Subki N Women Scholars MSR XIV 2010-Berkey-Pp1-17

Jonathan P.
Berkey
Davidson College
Al-Subkī and His Women
The historiography of the Mamluk period has over the past four decades developed
more thoroughly than that of most other eras of pre-modern Islamic history.
There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is the extraordinary
literary legacy of the period. Chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and other
sources relevant to the reconstruction of social, political, and cultural life survive
from the Mamluk period in numbers that dwarf those of most earlier periods.
No less important, perhaps, is the intrinsic interest of the Mamluks themselves.
Several important Western historians have found themselves captivated by these
slave soldiers who established a state in the middle of the thirteenth century that
dominated much of the Middle East until they were eclipsed by the Ottoman
Turks at the beginning of the sixteenth century. With the passing of David Ayalon
and Ulrich Haarmann, no one has done more to advance our understanding of
the Mamluk regime than Carl Petry, to whom this volume of the Mamlūk Studies
Review is dedicated.
Of late, Petry’s contributions have been devoted principally to political history.
His studies of the Mamluk sultans Qaytbāy and Qanṣūh al-Ghawrī 1 are models
for a type of book—that of the reigns of particular sultans—which now includes
detailed investigations of Baybars, Qalāwūn, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, and Barsbāy. 2
But his first book was arguably more influential because it contributed to and
served to strengthen an important emerging field of historiography. The Civilian
Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages 3 was one of several monographs published
in the wake of Ira Lapidus’s ground-breaking study of Muslim Cities in the Later
Middle Ages. 4 These were the first books to bring to pre-modern Islamic studies the
© The Middle East Documentation Center. The University of Chicago.

Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamlūk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power (Albany,
1994); Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamlūk Sultans al-Ashraf Qāyt Bāy and Qanṣūh al-
Ghawrī in Egypt (Seattle, 1993).

Peter Thorau, The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars of Egypt and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century
(London, 1992); Linda Northrup, From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn and the
Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678–689 A.H./1279–1290 A.D. (Stuttgart, 1998);
Amalia Levanoni, A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn
Qalāwūn (1310–1341) (Leiden, 1995); Ahmad Darrag, L’Égypte sous le règne de Barsbāy, 825–
841/1422–1438 (Damascus, 1961).

Princeton, 1981.

Cambridge, Mass., 1967. Other important works included Richard Bulliet’s The Patricians of
Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), and Roy Mottahedeh,
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Jonathan P. Berkey , Al-Subkī and His Women
disciplines and conventions of social history as it was then developing, especially

among historians of medieval and early modern Europe.
The Civilian Elite of Cairo concerned those individuals who represented and
led the city’s Muslim inhabitants in their religious and academic lives, and also
those who administered the offices and institutions of the state under the rule
of the mostly foreign-born Mamluk military caste. Essentially, the “civilian
elite” represented the social group which Richard Bulliet, discussing a different
medieval Islamic society, had earlier identified as the “patriciate.” They included
prayer leaders, preachers, and Quran readers in the mosques, professors and other
functionaries in the city’s many institutions of higher education, judges of the
shariʿah courts, and leaders of the Sufi organizations which, by the later medieval
period, played a dominant role in the spiritual lives of many if not most Muslims.
They also included a cadre of men employed as scribes and administrators, both
in the various offices of the government and also by the religious endowments
(awqāf, sing. waqf), which supported religious and academic institutions and
which proliferated throughout the Mamluk period. 5
Obviously, this constituted a broad range of people, in terms of their background,
training, wealth, status, and power. Indeed, the group is so varied that the term
“elite” might be a little misleading. It is a fair question to ask whether the prayer
leader of some minor mosque and the holder of a valuable and prestigious
“chair” in, say, Shafiʿi jurisprudence at the grand madrasah established by Sultan
Ḥasan below the Cairo citadel shared a sufficient community of interests that
we can identify both as members of an analytically distinct social group. Beyond
“vertical” social distinctions such as that separating the prayer leader and the
professor lies an even more significant range of “horizontal” differences. Most
importantly, the “civilian elite” included both those whose activities defined the
religious and academic life of the city (i.e., those known in Arabic as the ʿulamāʾ,
sing. ʿālim) and those whose careers focused on scribal and bureaucratic tracks. 6
Those two domains were not necessarily distinct; there was some overlap between
them. But by the Mamluk period, there was a fair degree of specialization and
Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton, 1980).

These endowments are not directly relevant to this essay, but it is worth pointing out that the
fortuitous survival of several hundred of them from Mamluk Cairo has been in the last several
decades a leading catalyst behind the flourishing of historical studies of the city, and also that Petry
has both pioneered their investigation and championed the use of the awqāf by other historians.
The present author is not the only one who has benefited tremendously from his knowledge of and
experience in the archives in which the endowment deeds are preserved.

Cf. Petry’s comment about the term “civilian elite,” which included all “the nonmilitary personnel
whom the biographers regarded as notables, but who may not be classified solely as ʿulamaʾ.”
Civilian Elite, 4.
MAMLŪK STUDIES REVIEW Vol. 14, 2010
professionalization, so that a religious scholar and a bureaucrat, although they

might share their initial training, would soon find their career paths diverging. 7
Indeed, in the Egyptian case, the distinction between ulama and bureaucrats
might be especially sharp since many of the latter were from Coptic families, and
although they were generally formally converted to Islam, their credentials as
Muslims, let alone as students and scholars of the Islamic religious sciences, were
often suspect.
Nonetheless, there are good reasons for thinking of the “civilian elite” as a
meaningful category of historical analysis. Not the least is the fundamental social
division between the Mamluks and the local population. Of course, even here the
boundary was sometimes blurred. Some Mamluks became learned in the religious
and legal sciences; others served as administrators of awqāf. 8 Some offices,
especially that of muḥtasib or “market inspector,” were held at different times
by both religious scholars and high-ranking amirs. 9 And of course the Mamluks
often married into local families, and their sons and descendants were eventually
assimilated into local social groups. Still, the social and cultural gap between
the foreign-born, mostly Turkish or Circassian ruling elite, who held a virtual
monopoly on political power, and their Arabic-speaking subjects was real and
fundamental. In the Mamluks’ case it was widened by their slave origins, but in
its essence the gap which separated rulers and ruled in Mamluk Egypt and Syria
was paralleled by others which cut across most Middle Eastern societies in the
Middle Ages. Leading social groups from the “ruled” side of the divide—ulama and
scribes, for example—thus found themselves in structurally similar relationships
to the wielders of political power.
A more positive reason for thinking of the civilian elite as an identifiable
if not unified social group has to do with the centrality of education and the
transmission of the Islamic religious sciences to social and cultural life in Cairo,
and indeed in all medieval Islamic cities. 10 Participation in the informal networks
through which religious knowledge was transmitted carried value as a pious
activity and conveyed considerable social prestige. Consequently, it was not
simply professional academics who engaged in it; ulama status was widely shared

Petry, Civilian Elite, 312f.; cf. Daphna Ephrat, A Learned Society in Transition: The Sunni ʿUlamāʾ of
Eleventh-Century Baghdad (Albany, 2000), 95–124.

On the Mamluks and education, see Jonathan P. Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval
Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton, 1992), 128–60. On Mamluks as nāẓirs of
charitable endowments, see Petry, Civilian Elite, 214.

Petry, Civilian Elite, 224; Jonathan P. Berkey, “The Muhtasibs of Cairo Under the Mamluks:
Towards an Understanding of an Islamic Institution,” in The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics
and Society, ed. Amalia Levanoni and Michael Winter (Leiden and Boston, 2003), 243–76.
10
Cf. Petry, Civilian Elite, 312.
throughout the population. 11 As this last point might suggest, it was the ulama,
broadly speaking, who constituted the central component of the “civilian elite”
and to whom the indigenous Muslim population looked most naturally for local
leadership. This point has been recognized for some time. To some degree, the
importance of the ulama may be an optical illusion produced by the fact that
the biographical dictionaries (tarājim), which constitute one of the major literary
sources for medieval Islamic history, dwell principally on the lives and careers of
the ulama. Indeed, as Roy Mottahedeh once observed, we had better appreciate
the social history of the ulama, as it is “almost all the Islamic social history we will
ever have for this [pre-modern] period.” 12 But the central social role of the ulama,
in Mamluk Egypt and elsewhere, can hardly be doubted. For this reason, the
strain of social history to which The Civilian Elite of Cairo was such an important
contribution has sometimes been (lovingly) called “ulamalogy.”
As preparation for what follows, I wish to draw attention to two themes that
have emerged from the literature on the “civilian elite” as it has developed over
the last several decades. The first—what we might call a “major theme”—concerns
the persistent informality of Islamic education. The proliferation of institutions
devoted to the transmission of religious knowledge was one of the most important
and widespread developments in the cities of the medieval Islamic world.
Madrasahs and their cognate institutions, especially Sufi convents and mosques
with endowments that made provisions for instruction in the religious sciences,
became a ubiquitous feature of the medieval Islamic urban fabric. 13 Nonetheless,
the standards by which an education was measured remained informal and
personal. No system of institutional degrees was ever established; rather, the ulama
sought to control the transmission of knowledge through the personal attestation
that a person had acquired command of (or at least exposure to) a text or a body
of knowledge. That attestation, usually in the form of an ijāzah, could only be
given by an individual who was himself already recognized as an authority over
the text. 14 Consequently, the regulation of the transmission of knowledge, and
also of access to ulama status, depended on a variety of mechanisms by which
those personal relationships linking one authority to another, and linking teacher
to student, were identified, recorded, and published to the wider community.
11
On this, see Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, 210–18.
12
Roy Mottahedeh, review of The Patricians of Nishapur: A Study in Medieval Islamic Social History,
by Richard Bulliet, Journal of the American Oriental Society 95 (1975): 495.
13
On the madrasah, see George Makdisi’s ground-breaking work, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions
of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, 1981).
14
On the persistent informality of education and on the networks of relationships which
characterized the ulama, see Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, passim, and Michael Chamberlain,
Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge, 1994).
This was the public face of what was otherwise a very private matter (that is,
the acquisition of knowledge), and its centrality to the system by which religious
knowledge was preserved and handed on has enabled modern social historians to
investigate the lives and experiences of the medieval ulama in some detail.
The second or “minor” theme has to do with the surprising importance of
women in the social, institutional, and intellectual world of higher education.
As with most other public activities, the transmission of religious knowledge
was dominated by men. And in certain areas, women were excluded entirely: no
woman, for example, was ever appointed mudarris in one of the many madrasahs
in Cairo or, presumably, other medieval Islamic cities. Nonetheless, some women
were able to carve out important roles for themselves. Women as well as men
might possess wealth and develop the charitable instincts that led an individual
to establish and endow a madrasah in the first place, and quite a few schools, in
Cairo and elsewhere, owed their origins to acts of charity by women. 15 Perhaps
more surprisingly, many women served as financial controllers of the endowments
that supported the activities of madrasahs and other religious institutions. 16
But most importantly of all, women played an active and important role in
the transmission of religious knowledge, especially of hadith. What made this
possible was the persistent informality of the process, and the importance of those
personal relationships by which authority over texts was transmitted. If a woman
had, for example, acquired an ijāzah over a text from a particularly reputable
individual, she as well as any man might become a valued link in the “chain”
(isnād) of authorities stretching back to the original author of the text. Especially
if the woman survived to become one of the last living people connected to that
individual, she might acquire a reputation of her own and become someone with
whom younger students sought to study. 17
These two themes provide the framework for this minor contribution to the
social history of the “civilian elite” of the Mamluk period. The fundamental
importance of the networks between scholars and between teachers and pupils
required that medieval Muslims, in various ways, preserve a memory of those
networks and of the individuals who formed them. The most important mechanism
for doing so was, of course, the biographical dictionary. These compilations
15
Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, 162–64.
16
Carl Petry, “A Paradox of Patronage During the Later Mamluk Period,” The Muslim World 73
(1983): 182–207.
17
Jonathan P. Berkey, “Women and Education in the Mamluk Period,” in Women in Middle Eastern
History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven,
1992), 143–57. For a fuller exploration of the careers of two prominent female scholars of the
Mamluk period, see the splendid article by Asma Sayeed, “Women and Hadith Transmission: Two
Case Studies from Mamluk Damascus,” Studia Islamica 95 (2002): 71–94.
of short biographies of prominent men (and some women) have a long history
in the Islamic world; they were not new to the Mamluk period, nor did they
focus only on scholars. 18 But quite a few compilations were published during the
Mamluk era, including major works by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, 19 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
al-Sakhāwī, 20 and Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, 21 who is the subject of this piece. Some
recorded biographical data about many members of the ruling elites; that by Ibn
Taghrībirdī is an essential source for the study of the Mamluks themselves. But by
and large the authors of these books were scholars of hadith and jurisprudence,
and so were interested especially in the interlocking lives of the ulama.
A related genre of works was the muʿjam or mashyakhah. 22 These were essentially
lists of an individual’s teachers or of those on whose authority he transmitted
texts. 23 They were compiled by the individuals in question themselves, or by their
students, or by some other interested party. Not every scholar compiled such a list,
but many did; al-Sakhāwī, writing in the late fifteenth century, estimated that more
than a thousand were extant. 24 These constitute a well-known but underutilized
source for the social history of the ulama in the medieval period. 25 At first
glance they seem to be somewhat superfluous as a source for social history. The
biographical notices they contain tend to be fairly short and usually simply repeat
or summarize accounts from the more comprehensive biographical dictionaries.
There is, for example, little if any information about Ibn Ḥajar’s teachers in his
muʿjam that is not available in his better known account of academic and other
luminaries of the eighth/fourteenth century, Al-Durar al-Kāminah.
Yet the very fact that scholars found it expedient not simply to write but to
publish these collections—publish, that is, in the pre-printing sense of the term—is
significant. They were not simply compiled for the personal use of the author,
to record his own private account of his education. We know that the muʿjams
themselves were copied; even more, they were formally transmitted from the author
18
On the biographical dictionary as genre and on its origins, see Michael Cooperson, Classical
Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Maʾmūn (Cambridge, 2000).
19
Al-Durar al-Kāminah fī Aʿyān al-Miʾah al-Thāminah (Cairo, 1966–67).
20
Al-Ḍawʾ al-Lāmiʿ li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tāsiʿ (Cairo, 1934).
21
Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿīyah al-Kubrá (Cairo, 1992).
22
Other terms used to indicate comparable works include fahrasah, barnamaj, and thabat. See
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., articles “Fahrasa” and “Idjāza.”
23
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī compiled one as a list of the books he had studied, as well as one of the
more usual type that listed his shaykhs.
24
Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden, 1968), 451.
25
Georges Vajda was their most enthusiastic student; his previously-published studies of several
different muʿjams are collected in La transmission du savoir en Islam (viie–xviii siècles), ed. Nicole
Cottart (London, 1983).
to others, from teacher to pupil, for many years after the original compilation. 26
Indeed, they continue to be read and studied; those compiled by Ibn Ḥajar al-
ʿAsqalānī, for example, have recently been printed. 27 At a minimum, they are a
compelling witness to the importance of those networks of personal relationships
on which the authority of the ulama rested. For the modern social historian,
they provide the most comprehensive account of the training, the intellectual
development, and the social networking of prominent scholarly members of the
civilian elite.
The Dār al-Kutub in Cairo preserves a copy of the muʿjam of Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-
Wahhāb al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), perhaps the most illustrious member of a well-
known family of Shafiʿi ulama from the Mamluk period. 28 His father, Taqī al-Dīn
ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Kāfī al-Subkī (d. 756/1355), had been born in the family’s ancestral
village of Subk in the Nile Delta in Egypt but was raised in Cairo, where his own
father taught hadith in a number of madrasahs. Taqī al-Dīn’s teachers included
some of the most prominent religious scholars of the day, such as the Shafiʿi
qadi Ibn Bint al-Aʿazz, and the famous Shādhilī Sufi Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh. Taqī al-Dīn
acquired an impressive reputation in a number of fields, and held professorships
in several institutions of higher learning in the Mamluk capital. His most lasting
work, perhaps, was a collection of fatwas which has been reprinted several times
in recent decades. In 739/1338–39, the sultan Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad appointed
Taqī al-Dīn Shafiʿi qadi in Damascus. During his service there over the next sixteen
years, he also held teaching appointments as professor of fiqh and hadith in a
number of the city’s most prominent schools. 29
The Subkī family was prominent in the intellectual life of Cairo and Damascus
for six generations or more in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—a point
of some relevance here. An academic career of course required an independent
reputation. A scholar seeking preferment had to establish his bona fides through
the usual channels: by publishing commentaries on legal and religious topics,
and by acquiring status within the informal networks through which the ulama
26
See, for example, Georges Vajda, “La transmission de la Mašyaḫa d’Ibn al-Buḫārī d’après le
manuscrit Reisülküttab 262 de la Bibliothèque Süleymaniye d’Istanbul,” Rivista degli studi orientali
18 (1974): 55–74. See also Fāṭimah bint Ibrāhīm (# 13), below.
27
Al-Majmaʿ al-Muʾassas li-Muʿjam al-Mufahras (Beirut, 1992), and Al-Muʿjam al-Mufahras, aw,
Tajrīd Asānīd lil-Kutub al-Mashhūrah wa-al-Ajzāʾ al-Manthūrah (Beirut, 1998).
28
Compiled by Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyá ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿd [or: Saʿīd] al-Maqdisī (on
whom see Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 5:54). Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyah, Aḥmad Tīmūr Pāshā
Collection, “Tārīkh” ms. 1446. I consulted a microfilm copy preserved at the Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt
al-ʿArabīyah, “Tārīkh” ms. 490.
29
On Taqī al-Dīn ʿAlī, see Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿīyah al-Kubrá, 2nd ed. (Beirut,
1992), 10:139–70; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab fī Akhbār Man Dhahab (Cairo, 1931–32),
6:180–81.
supervised the transmission of religious knowledge. Nonetheless, having an ʿālim

for a father or grandfather or other close relative could be of enormous advantage to
an individual seeking to carve out an academic career, not least because it gave an
individual a head start in constructing those networks of personal and intellectual
relationships through which a reputation was established. The proliferation of
endowed institutions of learning in the medieval period gave an especially sharp
edge to the advantage held by the sons and grandsons of established scholars.
It was frequently possible for a scholar who held a teaching appointment in a
madrasah or mosque to ensure that his position—that is, the income he drew from
the institution’s endowment—be inherited by his sons or other chosen relations. 30
More generally, an accomplished scholar was naturally more likely to ensure that
his sons received the sort of training on which an academic career depended. This
training would include instruction in the Quran, hadith, jurisprudence, and the
other disciplines relevant to scholarly and academic life.
Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī was born in Cairo in 727/1327 or 728/1328, and like other
sons of the ulama, he was educated at first by his father and then by some of the
leading scholars of his day. When he was eleven, his father moved to Damascus,
and Tāj al-Dīn naturally accompanied him there. It was principally in the Syrian
capital that al-Subkī received the education that would establish him as one of the
leading scholars of his age. His teachers included the great historian Shams al-Dīn
Muḥammad al-Dhahabī and the jurist Shams al-Din Ibn al-Naqīb. Tāj al-Dīn was
a precocious student. Already before the age of 18, he had begun to teach as a
substitute for his shaykh Ibn al-Naqīb. In 754/1353, he began to assist his father
as qadi of Damascus, and within two years he had been formally vested in the
office. For most of the rest of his life, he served as chief qadi in the Syrian capital,
although his tenure was controversial, and at one point he was dismissed and
spent eighty days in jail, apparently on accusations that he had misappropriated
funds intended for the support of orphans. He died at a relatively young age in
771/1370.
The education of Tāj al-Dīn is relatively familiar to historians of medieval
Egypt and Syria, because in many resects it was typical of those of the leading
ulama of the Mamluk period. But the survival of al-Subkī’s muʿjam allows us to
examine it in greater detail than most. One of the most striking things about the
names recorded in that document is the number of women it includes, confirming
the prominent position that female hadith scholars managed to carve out for
themselves. Of the 172 names of shaykhs with whom al-Subkī had studied and on
whose authority he transmitted texts, 20 belong to women. That proportion was
30
See Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, 119–27.
not, in fact, atypical for the leading scholars of the day. 31

What follows is an inventory of the women listed in al-Subkī’s muʿjam. The
list includes their names, as they appear in the muʿjam, and basic biographical
information drawn from the muʿjam or (as indicated) other sources. The entries in
the muʿjam itself include considerably more information concerning the women’s
teachers and their own pupils than is recorded here. I have included only the
names of especially prominent shaykhs, or others worthy of note for one reason or
another, and other information requiring comment. The number in brackets at the
beginning indicates the number of the page (the manuscript has been paginated
by hand) on which the biographical entry appears.
[192]
(1) Asmāʾ bint Muḥammad ibn Sālim ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Hibbat Allāh ibn Maḥfūẓ
ibn Ṣaṣrā al-Rabʿī al-Taghlibī, Umm Muḥammad, al-Dimashqīyah. 32 Born in
638/1240–41 or 639/1241–42, she died in Damascus in 733/1332–33. She issued
an ijāzah to al-Subkī in 728/1327–28. She had begun to recite hadith already in
the year 683/1284–85, and continued to do so until her death.
[197]
(2) Āminah bint Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Faḍl ibn al-Wāsiṭī, al-
Dimashqīyah, Umm Muḥammad. 33 She was born around the year 664, and died in
740/1340 in Damascus. She held a samāʿ (a certificate of audition) from her father
dated 665. She heard hadith from a number of prominent scholars, including the
Hanbali scholar Zayn al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim (d. 668/1270) 34 and Zaynab
bint Makkī (d. 688/1289). 35 Among those who recited hadith on her authority
were her contemporaries the prominent muḥaddithūn Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad
ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), 36 who was also among al-
Subkī’s teachers (and who was also the author of the monumental Tārīkh al-Islām),
31
Cf. Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, 176.
32
See also ʿUmar Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ fī ʿĀlamay al-ʿArab wa-al-Islām, 4th ed. (Beirut, n.d.),
1:63–64; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 1:384–85.
33
Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 1:8; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 1:441–42.
34
Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 5:325–26.
35
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Asʿad al-Yāfiʿī, Mirʾat al-Jinān wa-ʿIbrat al-Yaqẓān fī Maʿrifat Mā Yuʿtabaru min
Ḥawādith al-Zamān (Hyderabad, 1337 A.H.), 4:207–8; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 5:404;
Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 2:116–19.
36
Al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿīyah, 9:100–123; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 6:153–57.
10 Jonathan P. Berkey , Al-Subkī and His Women
and al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339). 37
[202]
(3) Ḥabībah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Manṣūr al-Maqdisī, Umm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. 38 Born
around the year 650/1252–53, 39 she died in 733/1333. She heard Ibn ʿAbd al-
Dāʾim and others recite hadith, and she received ijāzahs from scholars throughout
the Muslim world, including Baghdad, Egypt, Mecca, and Medina, as well as from
towns in Syria. Both al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī heard her recite hadith. Al-Subkī
received an ijāzah from her in 728/1327–28.
[210]
(4) Zāhidah bint Abī Bakr ibn Ḥamzah ibn Maḥfūẓ al-Ṣaḥrāwī, Umm Abī Bakr,
al-Ṣāliḥīyah. 40 Born in 682/1283–84, she died during the plague in 749/1348–49.
She also heard Zaynab bint Makkī recite hadith, and al-Dhahabī in turn heard her
recite traditions.
[212 (in the margin)]
(5) Zahrah bint ʿUmar ibn Ḥusayn ibn Abī Bakr al-Khuthnī. 41 Al-Subkī heard
her recite traditions in 729/1329.
[212]
(6) Zaynab bint Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad ibn
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Manṣūr al-Maqdisī, Umm ʿAbd Allāh, known as
Bint al-Kamāl. 42 One of the most prominent female hadith scholars of the medieval
period, she was born in 646/1249–50 and died in 740/1339. She heard hadith
recitations from numerous scholars in Damascus, including Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim,
and received ijāzahs from “many people” (khalq kathīr) from Baghdad, Mosul,
Mardin, Harran, Aleppo, and Egypt, as well as her home town of Damascus. Those
37
Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 3:321–23.
38 Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 1:241; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 2:85–86.
39
Ibn Ḥajar gives her year of birth as 654/1256–57.
40
I have not been able to locate other biographical notices for Zaynab bint Abī Bakr.
41
Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 2:42; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 2:208.
42
Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 2:46–51; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 2:209–10.
MAMLŪK STUDIES REVIEW Vol. 14, 2010 11
who heard her recite included, again, al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī. Al-Subkī himself
transmitted many volumes (ajzāʾ) of hadith and other subjects, on her authority,
bi-al-samāʿ wa-al-ijāzah. She distinguished herself as the last person to relate
traditions from the prominent muḥaddith Sibṭ al-Silafī and others bi-al-ijāzah.
[222]
(7) Zaynab bint Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Sālim ibn Saʿd ibn Rikāb al-Anṣārīyah
al-Dimashqīyah, Umm ʿAbd Allāh and Umm Muḥammad. 43 Born in 659/1261,
she died in 749/1349. She heard Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim and others recite hadith,
and she herself recited on the authority of a large number of shaykhs; al-Birzālī
was among those who heard her do so. Al-Subkī says that he heard her recite a
“volume” (juzʾ) by al-Anṣārī, 44 which she recited on the authority of twenty-eight
different shaykhs whose recitations of the text she had heard (samāʿan).
[227]
(8) Zaynab bint Yaḥyá ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Abī al-Qāsim ibn
al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Muhadhdhib al-Sulamī al-Dimashqī. 45 Born in
648/1250–51, she died in 635/1335. As a five-year-old girl, she attended hadith
sessions with a number of shaykhs, and in 650/1252–53 she received ijāzahs
from Egypt from Sibṭ al-Silafī (ajāza la-hā . . . min al-diyār al-miṣrīyah)—that is,
apparently without her actually travelling to Egypt. Al-Birzālī heard her recite
traditions, and al-Subkī received an ijāzah from her in 728/1327–28.
[231]
(9) Safrā bint Yaʿqūb ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh
al-Dimashqīyah, Umm Muḥammad, whose grandfather was known as Ibn Qāḍī al-
Yaman. 46 Born sometime after 660/1261–62, she died in Damascus in 745/1245.
Al-Birzālī heard her recite hadith. Al-Subkī heard her recite traditions on a chain
of authority going back through her famous grandfather.
[236]
43
44
It is not clear to whom this refers.
45
Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ, 2:122–23; Ibn Ḥajar, Al-Durar al-Kāminah, 2:215.
46
(10) Ṣafīyah bint Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad
ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī, Umm Aḥmad, whose father was the grandson of the
famous Hanbali jurist Muwaffaq al-Dīn ibn Qudāmah (d. 620/1223). 47 She died in
741/1341. She heard Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim recite the entirety of the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim,
one of the principal Sunni collections of hadith. She issued an ijāzah to al-Subkī
in 728/1328–29.
[239]
(11) Ṣafīyah bint Abī Bakr ibn Ḥamzah ibn Maḥfūẓ al-Ṣaḥrāwī, Umm ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān al-Ṣāliḥīyah. 48 She died of the plague in 749/1348–49, and was buried
in the tomb of Muwaffaq al-Dīn ibn Qudāmah. She heard Zaynab bint Makkī and
others recite traditions. Al-Subkī heard her recite a volume by al-Anṣārī.
[241]
(12) ʿĀʾishah bint Muḥammad ibn Musallam ibn Salāmah ibn al-Bahāʾ al-
Ḥarrānī, Umm Muḥammad, al-Ṣāliḥīyah. 49 Born in 648/1250–51, 50 she died in
736/1336. She heard hadith from a number of scholars and recited them herself;
al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī were among those who heard her. Ibn Saʿd 51 compiled
her mashyakhah. She issued an ijāzah to al-Subkī in 728/1328–9.
[245]
(13) Fāṭimah bint Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn
Muḥammad ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī al-Ṣāliḥī, Umm Ibrāhīm 52—like Ṣafīyah
bint Aḥmad above, from the famed Banū Qudāmah dynasty of Hanbali scholars.
Born in 654/1256–57, she died in 729/1329. She heard hadith from Ibn ʿAbd
al-Dāʾim and others; both al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī heard her recite in turn. She
received ijāzahs from her relation Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 658/1260). 53
As she aged, she became known as the last surviving individual to transmit hadith
from several of those on whose authority she relied, including Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī
47
48
I have not been able to locate other biographical notices for Ṣafīyah bint Abī Bakr.
49
50
According to Ibn Ḥajar, 647/1249–50.
51
The same Ibn Saʿd who compiled al-Subkī’s muʿjam? See note 28.
52
53
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī, also from the Banū Qudāmah. Ibn al-
ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 5:295.
“by ijāzah.” According to al-Subkī, “she recited frequently, and many benefited
from her.” Al-Subkī read to her the mashyakhah of Shahdah bint Aḥmad ibn al-
Faraj al-Dīnawarīyah (d. 574/1178), 54 a female Baghdadi hadith scholar of such
prominence that she was known as “the support of Iraq” (masnadat al-ʿirāq), with
Fāṭimah’s ijāzah from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, who was himself the last
person to transmit “by ijāzah” from Shahdah.
[251]
(14) Fāṭimah bint Abī Bakr ibn Muḥammad ibn Turkhān ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ibn
Raddād al-Dimashqī al-Ṣāliḥī, Umm Aḥmad. 55 Born around the year 653/1255–
56, she died in 729/1329. She attended classes lead by Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim, and
received ijāzahs from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, among other scholars.
She recited hadith, and al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī both heard her do so. In his
own mashyakhah, al-Birzālī noted that he heard from and recited hadith on the
authority of this woman, and also her brothers, as well as their father and mother.
She apparently distinguished herself by writing ijāzahs “in her own hand” (bi-
khaṭṭihā). Al-Subkī received an ijāzah from her in 728/1328–29.
[253]
(15) Fāṭimah bint ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿIwaḍ ibn Rājiḥ ibn Bilāl al-
Maqdisī, Umm ʿAlī al-Ṣāliḥīyah. 56 Born in 650/1252–53, she died in 729/1328 57
after returning from the hajj. She heard traditions from Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim, and she
recited them in turn to al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī, among others. Al-Subkī received
an ijāzah from her in 728/1328–29.
[255]
(16) Fāṭimah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿĪsá ibn al-Musallam ibn Kathīr al-
Dimashqī, Umm Muḥammad, al-Ṣāliḥīyah. 58 Born in the 650s, 59 she died in
740/1339 and was buried in the tomb of Muwaffaq al-Dīn ibn Qudāmah. Ibn ʿAbd
al-Dāʾim was among those from whom she heard traditions, and she received
54
Al-Yāfiʿī, Mirʾat al-Jinān, 3:400; Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 4:248; Kaḥḥālah, Aʿlām al-
Nisāʾ, 2:309–12.
55
56
57
Ibn Ḥajar gives a date of death of 734/1333.
58
59
According to Ibn Ḥajar, 656/1258.
ijāzahs from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī as well as his brother ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd.
Al-Birzālī heard her recite hadith, and al-Dhahabī mentioned her in his muʿjam.
[260]
(17) Fāṭimah bint Fakhrāwar ibn Muḥammad ibn Fakhrāwar ibn Hindawīyah
[sic] al-Kunjī al-Ṣūfī, Umm Maḥmūd. 60 Born in 659/1261, 61 she died in 733/1333
outside Cairo. Unlike most of the other women cited by al-Subkī, she lived in the
Egyptian capital, where her father was a pious ascetic. She received ijāzahs from a
number of scholars in the year 663—that is, when she was a young girl. She recited
hadith, and also had a reputation for preaching to women. In Cairo in 731/1331,
that is when he was four, al-Subkī heard her recite the Kitāb al-Jumʿah from the
hadith collection of al-Nasāʾī (author of one of the six “canonical” collections of
hadith) according to an isnād going back through al-Muʿīn [Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn
Yūsuf] al-Dimashqī 62 and Ismāʿīl [ibn ʿAbd al-Qawī ibn Abī al-ʿIzz] ibn ʿUzūn [?]
(d. 667/1268) 63 to [Hibbat Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Masʿūd] al-Būṣīrī (d. 598/1201). 64
[262]
(18) Fāṭimah bint Muḥammad ibn Jamīl ibn Ḥamīd ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī ʿAṭṭāf ibn
Aḥmad al-Baghdādīyah al-Ṣāliḥīyah, Umm Muḥammad. 65 Born in 646/1248–49, 66
she died in 730/1330. She attended recitations given by her father in Baghdad
when she was just a year old. She received ijāzahs from a number of prominent
Iraqi scholars and later recited hadith to al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī among others.
[266]
(19) Fāṭimah bint Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jibrīl ibn Abī al-Fawāris
ibn Jibrīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Darbandī, Umm al-Ḥasan, known as Sitt al-
ʿAjam. 67 Born in 661/1263, she died in Cairo in 737/1337. She heard hadith from
numerous scholars and received ijāzahs from Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim and others “from
Damascus”—she herself lived in Cairo. In turn, she recited hadith to many people.
60
61
According to Ibn Ḥajar, 658/1260.
62
See Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 5:331.
63
Ibid., 5:324.
64
Ibid., 4:338.
65
66
656/1258, according to Ibn Ḥajar.
67
When he was four, al-Subkī heard her recite al-Nasāʾī’s Kitāb al-Jumʿah according
to the same isnād held by Fāṭimah bint Fakhrāwar, above.
[270]
(20) Nāranj bint ʿAbd Allāh al-Rūmīyah, the ʿatīqah of al-Ḥājj Mufliḥ, the ʿatīq
of al-Ḥājj ʿAlī ibn Ḥusayn ibn Manāʿ al-Takrītī al-Tājir, Umm ʿĀʾishah. 68 She died
in 741/1340. She heard recitations by Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim in 659/1261; al-Subkī
received an ijāzah from her in 728/1328–29.
In many respects, much of the information contained in these short biographical

notices in al-Subkī’s muʿjam is unremarkable. That is, it parallels accounts of
the lives of other (male) scholars, not just in this text, but in the biographical
dictionaries more generally. This in itself is worthy of note, for it reaffirms just
how thoroughly integrated women were into the world of textual, and especially
hadith, transmission, both as teachers and as pupils. 69 A fuller reading of these
notices in the context of a larger analysis of the entire muʿjam would provide the
basis for a comprehensive intellectual biography of this major Mamluk-era scholar
and jurist. But even a preliminary analysis confirms several important points.
The standards of hadith transmission recognized several different methods by
which a pupil could acquire authority over a text. Close reading and analysis of the
text in the presence of the shaykh was obviously preferred, but one could receive
an ijāzah with less intimate contact. It was even possible to request and receive
an ijāzah without actually encountering the individual issuing the certification,
and when Zaynab bint Yaḥyá received an ijāzah from Sibṭ al-Silafī “min al-diyār
al-miṣrīyah,” it is possible that she had not left her Damascene home. 70 Al-Subkī
himself appears to have included the names of several women from whom he
received ijāzahs in a similar way, the Damascene Asmāʾ bint Muḥammad, for
example, who issued him an ijāzah in 728/1327–28, when he was an infant in
Cairo. 71 This does not mean, however, that all transmission between women
and men was accomplished at a distance, and it is clear from al-Subkī’s muʿjam
that many of his shaykhahs transmitted from their teachers bi-al-samāʿ, that is,
68
69
At least one of the women listed in al-Subkī’s muʿjam had a mashyakhah of her own compiled;
see ʿĀʾishah bint Muḥammad (# 12).
70
# 8. Cf. Ḥabībah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (#3) and others, who received ijāzahs from scholars in
cities throughout the Muslim world.
71
#1. Cf. Zaynab bint Yaḥyá (# 8), Ṣafīyah bint Aḥmad (# 10), ʿĀʾishah bint Muḥammad (# 12),
Fāṭimah bint Abī Bakr (# 14), Fāṭimah bint ʿAbd Allāh (# 15), and Nāranj bint ʿAbd Allāh (#
20).
having themselves “heard” texts from male transmitters, and that al-Subkī himself
physically encountered many of his female teachers and heard them recite texts.
But virtually all of the women listed here were elderly at the point of contact,
and al-Subkī himself was quite young—sometimes, as in the case of Asmāʾ bint
Muḥammad, an infant. The advantage of hearing the recitation of hadith or
receiving an ijāzah at such a tender age is that, all things being equal, it shortened
the isnād—i.e., it reduced the number of links in the chain of transmission.
Several of the women listed here died shortly after the young al-Subkī arrived in
Damascus, meaning that he would be among the last individuals to recite texts on
their authority. 72 In a similar vein, several of al-Subkī’s shaykhahs distinguished
themselves by aging until they became the last surviving transmitter from a
particular shaykh of an earlier generation. 73 It is partly for this reason that, in
general, older teachers were preferred. In the case of a superannuated woman
transmitting a text to a very young male pupil, an added advantage was that
the sexual tension implicit in an encounter between non-maḥram individuals was
lessened.
A second point reaffirmed by al-Subkī’s muʿjam is the advantage that birth into
an academic family gave an individual seeking to establish a scholarly career. The
infant al-Subkī did not think to request an ijāzah from Asmāʾ bint Muḥammad
and others; it was his father’s foresight which took the steps to lay the foundation
for his son’s later reputation. The young al-Subkī was also able to take advantage
of his father’s posting as qadi in Damascus in 739/1338–39 to make more direct
contact with scholars, both male and female, in that city. On the “supply” side, it
is striking how many of the women whom al-Subkī listed as shaykhahs themselves
came from established and reputable scholarly families: those, for example, from
the famous Banū Qudāmah dynasty of Hanbali scholars. 74
It is clear, finally, that in a certain sense the community of scholars actively
engaged in the transmission of hadith was a small world: small, that is, in the
sense that the individuals who populated it formed a close-knit group. It is striking
how frequently certain data replicates itself in most of the biographical notices:
for example, that al-Dhahabī and al-Birzālī listed the shaykhah in question among
those on whose authority they related traditions. Similarly, a high proportion
of the women listed here included particular shaykhs of an earlier generation—
especially Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī—among their
teachers. At their base, the networks through which the educated class established
its reputation were broad and inclusive: they were broad and inclusive enough to
72
See for example Āminah bint Ibrāhīm (#2), Bint al-Kamāl (#6), and Fāṭimah bint ʿAbd al-
Raḥmān (#16).
73
See, for example, Fāṭimah bint Aḥmad (# 13).
74
For example, Ṣafīyah bint Aḥmad (# 10) and Fāṭimah bint Ibrāhīm (#13).
include members of social groups that might otherwise be marginalized, such as

women. But the values and principles that governed the transmission of religious
knowledge also brought certain individuals to the fore. The women listed in the
muʿjam of al-Subkī had reached that exalted place, and in the process made an
important contribution to the shaping of the “civilian elite.”

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Jonathan P.

Al-Subkī and His Women

disciplines and conventions of social history as it was then developing, especially

Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton, 1980).

professionalization, so that a religious scholar and a bureaucrat, although they

supervised the transmission of religious knowledge. Nonetheless, having an ʿālim

not, in fact, atypical for the leading scholars of the day. 31

and al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339). 37

[212 (in the margin)]

In many respects, much of the information contained in these short biographical

include members of social groups that might otherwise be marginalized, such as

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