Relations, Narrations, and Judgments: The Scholarly Networks and Contributions of an Early Female Muslim Jurist

Through an extensive analysis of early biographical dictionaries and histories, ḥadīth collections and commentaries, as well as legal texts, I reconstruct the life of a female jurist from the third generation of Muslims. It was through informal networks of kin- ship and scholarship that ʿAmrah bint ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 106/724) contributed to the core of Islamic knowledge in ways similar to her male contemporaries, while she also served as a resource within the community for the gender-specific concerns of women. The depth of her knowledge established ʿAmrah’s narrations as reliable evidence of the Prophet Muḥammad’s conduct and endowed her own opinions and deeds with an authoritative weight respected by contemporaries and subsequent generations of Muslim scholars.

Duke Scholars

Author Mona Hassan Religious Studies