New Books In Islamic Studies

Studies on the subject of women’s participation in religious and intellectual life in Islam have been few.Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013)byAsma Sayeed, professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA, is a much needed addition to the fields of early and classical Islamic history, the study of hadith and its transmission, and women’s studies. Professor Sayeed leads readers through nine centuries, from the seventhto sixteenth century CE, of religious, social, and intellectual history of women’s participation as transmitters of hadith, the words and actions of Muhammad. Women’s participation within this area was not static, but ebbed and flowed throughout history as demonstrated in this book’s four chapters. Women were critical in the dissemination of hadith in the first century of Islam. As the study of hadith became more specialized from the fourthto tenthcentury, women were marginalized as transmitters which S