Mohammad Akram Nadwi - Al-Muhaddithat: The Female Scholars of Islam

About this lecture

In this lecture, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi — author of a monumental 40-volume biographical encyclopedia of 9,000 female Hadith scholars — presents the rich and largely forgotten tradition of women's Islamic scholarship. Drawing on historical examples spanning from the time of the Prophet ﷺ to the early 20th century, he demonstrates that women taught in the most sacred mosques, preserved entire sciences of Hadith, and were relied upon by the greatest male scholars of every era. He argues passionately that the decline of this tradition is directly linked to the infiltration of Greek philosophy into the madrasa curriculum, and that the revival of women's scholarship begins with men fundamentally changing their attitude toward women.