Kurdish Women and Scholarly Licenses in Islamic Civilization: A Historical Study of License Types and Female Participation Models (5th–9th Centuries AH / 11th–15th Centuries CE)

Abstract

This study investigated the role of Kurdish women in the Islamic scholarly license system (ijāzah) across the period extending from the fifth to the ninth centuries AH, a period that witnessed remarkable institutional development in the structure of Islamic education. The research was guided from the outset by a central question: what was the nature of Kurdish women's contribution to this scholarly system, which license types did they participate in, and what legacy did they leave within the broader landscape of Islamic intellectual history?

The study employed a historical-inductive methodology and drew upon primary sources as its principal evidential foundation, chiefly the biographical dictionaries and prosopographical works of al-Sakhāwī, al-Dhahabī, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, and al-Nawawī. The findings revealed that the Islamic ijāzah system had constituted a comprehensive institutional framework encompassing four principal types: the license of transmission (riwāyah), the license of critical understanding (dirāyah), the license of legal opinion (iftāʾ), and the license of teaching (tadrīs). The evidence further demonstrated that Kurdish women had participated in all four types to varying degrees, and that documented figures such as Umm Aḥmad Ṭarafa al-Ḥarrāniyya, ʿAfīfa al-Fāriqāniyya, Sitt al-Kataba Niʿma al-Hamdāniyya, Shahda al-Dīnawāriyya, and Asmāʾ bint al-Jamāl al-Muhmarrānī stood as compelling evidence that such participation had not been anomalous, but rather a natural expression of the established role women had historically played in preserving and transmitting the Islamic scholarly heritage.