WOMAN — AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

5. Muslim women ~ 88 ~ background at home. It is said that Imam ibn Jauzi, the famous religious scholar, received his primary education from his aunt. Ibn Abi Asiba’s sister and daughter were experts in medicine — the lady doctors of their time. And among the Hadith teachers of Imam ibn Asakir, several women teachers are mentioned. During the first era of Islam, academic activity related mostly to work on the Hadith and athar.78 We find, in this age, that a number of the Prophet’s Companions were women, and that they contributed in large measure to the narration and preservation of the traditions of the Prophet. The Prophet’s wife, ‘Aishah, herself handed down to posterity a substantial proportion of what comprises the vast whole of Islamic knowledge. The next generation of women in their turn handed down the traditions which they had heard at first hand from the Prophet or his Companions. Many of them acquired their knowledge from religious scholars to whom they were related, and carried on the good work of passing it on to their successors.