth
century, and came from an educated family in Baghdad. She excelled in many
fields such as Arabic literature, hadith and
jurisprudence. She invented solutions to many equations which have been cited
by other mathematicians which denote aptitude in algebra. She was praised by
historians such as Ibn al-Jawzi, Ibn al-Khatib Baghdadi and Ibn Kathir.
Labana of Cordoba (tenth century, Spain) was well-versed
in the exact sciences of mathematics and could solve the most complex
geometrical and algebraic problems known at that time. She was employed as the
private secretary to the Umayyad Caliph of Islamic Spain, Al Hakam the Second.
Ayesha, daughter of Prince Ahmed of Andalus, who lived in
the eleventh century excelled in rhyme and oratory. Her verses aroused the
tumultuous enthusiasm of the otherwise grave poets of Cordoba and her library
was one of the finest and most complete in the kingdom.
Wallada, a princess of Almohads during the eleventh
century, was renowned for her knowledge of poetry and rhetoric; her conversations
were remarkable for their depth and brilliance. At the academic contests of
Cordoba, the capital which attracted the learned and the eloquent from every
quarter of the Iberian peninsula, she never failed, whether in prose or in
poetical composition, to out-distance all competitors of the eleventh century.
Al Ghazaniya and Safia, both of Seville, were
distinguished for their poetical and oratorical genius of the eleventh century.
The latter was unsurpassed for the beauty and perfection of her calligraphy;
the splendid illuminations of her manuscripts were the despair of the most
accomplished artists of the age.
The literary attainments of Miriam, the gifted daughter
of al-Faisuli were famous throughout the Andalus. The caustic wit in the satire
of her epigrams were unrivalled by the end of the eleventh century.
In the art of calligraphy, one name that keeps recurring
is that of Thana, a slave in the household of Ibn-Qayyuma. Ibn Qayyuma was the
tutor of one of the sons of Caliph Mansur, of the eighth century. Of the two he
sent to be trained under the leading calligraphist of the day,
Ishaq-bint-Hammad, one was the slave girl Thana, who his pupils say, ‘wrote the
original measured scripts, never since equaled.’
Umm-al-Sa’d of the
eleventh century was famous for her familiarity with Muslim traditions. Al
Fihrist-ibn-al-Nadim, an eighteenth century historian in his book names women
with a varied range of skills. Two are grammarians – a much respected branch of
knowledge, related to the use of the full range of excellence of the Arabic
language. There was a woman scholar of Arab dialects, of the eleventh century,
‘whose origin was among the tribes.’ And another, ‘acquainted
with tribal legends and colloquialism’ and a third one wrote a book
entitled, ‘Rare Forms and Sources of Verbal Nouns.’
In a different field, Arwa, wrote a book on ‘sermons, morals and wisdom.’
An Indian, by the name of Rasa, was the author of a book
on medical care and the treatment of women. Her book is listed among medical
works available in Arabic. Mariyah-al-Qibtiyyah, an Egyptian, wrote on Alchemy
in the seventh century.
The making of astrolabes, a branch of applied science
which is given great status, was practiced by Al Ijiliyyah bint al-Ijili
al-Asturlabi, who followed her father’s profession in Aleppo and was employed
in the court of Sayf-ad-Dawla, one of the powerful Hamdanin rulers in northern
Syria, in the tenth century CE.
The Sharia requires Muslims to have great concern for
society in all spheres of life. With the arrival of Islam, women were
able to practice as physicians and treat both men and women particularly on the
battlefields.
The title of the first
nurse is credited to Rufayda bint Sa’ad al-Aslamiyya who lived at the same time
as the Prophet (saws). She nursed the wounded and
the dying in the battlefield during the Battle of Badr on 13th March 624 CE.
She learned most of her skill from assisting her father, Sa’ad al-Aslami, who
was a physician.
Al Shifa bint Abdulla al-Quraishiyya al-Adawiyah was
amongst the wise women of the time. She was involved in public administration
and skilled in medicine. Her name was Layla but, and received the title ‘Al
Shifa’ which means ‘The Healing.’
Nusayba bint Ka’ab al-Mazneya, offered her medical
services during the Battle of Uhud; Umm-e-Sinan Al-Islami, requested the
permission of the Prophet to go out into the battlefield and assist the wounded
soldiers and provide water to the thirsty; Umm Warqa bint Harith, who
participated in compiling the Qur’an, nursed those wounded at the Battle of Badr.
Nusayba bint al-Harith, also known as Umm al-Athia, took
care of casualties on the battlefield and took care of providing them with food
and water and first aid and, moreover, performed circumcision.
The most recent account of
a scholar, who dedicated her life to Islam, is that of Zainab al-Ghazali. Born
in 1917, in Egypt, she was an activist and was closely associated with
the Muslim Brotherhood. Her father encouraged her to
become an Islamic leader, citing the example of Nusayba bint Ka’ab al Muzaniyya,
a woman who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad in the Battle of Uhud. At the
age of nineteen, she founded the Jama’at al-Sayyidat
al-Muslimaat (Muslim Women’s Association) which had a
membership of three million throughout the country by the time it was dissolved
by government order in 1964. She was invited by Hassan al-Banna, the Founder of
the Muslim Brotherhood to merge the Jama’at with his organization. She refused his
offer in order to retain her autonomy. However, she did take an oath of personal
allegiance to him. Her weekly lectures attracted a crowd of approximately 5000
people. Besides offering lessons for women, the Jama’atpublished a magazine, maintained an orphanage,
assisted poor families and mediated family disputes. It took a political
stance, demanding that Egypt be ruled according to the Qur’an.
After the assassination of
Hassan al-Banna, she played a pivotal role in regrouping the Brotherhood in the 1960s. She was imprisoned in
the year 1965 and was sentenced for 25 years, but was released under Anwar
Sadat’s presidency. While in prison, al-Ghazali and members of the Brotherhood
underwent many inhumane punishments. During these periods of hardship, it is
said that she had visions of Prophet Muhammad (saws) and also
experienced some miracles as she got food, refuge and strength in those
difficult times. She has authored a book based on her experiences in jail,
which was later translated into English as Return of the Pharaoh.
She died on 3rd August 2005, aged 88
years.
Dr. Akram Nadwi, author of
a 40-volume collection of women scholars in Islam, Al-Muhaddithat, has, in his research, unearthed the
accounts of many such scholars whose legacy and contributions are forgotten by
now. According to him, the current emphasis placed on the subjugation of women
in Islamic society made it really important to seek out the real historical
records of women’s place in Islam. As the Shaykh describes:
“Initially I thought there might be about 30 to 40 women,
but as the research progressed, the accounts kept growing until I realized I
had no less than 8,000 biographical accounts of Muslim women who played major
roles in the preservation and development of Islamic traditions since the time
of the Prophet (PBUH) himself. The women I encountered were far from mediocre
when compared to men and, indeed, some excelled way beyond their male
contemporaries. These were exceptional women who not only participated in
society but actively reformed it. Most striking was their caliber for
intellectual achievement and the respect and recognition they received for it.”
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