Summary. — In the Prophet’s time, men and women shared the mosque, the prayer ground, military expeditions, wedding feasts and teaching circles — under precise rules: no being alone together, a restrained gaze, distant bodies. The Qur’an organises this co-presence; it does not abolish it. The transmission of knowledge remained mixed for fourteen centuries, from Umm al-Dardâʾ teaching a caliph to Ibn Hajar learning from a woman. Strict segregation is a late, datable hardening. A file built on 36 verified hadiths from Bukhârî, Muslim and Abû Dâwûd.
A note on method
Three levels of assertion are distinguished throughout:
- Established fact — attested by a datable, verifiable source (here, almost always Bukhârî or Muslim, with the hadith number in the standard numbering).
- Inference — a conclusion drawn from established facts; the reasoning is set out.
- Judgement — the assessment of an author, ancient or modern, reported as such.
The word “mixing” here means the co-presence of men and women in the same social space: mosque, prayer ground, market, road, military expedition, teaching circle, meal. It does not mean indistinction or the absence of rules. The question is simple: in the time of the Prophet and the first generation, did this co-presence exist, and under what conditions? What did the scholarly tradition make of it over fourteen centuries? And when, and how, did strict segregation set in?
The translations of the hadiths are our own, from the Arabic text.
I. The Qur’anic framework: regulate, not separate
1. The verses on the gaze presuppose co-presence
Established fact. The Qur’an addresses men first, then women: “Tell the believing men to lower some of their gaze and guard their chastity… Tell the believing women to lower some of their gaze and guard their chastity, and to draw their veil (khimâr) over their bosoms” (24:30-31).
Inference. One does not ask people who cannot see each other to lower “some of their gaze”. The partitive min (yaghuddû min absârihim) deserves to be taken seriously: the Qur’an does not ask people not to see, but to hold back part of their gaze — which presupposes a space in which they see each other. These two verses assume that men and women meet, and they order that meeting through a discipline of the gaze and of dress, not through a separation of places. This is the starting point of the whole file: the primary Qur’anic norm is an ethics of co-presence, not an architecture of separation.
2. “God knows that you will think of them”: Qur’anic realism
Established fact. Concerning widows in their waiting period: “There is no blame on you for alluding to a proposal of marriage, or for keeping it to yourselves. God knows that you will think of them. But do not make them a secret promise, unless you speak a decent word” (2:235).
Inference. The verse takes note, without scandal, of the fact that men think about women — here about widows they cannot yet marry. It does not respond to this fact by removing women from men’s sight; it lays down a rule of speech: allusion is permitted, secret promises are forbidden, the words must remain decent. The Qur’an does not deny desire; it channels it. The verse of the hijâb says the same thing through its stated purpose: “that is purer for your hearts and for their hearts” (33:53). The Qur’anic rules aim at hearts and conduct, not at walls.
3. Speaking to women: what the Qur’an takes for granted
Established fact. The Qur’an contains many passages in which men and women speak to one another, and others in which it regulates the manner of doing so — never by imposing silence.
- 33:32 — to the wives of the Prophet, the only women covered by the hijâb: “do not be soft in your speech, lest he in whose heart is a disease should hope; and speak a decent word (qawlan maʿrûfan)”. One does not regulate the tone of a conversation that is not supposed to take place. The verse assumes that the Mothers of the Believers speak to men, and it fixes the manner.
- 33:53 — “ask them from behind a screen”: the verse of the hijâb itself organises an exchange of words; it changes its modality, it does not abolish it.
- 58:1 — “God has heard the words of the woman who disputed with you (tujâdiluka) about her husband and complained to God; God heard your dialogue”. Khawla bint Thaʿlaba comes to plead her case before the Prophet; the sura bears her name (al-Mujâdila, “the woman who disputes”).
- 60:10 and 60:12 — the believing women who emigrate are “examined” by the believers; the Prophet receives their oath of allegiance — a dialogue, which ʿÂʾisha describes as purely verbal (Bukhârî 7214).
- 9:71 — “The believing men and the believing women are allies (awliyâʾ) of one another: they enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong”. An alliance that enjoins the good presupposes that people speak to each other.
- 28:23-26 — Moses approaches the two daughters of Madyan (“What is the matter with you?”), and they answer him; one of them comes back to him “walking with modesty” and speaks to him; then she advises her father: “Hire him.” The Qur’anic narrative gives modesty and speech together, not one against the other.
- 3:37 — Zachariah “enters upon” Mary in the sanctuary and asks her: “Where does this come from?”; she answers him.
Inference. In the Qur’an, speech between men and women is an ordinary fact, including for the most protected women (the wives of the Prophet, Mary). When the text intervenes, it regulates the manner — a decent word, without softness — and sometimes the setting (the screen of 33:53); it never prescribes silence. The Qur’anic rule of speech is consistent with that of the gaze: restrain, do not suppress.
4. The verse of the hijâb (33:53): its circumstances and its addressees
Established fact. The verse “…ask them from behind a screen (hijâb)” (33:53) was revealed in Medina, in year 5, in circumstances reported by Anas b. Mâlik: at the wedding banquet of Zaynab bint Jahsh, three guests linger chatting in the Prophet’s house, to his embarrassment; the verse then comes down (Bukhârî 4793). ʿUmar had earlier suggested: “O Messenger of God, the righteous and the wicked enter your house; if only you ordered the Mothers of the Believers to veil themselves…” (Bukhârî 4790). Another account by ʿÂʾisha connects the revelation to a night outing of Sawda, recognised by ʿUmar (Bukhârî 146).
Established fact. The text itself names its addressees: “O wives of the Prophet, you are not like other women” (33:32); “Stay in your houses” (33:33); “Do not enter the houses of the Prophet… ask them from behind a screen” (33:53). The verse concerns access to the interior of the apartments of the Prophet’s wives, and the way of addressing them.
Inference. The hijâb of 33:53 is a domestic and specific rule: it protects the privacy of the prophetic household, which was also a public place of passage. Extending this verse to all women and to the whole of social space is an act of interpretation — legitimate or not, that is another debate — but it is not the letter of the text. And even for its direct addressees, what follows shows that it did not mean seclusion: the wives of the Prophet continue to perform the tawâf, to receive visitors, to teach (see II.6 and IV.2).
5. The jilbâb (33:59): a rule for going out
Established fact. “O Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (jalâbîb) over themselves; that is the best way for them to be recognised and not molested” (33:59).
Inference. A rule of dress for going out only makes sense if women go out. The verse takes note of their presence in the public space of Medina and regulates its modalities.
Summary of Part I. The Qur’an organises co-presence; it does not abolish it. It lays down a discipline of the gaze, a dress code, a rule of speech, a protection of domestic privacy. No verse prescribes a general separation of the sexes in social space.
II. The attested facts: the shared space
The facts are presented in chronological order: Mecca first, with Khadîja; then Medina, where the essential is played out.
1. Khadîja, merchant and wife of the Prophet
Established fact. Ibn Hishâm presents Khadîja bint Khuwaylid as “a merchant woman of nobility and wealth, who hired men to trade with her goods” (tastaʾjiru l-rijâla fî mâlihâ). She hires Muhammad, then about twenty-five years old, to lead her caravan to Syria with her servant Maysara; on the latter’s report and on what she has observed herself, it is she who takes the initiative of the marriage, through a friend, Nafîsa bint Munya (Ibn Hishâm, al-Sîra, “The marriage of the Messenger of God to Khadîja”; Ibn Saʿd, al-Tabaqât, vol. 8, entry on Khadîja).
Established fact. At the moment of the first revelation, Khadîja again plays an active role: she reassures the Prophet, then “took him to Waraqa b. Nawfal”, her cousin, an old Christian versed in the Scriptures, and says to him directly: “O cousin, listen to what your nephew says” (ʿÂʾisha, Bukhârî 3).
Inference. The household from which Islam emerged was born of a professional relationship between a woman employer and a man employee, then of a marriage proposal made by the woman. This marriage preceded the revelation by fifteen years; but the Prophet lived with Khadîja through the first ten years of his mission, and the Qur’an, which reforms so many customs of pre-Islamic Arabia — the infanticide of daughters, the inheriting of widows, unlimited repudiation — never touched this one. The Muslim tradition did not present this story as a relic to be corrected; it handed it down as a model. And the scene with Waraqa shows, on the very day Islam begins, a woman speaking to a man who is not, strictly speaking, a relative, in the presence of her husband, on a grave matter.
What the case does not establish. The sources do not say whether Khadîja continued her trade after the revelation; they say that she put her fortune at the service of the nascent community. We will therefore not draw from her example more than it contains: a woman of the first rank, acting in public space and with men, at the very origin of Islam.
2. The mosque
Established fact. The Prophet said: “Do not prevent the female servants of God from going to the mosques of God” (Bukhârî 900; Muslim 442: “When the wife of one of you asks his permission to go to the mosque, let him not prevent her”).
The context of the hadith in Bukhârî deserves to be read in full: a wife of ʿUmar b. al-Khattâb used to attend the dawn and night prayers at the mosque. She was asked: “Why do you go out, when you know that ʿUmar dislikes it and is jealous?” She answered: “And what prevents him from forbidding me? — What prevents him is the saying of the Messenger of God: ‘Do not prevent the female servants of God from going to the mosques of God'” (Bukhârî 900).
Established fact. Women attended the dawn prayer, the darkest one: “The believing women used to attend the fajr prayer with the Messenger of God, wrapped in their cloaks, then return to their homes without anyone recognising them, because of the darkness” (ʿÂʾisha, Bukhârî 578).
Established fact. The rows were distinct but within the same space: “The best rows for men are the first… the best rows for women are the last” (Muslim 440). At the end of the prayer, the women rose first and the Prophet paused, “so that — comments Ibn Shihâb — the women might leave before the men caught up with them” (Umm Salama, Bukhârî 837).
Established fact. The mosque was also a place of care and of life: during the Battle of the Trench, the Prophet had a tent pitched in the mosque to nurse Saʿd b. Muʿâdh (Bukhârî 463) — the biographical tradition (Ibn Ishâq/Ibn Hishâm) names the nurse, Rufayda al-Aslamiyya. A black woman used to sweep the mosque; when she died, the Prophet, who had not been told, had himself taken to her grave to pray over her (Bukhârî 458).
3. The prayer of the two festivals
Established fact. Umm ʿAtiyya reports: “We were ordered to bring out [for the festival] the young girls and those who live in seclusion” — and, in a variant, “the menstruating women keep away from the prayer ground” (Bukhârî 974). The order therefore explicitly targets the categories of women who otherwise did not go out.
Established fact. After the sermon, the Prophet, accompanied by Bilâl, “thinking that he had not been heard by the women”, went towards them, exhorted them and ordered them to give alms; “the women began to throw earrings and rings, and Bilâl gathered them in a fold of his garment” (Ibn ʿAbbâs, Bukhârî 98).
Inference. The prayer ground of the festivals is a common space, with a women’s section distinct enough for the Prophet to walk over to it, but close enough for him to go there on foot with his muezzin.
4. Military expeditions
Established fact. Bukhârî devotes a chapter to “The expedition of women and their fighting alongside men” (Jihâd, bâb 65). Anas reports there: “On the day of Uhud, when the people abandoned the Prophet, I saw ʿÂʾisha bint Abî Bakr and Umm Sulaym, with their garments tucked up — I could see the anklets on their legs —, carrying the water-skins on their backs and pouring them into the mouths of the fighters” (Bukhârî 2880).
Established fact. Al-Rubayyiʿ bint Muʿawwidh: “We used to go on expeditions with the Prophet: we gave the men water, we served them, we brought the wounded and the dead back to Medina” (Bukhârî 2883). Umm ʿAtiyya: “I took part in seven expeditions with the Messenger of God; I stayed behind in the camps, I prepared the food, I treated the wounded and I looked after the sick” (Muslim 1812g). Ibn ʿAbbâs, replying in writing to the Kharijite Najda: “The Messenger of God took women on expeditions; they treated the wounded and received a gift from the booty, but not a fixed share” (Muslim 1812a).
Established fact — in the opposite direction. The Prophet did not always accept: to Umm Waraqa, who asked to leave for Badr as a nurse, he replied: “Stay in your house” (Abû Dâwûd 591). The presence of women on campaign is therefore neither systematic nor a right; it is an accepted practice, decided case by case.
5. Ordinary social life
Established fact. At the wedding of Abû Usayd al-Sâʿidî, “no one prepared the meal or served it [to the Prophet and his Companions] but his wife, Umm Usayd” (Bukhârî 5182). Bukhârî’s chapter title: “The bride herself serving the men at her wedding”.
Established fact. Asmâʾ bint Abî Bakr, wife of al-Zubayr, used to carry date stones on her head from her husband’s land, nearly a kilometre away; “I met the Messenger of God with a group of Ansâr; he called me and made his mount kneel so that I might ride behind him; I felt ashamed, and I remembered al-Zubayr’s jealousy” — the Prophet, seeing her embarrassment, went on his way (Bukhârî 5224).
Established fact. On arriving in Medina, ʿÂʾisha visits Abû Bakr and Bilâl, both laid low with fever, and talks with them (Bukhârî 5654). Abû Bakr is her father: that part of the account proves nothing. But Bilâl is not related to her, and that is precisely how Bukhârî classifies the hadith: “Women visiting sick men”. It should be noted, in honesty, that ʿÂʾisha was then very young; the example holds by the normative use Bukhârî makes of it rather than by the scene itself.
Inference. These scenes have one thing in common: they are reported without surprise by their witnesses, and classified by Bukhârî under titles that make rules of them. Asmâʾ’s account further shows the coexistence of co-presence (she meets a group of men on the road, the Prophet offers her a seat) and of individual modesty (she declines). The two do not exclude each other.
6. The tawâf: the pivotal text
Established fact. Bukhârî 1618, chapter “The tawâf of women together with men”. Ibn Jurayj reports: “ʿAtâʾ [b. Abî Rabâh] informed me, when Ibn Hishâm forbade women to perform the tawâf together with men: ‘How can he forbid them, when the wives of the Prophet performed the tawâf together with men?’ I said: ‘Was that after the hijâb or before?’ He answered: ‘Yes, by my life, I saw it with my own eyes after the hijâb.’ I said: ‘How did they mix with the men?’ He said: ‘They did not mix (lam yakunna yukhâlitna): ʿÂʾisha performed the tawâf apart from the men, without mixing with them… They would go out at night, unrecognisable, and perform the tawâf with the men; but when they wanted to enter the Kaʿba, they waited until the men had come out.'”
This text is the most important in the file, for three reasons:
- It attests that the wives of the Prophet — the only direct addressees of 33:53 — performed the tawâf in the same space as the men, after the revelation of the hijâb.
- It defines what “mixing” meant for a Successor: co-presence in the same place, without mingling of bodies (mukhâlata), with distance and discretion (going out at night, dress) — exactly the regime described in III.
- It dates the first administrative prohibition of this co-presence. “Ibn Hishâm” is, according to Ibn Hajar (Fath al-Bârî, commentary on no. 1618), one of the sons of Hishâm b. Ismâʿîl al-Makhzûmî — maternal uncles of the caliph Hishâm b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 724-743), governors of Medina and Mecca. And it also dates the first scholarly resistance: ʿAtâʾ, the great mufti of Mecca (d. 114/732), opposes it in the name of prophetic practice. Ibn Hajar adds two clarifications (Fath al-Bârî, vol. 3, p. 561). A tradition reported by al-Fâkihî has ʿUmar forbidding men to circumambulate mingled with women, and striking a man found among them; “if authentic, it does not contradict the first, for Ibn Hishâm forbade them to circumambulate while the men circumambulate, absolutely” — ʿUmar would have forbidden mingling, Ibn Hishâm co-presence. This is exactly ʿAtâʾ’s distinction. Another notice attributes to Khâlid al-Qasrî, governor of Mecca under ʿAbd al-Malik, having been “the first to separate men and women at the tawâf”; Ibn Hajar takes it, if accurate, for a temporary measure.
7. A public office? The case of al-Shifâʾ
Judgement — weak chain. The biographical dictionaries report that ʿUmar “sometimes entrusted her with something of the affairs of the market” (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istîʿâb, entry on al-Shifâʾ bint ʿAbdillâh; taken up by al-Mizzî and Ibn Hajar, al-Isâba). This notice is widely circulated; one should know that its chain (Ibn Abî ʿÂsim, al-Âhâd wa-l-mathânî) is judged very weak by hadith critics. It bears witness to what a biographical tradition considered plausible in the 3rd/9th century; it cannot serve as an established fact. We mention it so that we are not reproached with having concealed it, and so that it is not cited as proof.
III. The limits: what mixing was not
The same collections that attest co-presence also lay down its rules. Reading them together is the only honest way to describe the Medinan regime.
1. The prohibition of being alone together (khalwa)
Established fact. “Let no man ever be alone with a woman, except in the presence of a mahram” (Ibn ʿAbbâs, Bukhârî 5233). “Beware of entering upon women. — And the brother-in-law (al-hamw), O Messenger of God? — The brother-in-law is death” (ʿUqba b. ʿÂmir, Bukhârî 5232).
Inference. The red line is not co-presence in public space: it is being alone together in private space. The rule targets precisely what public space, by its visibility, prevents. A system that allows the mosque, the market and the road, but forbids the closed room, is coherent: it deals with the risk where it lies.
2. The discipline of the gaze
Established fact. During the Farewell Pilgrimage, a woman of Khathʿam comes to question the Prophet; al-Fadl b. ʿAbbâs, riding behind him, looks at her and she looks at him; “the Prophet kept turning al-Fadl’s face to the other side” — then he answers the woman’s question (Bukhârî 1513).
Inference. The scene condenses the whole regime: a woman addresses the Prophet directly, in public, in front of men; she is not sent away, she is not veiled any further; it is the man who looks who is corrected. Co-presence is maintained; it is conduct that is regulated.
3. The distance of bodies
Established fact. The Prophet received the oath of allegiance of women (Qur’an 60:12) by word only: “The hand of the Messenger of God never touched the hand of a woman” (ʿÂʾisha, Bukhârî 7214; Muslim 1866). Distinct rows (Muslim 440); staggered departure at the end of the prayer (Bukhârî 837). And, coming out of the mosque and seeing men and women mingled on the road, the Prophet said to the women: “Draw back, it is not for you to take the middle of the road; keep to the sides” (Abû Dâwûd 5272 — graded hasan by al-Albânî, chain debated).
4. Dress and the absence of perfume
Established fact. At the revelation of 24:31, the women of the Ansâr “tore their cloaks and made head-veils of them” (ʿÂʾisha, Bukhârî 4758). Muslim entitles his chapter: “Women going out to the mosques when no fitna results from it, and that she should not go out perfumed” (Muslim, Salât, bâb 30; the perfume hadith is no. 443: “When one of you attends the night prayer, let her not perfume herself that night”).
Summary of Part III. The Medinan regime is neither segregation nor indistinction. It is a regulated co-presence: the same places, distant bodies, lowered gazes, covering dress, no closed rooms. ʿAtâʾ sums it up in one phrase: they were with the men, but “did not mix”.
IV. The transmission of knowledge: a mixing never interrupted
If co-presence receded in everyday public space, there is one domain in which it never ceased, for fourteen centuries, under the eyes of all the jurists and with their participation: the teaching of the religious sciences. It is the most massive fact in the file, and the least known.
1. The prophetic model: shared teaching
Established fact. “The women said to the Prophet: ‘The men have taken you over from us; grant us a day of your own.’ He appointed them a day on which he met them, exhorted them and gave them instructions” (Abû Saʿîd al-Khudrî, Bukhârî 101). Bukhârî entitles the chapter: “Should a separate day be set for women for knowledge?”
Established fact. Women also asked their questions in public, in front of men, including on the most intimate subjects. Umm Sulaym: “O Messenger of God, God is not ashamed of the truth: must a woman perform the major ablution when she has an erotic dream?” (Bukhârî 130 — Umm Salama, present, covers her face in embarrassment, but the question is asked and the answer given). During the Farewell Pilgrimage, a woman of Khathʿam questions the Prophet before the pilgrims about the pilgrimage to be performed for her father (Bukhârî 1513).
Established fact. Umm Hishâm bint Hâritha: “I learned the sura Qâf only from the very mouth of the Messenger of God, who preached it every Friday” (Muslim 873). A woman memorises an entire sura by attending, week after week, the sermon addressed to the assembly of men. At the festival, the Prophet extends his sermon by going to instruct the women, with Bilâl (Bukhârî 98).
Inference. The request for a “separate day” proves two things at once: that ordinary teaching was shared — the women ask for a session because the men monopolise the shared sessions; otherwise the request would make no sense — and that the women wanted more direct access. The Prophet grants the second without abolishing the first. He never organised religious teaching separated on principle: the “separate day” is a complement, not a substitute.
2. Women in the chains of transmission — including those of this article
Established fact. Several of the hadiths cited in this article reached Bukhârî and Muslim through women who transmitted them to men:
- Hafsa bint Sîrîn (d. c. 101/720), sister of the famous Ibn Sîrîn, transmits Umm ʿAtiyya to Ayyûb al-Sakhtiyânî (Bukhârî 974) and to Hishâm b. Hassân (Muslim 1812g).
- ʿAmra bint ʿAbd al-Rahmân (d. c. 98/717), pupil and confidante of ʿÂʾisha, transmits to Yahyâ b. Saʿîd al-Ansârî, from whom Mâlik has the hadith (Bukhârî 869; Muslim 445). The caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzîz, launching the writing down of hadith, ordered his governor of Medina to record “the hadith of ʿAmra” (Ibn Saʿd); al-Dhahabî calls her “learned, a jurist, an authority, of great knowledge”, and reports al-Qâsim b. Muhammad’s advice to a young student: “Keep to ʿAmra, she grew up in ʿÂʾisha’s house” — “and I found her,” he says, “an inexhaustible sea” (Siyar, vol. 4, entry “ʿAmra”).
- Zaynab bint Abî Salama, daughter of Umm Salama, transmits to ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr (Bukhârî 130).
- Hind bint al-Hârith transmits Umm Salama to Ibn Shihâb al-Zuhrî, the master of Mâlik (Bukhârî 837).
And upstream of all these chains, ʿÂʾisha herself, who taught dozens of Companions and Successors — Masrûq, al-Aswad, ʿAlqama, Abû Salama b. ʿAbd al-Rahmân, ʿUrwa —, often from behind a curtain, in accordance with the verse that concerned her, and who answered the questions of men and women alike on every chapter of the law.
Inference. The Sahîh of Bukhârî, the most revered text of Islam after the Qur’an, is built on transmissions from women to men. No hadith critic, of any school, ever weakened a chain because a woman appeared in it: the conditions of transmission — probity, memory, direct audition — are the same for both sexes. Now direct audition (samâʿ) presupposes the physical co-presence of master and pupil. The science of hadith has therefore, from its origin, presupposed and practised mixed teaching.
3. Umm al-Dardâʾ: a caliph at a woman’s school
Established fact. Al-Dhahabî devotes an entry to Umm al-Dardâʾ al-Sughrâ (Hujayma bint Huyayy, d. after 81/700), “the learned lady, the jurist”. As a child, an orphan taken in by Abû l-Dardâʾ, “she went with him, prayed in the men’s rows and sat in the circles of the reciters to learn the Qur’an, until the day Abû l-Dardâʾ said to her: ‘Join the women’s rows.'” As an adult, she teaches in Damascus; al-Dhahabî lists her pupils — all men: Jubayr b. Nufayr, Abû Qilâba, Sâlim b. Abî l-Jaʿd, Rajâʾ b. Haywa, Makhûl, and others. “Makhûl used to say: Umm al-Dardâʾ was a jurist (faqîha).” ʿAwn b. ʿAbdillâh: “We used to go to Umm al-Dardâʾ and perform the dhikr in her presence.” And above all: “ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwân often sat with Umm al-Dardâʾ, at the back of the mosque of Damascus” (al-Dhahabî, Siyar aʿlâm al-nubalâʾ, entry “Umm al-Dardâʾ al-Sughrâ”, vol. 4).
Inference. An Umayyad caliph, in the great mosque of his capital, takes his place in a woman’s circle to learn from her. The scene is reported by a 14th-century traditionist, without the slightest reservation, as a title of glory for both. And the same text shows the limit: when the prayer is called, she joins the women and he goes to lead the men. It is, once again, regulated co-presence — and here it applies to teaching.
4. Fourteen centuries of women hadith teachers
Established fact. The list is long; here are a few landmarks, all documented in the classical biographical dictionaries:
- Karîma al-Marwaziyya (d. 463/1070) teaches the Sahîh of Bukhârî in Mecca, to listeners from all over the Muslim world; al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî is among her auditors, and her copy of the Sahîh is held to be one of the most reliable (al-Dhahabî, Siyar, vol. 18, pp. 233-234: “she transmitted the Sahîh many times — once with Abû Bakr al-Khatîb reading, during the pilgrimage season”).
- Shuhda bint Ahmad al-Ibarî, “Fakhr al-Nisâʾ” (d. 574/1178), teaches in Baghdad before large gatherings of men (Siyar, vol. 20, pp. 542-543: “the musnida of Iraq, Fakhr al-Nisâʾ”; Ibn ʿAsâkir, al-Samʿânî, Ibn al-Jawzî — “I read before her” — and “a great multitude” transmit from her).
- Fâtima bint Muhammad al-Samarqandî (d. 581/1185), a Hanafi jurist, daughter of the author of the Tuhfat al-fuqahâʾ and wife of al-Kâsânî: the fatwas of the household bear three signatures — the father, the daughter, the husband (al-Qurashî, al-Jawâhir al-mudiyya, entry “Fâtima bint Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Samarqandî”, after Ibn al-ʿAdîm).
- Zaynab bint al-Kamâl (d. 740/1339) teaches hadith in Damascus for decades; al-Dhahabî and Tâj al-Dîn al-Subkî are among her pupils (al-Dhahabî, Muʿjam al-shuyûkh al-kabîr, vol. 1, p. 248, no. 267 — he counts her among his own teachers; Ibn Hajar, al-Durar al-kâmina, entry “Zaynab bint Ahmad b. ʿAbd al-Rahîm”: “students crowded to her and read the great collections before her”).
- ʿÂʾisha bint ʿAbd al-Hâdî (d. 816/1413), in Damascus, holds the shortest chain to Bukhârî of her time; Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalânî, the author of the Fath al-Bârî, is her pupil and lists her among his teachers (al-Sakhâwî, al-Dawʾ al-lâmiʿ, vol. 12, entry “ʿÂʾisha ibnat Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Hâdî”: “among those who transmitted much from her, our master [Ibn Hajar], who recorded her in his Muʿjam“; “she was the last to transmit the Bukhârî by direct audition with so short a chain”).
Established fact. The figures: Ibn ʿAsâkir (d. 571/1176), the historian of Damascus, studied under more than 1,200 men and 80 women, to whom he devotes a register. Al-Sakhâwî (d. 902/1497), in his dictionary of the scholars of the 9th century of the Hijra (al-Dawʾ al-lâmiʿ), devotes an entire volume to women: 1,075 entries. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, in the dictionary he has devoted to them, records several thousand, from the 1st to the 14th century.
5. What this establishes
Inference. Three conclusions follow, and they are solid because they rest on the practice of the most uncontested authorities of the tradition:
- No school of law ever forbade a man to learn from a woman, or a woman to learn from a man. The question did not even arise: the chains of hadith would have made it absurd.
- This teaching was a real co-presence, in the mosques and houses of learning, under the regime of the Medinan rules: distance, dress, no closed rooms. Umm al-Dardâʾ at the back of the mosque of Damascus, Karîma in Mecca, Shuhda in Baghdad did not teach by correspondence.
- The jurists who codified the rules concerning women — Ibn Hajar, al-Dhahabî, al-Subkî, Ibn ʿAsâkir, al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî — themselves learned from women, in shared sessions, and recorded it with pride in the lists of their teachers.
Mixed religious teaching, held under the rules of Medina, is therefore not a modern innovation in need of justification: it is the normal form of the transmission of knowledge in Islam for fourteen centuries. What is recent, historically, is its exclusion.
V. The hardening: chronology of a shift
1. From the first generation: the signs
Established fact. ʿUmar “disliked” his own wife going to the mosque, and “was jealous of it” — but did not prevent her, halted by the hadith (Bukhârî 900). A saying attributed to ʿUmar (or to the Prophet according to the chains; Abû Dâwûd holds the attribution to ʿUmar to be more reliable): “If we left this door to the women…” — and Ibn ʿUmar never again went through that door until his death (Abû Dâwûd 462 and 571). This is the origin of the “women’s door” of the mosque of Medina.
Established fact. ʿÂʾisha, in the last years of her life (d. 58/678): “If the Messenger of God had seen what the women have introduced [as novelties], he would have forbidden them the mosque as the women of the Banû Isrâʾîl were forbidden” (Bukhârî 869; Muslim 445).
Inference. These three texts show that the tension existed from the beginning, among the closest Companions — and that it was contained by the prophetic norm. ʿUmar does not cross the line; he makes an arrangement (a door). ʿÂʾisha expresses a conditional regret (“had he seen… he would have”); she does not pronounce a prohibition. Ibn Hajar said it better than anyone (Fath al-Bârî, vol. 2, p. 407): “Some have relied on ʿÂʾisha’s words to forbid women [the mosque] absolutely; this does not hold, for no change of the rule follows from it: she made it conditional on something that did not occur… The answer is: he did not see, and he did not forbid; so the rule continued — to the point that ʿÂʾisha herself pronounced no prohibition. Moreover, God knew what they would introduce, and He did not reveal to His Prophet to forbid them; if what they introduced entailed forbidding them the mosque, forbidding them the markets would be more warranted still; finally, the innovation came from some women, not from all.” The legal fact remains: the mosque stays open to women.
2. The Umayyad period: the first prohibition
Established fact. Bukhârî 1618 (see II.6): an Umayyad governor of the Makhzûmî line forbids mixed tawâf, in the 720s-730s; ʿAtâʾ protests in the name of the practice of the Prophet’s wives. This is, to our knowledge, the first prohibition of co-presence documented by a canonical source, and it comes from the state, not from the scholars.
Inference. The shift is not doctrinal in the first place; it is administrative. The jurist reacts to a political decision — and he reacts in favour of co-presence. A century after the Prophet, the scholarly norm is still that of Medina; it is the state norm that has moved. At the same time, in Damascus, the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik — father of Hishâm, whose uncle forbids the mixed tawâf — was sitting in the circle of Umm al-Dardâʾ (IV.3). The contradiction is in the sources; it tells us that nothing was yet fixed.
3. The Abbasid period: institutionalisation
Judgement. Leila Ahmed (Women and Gender in Islam, ch. 4-5) argues that the codification of the law took place in Baghdad, in a society that had adopted the court customs of Byzantium and Sasanian Persia — harem, seclusion, mass concubinage —, and that the jurists read the founding texts through those customs. This is a historiographical thesis, debated, not an established fact; but it accounts for a chronology which the sources confirm: the restrictive norm appears after the permissive norm, and not the other way round.
Established fact. In the 14th century, the Mâlikî jurist Ibn al-Hâjj (d. 737/1337) devotes long passages of his Madkhal to condemning the presence of women in the markets, at funerals, in the mosques and at the festivals of Cairo (al-Madkhal, vol. 1, p. 245 ff.: women going out for their purchases; vol. 1, p. 250: the cemeteries; vol. 2, p. 288: the festival prayer). He describes women who “walk in the middle of the road and jostle the men, so that the men draw back against the walls to let them pass”. Inference. So insistent a condemnation proves that the practice persisted; one does not forbid what does not exist. Segregation is a scholarly norm at war with a tenacious custom, not an original given. And that same 14th century is that of Zaynab bint al-Kamâl and her pupils al-Dhahabî and al-Subkî (IV.4): the everyday mosque closes to women at the very moment when the chair of hadith remains open to them.
VI. Conclusion
- The Qur’an organises the co-presence of the sexes (partial gaze, decent speech, dress, domestic privacy); it prescribes no general separation of spaces. It takes note of desire (“God knows that you will think of them”) and regulates it through conduct, not through walls; it has men and women speak, and regulates the manner, never the silence. The verse of the hijâb is domestic and specific to the wives of the Prophet.
- Khadîja, at the origin of Islam, is a woman who employs men, takes the initiative of her marriage and speaks for her husband on the day of the first revelation. The tradition never made this story a relic to be corrected.
- The prophetic practice, documented by Bukhârî and Muslim, attests the presence of women in the mosque, at the prayer of the festivals, in teaching, on expeditions, at wedding feasts, on the roads, and — for the wives of the Prophet themselves, after the hijâb — at the tawâf among men.
- This co-presence is regulated: no being alone together, disciplined gaze, distant bodies, covering dress. It is neither segregation nor indistinction.
- The transmission of knowledge remained mixed without interruption: the chains of Bukhârî pass through women; a caliph learns from Umm al-Dardâʾ in the mosque of Damascus; Ibn Hajar learns from ʿÂʾisha bint ʿAbd al-Hâdî; al-Sakhâwî records a thousand women scholars in one century. No school ever forbade this shared teaching.
- The hardening can be dated: tensions contained from the first generation; the first administrative prohibition under the Umayyads, contested by the scholars; institutionalisation in the Abbasid period — without ever reaching the chair of hadith.
Whoever claims that strict segregation is the original norm of Islam must explain Bukhârî 900, 974, 101, 2880, 5182, 5224 and 1618 — and explain why Ibn Hajar learned his Sahîh from a woman. Whoever claims that early Islam knew no rule of distance must explain Bukhârî 5233, 1513, 7214 and 837. The sources hold both ends. It is for us not to let go of either.
Bibliography
Primary sources
- al-Bukhârî, al-Jâmiʿ al-sahîh — standard numbering (Fath al-Bârî ed.): nos. 3, 98, 101, 130, 146, 458, 463, 578, 837, 869, 900, 974, 1513, 1618, 2880, 2883, 4758, 4790, 4793, 5182, 5224, 5232, 5233, 5654, 7214.
- Muslim, al-Sahîh — nos. 440, 442, 443, 445, 873, 1812 (a, g), 1866.
- Abû Dâwûd, al-Sunan — nos. 462, 571, 591, 5272.
- Ibn Hishâm, al-Sîra al-nabawiyya — “The marriage of the Messenger of God to Khadîja”; Rufayda; Nusayba Umm ʿUmâra at Uhud.
- Ibn Saʿd, al-Tabaqât al-kubrâ, vol. 8 (biographies of the women Companions; entry on Khadîja).
- Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalânî, Fath al-Bârî bi-sharh Sahîh al-Bukhârî (Salafiyya/Dâr al-Maʿrifa ed.) — vol. 2, p. 407 (women going out to the mosques); vol. 3, pp. 560-562 (tawâf of women with men); al-Durar al-kâmina (entry Zaynab bint Ahmad b. ʿAbd al-Rahîm); al-Isâba fî tamyîz al-sahâba; al-Majmaʿ al-muʾassis li-l-muʿjam al-mufahris (list of his teachers, including the women).
- Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istîʿâb fî maʿrifat al-ashâb — entry on al-Shifâʾ bint ʿAbdillâh.
- al-Dhahabî, Siyar aʿlâm al-nubalâʾ (al-Risâla ed.) — entries on Umm al-Dardâʾ al-Sughrâ and ʿAmra (vol. 4), Karîma al-Marwaziyya (vol. 18, pp. 233-234), Shuhda (vol. 20, pp. 542-543); Muʿjam al-shuyûkh al-kabîr, vol. 1, p. 248 (Zaynab bint al-Kamâl).
- al-Qurashî, al-Jawâhir al-mudiyya fî tabaqât al-hanafiyya — entry on Fâtima bint Muhammad al-Samarqandî.
- Ibn ʿAsâkir, Muʿjam al-nisâʾ (register of his women teachers).
- al-Sakhâwî, al-Dawʾ al-lâmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tâsiʿ, vol. 12 (the women).
- Ibn al-Hâjj al-ʿAbdarî (d. 737/1337), al-Madkhal, Dâr al-Turâth ed., 4 vols. — vol. 1, pp. 245-250; vol. 2, p. 288.
Studies
- ʿAbd al-Halîm Abû Shuqqa, Tahrîr al-marʾa fî ʿasr al-risâla, 6 vols., Dâr al-Qalam, Kuwait, 1990-1995 — the most complete survey of the two Sahîh on the question; vol. 2: women’s participation in social life.
- Muhammad al-Ghazâlî, al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayna ahl al-fiqh wa-ahl al-hadîth, Dâr al-Shurûq, Cairo, 1989.
- Mohammad Akram Nadwi, Al-Muhaddithât: The Women Scholars in Islam, Interface Publications, Oxford, 2007 (introduction to the dictionary al-Wafâʾ bi-asmâʾ al-nisâʾ, 43 vols., Dâr al-Minhâj, 2021).
- Asma Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
- Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Yale University Press, 1992.
- Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Saʿd to Who’s Who, Lynne Rienner, 1994.
- Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite (orig. Le harem politique, 1987), Addison-Wesley, 1991 — on the circumstances of 33:53; a militant reading, to be handled with care.