It goes without saying that women were the primary narrators of the customs related to matters pertaining to women. However, there are many instances where women narrated on general issues. One renowned Ḥadīth is narrated by al-Rubayyi’ bint Mu’awwidh in which she describes the Prophet’s wuḍhūʾ. Her knowledge on this was so accurate and detailed that various scholars travelled to great lengths to hear this Ḥadīth from her.
Umm Ad-Darda’ was held by Iyas ibn Mu`awiyah, as an important scholar of hadith of the time and a judge of undisputed ability and merit, to be superior to all the other hadith scholars of the period, including the celebrated masters of hadith like Al-Hasan Al-Basri and Ibn Sirin.
In retaliation, the patriarchy did what the patriarchy does best. It fought and rallied for the disappearance of women. Many fans of female reciters and other female Sheikhas protested against the fatwa but to no avail. Radio stations soon stopped playing Sheikha Munira and other Shiekhas’ recitations. The Sheikhs refused to rescind their fatwa even though some scholars saw it as a form of intellectual regression.
Documentation from Ibn Hajar indicates that Zainab bint al-Kamāl never married. It also tells us that she suffered from ophthalmia – an inflammation of the eye, though it did not seem to impair her career.
“Sitt” at the time was a title attributed to women rulers or women of that calibre. The queen of the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt in 980 bore the title Sitt al-Mulk. There were also female chief qadis who were addressed as Sitt al-Qudat, for their expertise in the fields of hadith and fiqh in Damascus during the 14th century. Transmissions of the hadiths from Sahih Al-Bukhari.
