A Woman Scholar in Mamluk's Intellectual Life: Maryam al-Adhra'iyyah

Abstract

The Mamluk period is considered as the first era in which influencial role was being played by women in intellectual life other than all other periods in Islamic history. In this period, some of the elite women in the society has supported the educational institutions by establishing foundations while some of them were involved in intellectual activities. It can be seen that those who had established educational institutions were mostly from the administrative class, and those who were in the intellectual activities usually came from the scholarly backgrounds. Especially, it needs to be said that 9th (15th) century Mamluk historians recorded women who were involved in scholarship. Clearly, existence of a large number of women among their teachers also played effective role for the emergence of this situation. Maryam al-Adhra'iyyah is one of the woman scholars, who was prominent in her intellectual activity and known by her historian students. Maryam lived in 8th (14th) century and she was connected to the Hanafi School, as often the case in scholarly family in that period, her participation of the intellectual activity had started from very young ages. In addition to the fact that she received education from famous teachers in various fields in that period, she concentrated herself in Hadith studies. In this paper, firstly we try to highlight Maryam's family background, then her intellectual life and her students will be examined.