In the first centuries of Islam, they were learned and taught in the great mosques

We often forget it. Or perhaps we have left it in the shadows for too long. For centuries, Muslim women have played an essential role in the transmission of religious knowledge. They were not just discreet students or exceptional figures cited to embellish the history books. They were teachers, specialists, references. They taught in prestigious mosques, in circles frequented by students sometimes coming from very distant regions. Men and women sat down to listen to their explanations, learn a chain of transmission, understand a text, receive authorization to teach in their turn.

These women transmitted the Koran, the sciences of hadith, jurisprudence, the Arabic language. Some devoted their entire lives to manuscripts, commentaries, and intellectual debates. Their name circulated among scholars. Their competence was recognized. This story may surprise you today. Not because it is marginal, but because it has been gradually forgotten. However, it tells a profound reality of Muslim civilization: knowledge has long traveled through different voices. And some of those voices were women’s.

When the mosque was the beating heart of knowledge

In the first centuries of Islam, the mosque was not only a place where people came to perform prayers. It was also a living space, an intellectual crossroads. There we met scientists, travelers, students. We debated there, we read there, we transmitted there. In Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Mecca or Medina, the large mosques sometimes resembled real open universities. There were not always large closed rooms or organized institutions like today. Knowledge often circulated in circles. A teacher would sit down, the students would gather around him, a book would be opened, and the transmission would begin.

In this universe, women naturally found their place. Some teachers received famous students. They granted ijâzas, these authorizations which made it possible to transmit a text or a science. Obtaining an ijâza from a great scholar was a sought-after honor.

Fatima al-Fihri remains one of the most symbolic names in this history. In the 9th century, this woman from Kairouan was associated with the founding of the al-Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez. This place would become one of the great intellectual centers of the Muslim world, attracting generations of students. The image is strong. A woman participating in the birth of a space that would train scholars for centuries. A historical reality far from the clichés which would like to present religious knowledge as an exclusively male domain.

Women whose teaching the great scholars sought

Muslim history preserves the memory of many scholars, particularly in the science of hadith. A demanding discipline, based on precision, reliability and an immense capacity for memorization. In this area, authority was not based solely on social status. It was based on a simple question: who has the most solid knowledge? Karima al-Marwaziyya, who died in the 11th century, is one of the most famous examples. A great specialist in the Sahih of al-Bukhari, she was recognized for the quality of her transmission. Scholars traveled long distances to attend his classes.

This scene is worth imagining. Students seated in an assembly, a major work of Islamic tradition open before them, and a woman in the center of the circle who teaches, explains and corrects. She was not an isolated exception. Historians of the Muslim world have identified numerous women specialists in hadith. Some were teachers of scientists who became famous. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, a great figure in Muslim scholarship, himself mentions several women among his teachers.

Fatima bint Muhammad al-Samarqandi, a 12th-century jurist, is another notable example. Trained in a large family of scholars, she mastered the complex questions of Muslim law. His reputation went far beyond the family. These journeys remind us of an often forgotten truth: for long periods of time, female intellectual excellence was not considered an anomaly. It was part of the knowledge landscape.

How part of this memory was erased

A question then naturally arises: if these women existed, why are their names so little known today? The answer is not simple. History is never a uniform block. Societies change. Mentalities are changing. Opening periods alternate with closing periods. Over time, several political, social and cultural factors have reduced the visible presence of women in certain public spaces of knowledge. New habits have taken root. Some doors closed. What was common in one era has become rare in another.

Then forgetting did its work. Generations grew up imagining that the absence of women in certain places was an ancient and permanent rule. However, historical sources tell a more nuanced reality. It’s not about idealizing the past. Ancient Muslim societies also had their limits and their inequalities. But reducing this whole story to a total absence of women would be a mistake. They were there. They were reading. They taught. They transmitted.

Finding the forgotten voices of a civilization of knowledge

Talking about these learned women today is not just a historical exercise. It is a way of rediscovering part of Muslim memory. A civilization is better understood when it accepts all the voices that built it. Those of the great jurists, theologians, philosophers, but also those of the women who carried the same books, studied the same texts and devoted their lives to the same research.

In the great mosques of the past, we could hear these female voices explaining a prophetic word, commenting on a work, transmitting knowledge received several generations before. They were not on the fringes of history. They were in his movement. Giving them a place again today is not importing a new idea into the Muslim tradition. Sometimes it is simply rediscovering what this tradition had already known. As if, beneath the dust of time, we found an ancient page that no one should ever have stopped reading.