Scholarship and Social Life of Women in the Period of Mamluks: With Special Attention to Najm al-Din Ibn Fand's Teachers

During the Mamluk period (648-923/1250-1517), some developments such as the support of the state dignitaries for scholarly activities, the interest of the 'ulama to the Mamluk geography and the establishment of many scientific institutions increased the interest in scholarly activities in society. In this period of intensive scholarly activities, women also started to increasingly take part in this field, and as a result, many female scholars were trained. The fact that women scholars were encountered among the teachers of the famous scientists of the period is a clear proof of this situation. As a matter of fact, the teachers of Najm al-Din Ibn Fand, one of the famous muhaddiths and historians of the 9th (15th) century, set an obvious example for this. Sixty-seven of his four hundred ninety-seven teachers were women. Najm al-Din Ibn Fand, a member of a prominent 'ulama family of Mecca, traveled to different cities in the Mamluk geography and took lessons from many teachers, men and women. What is more valuable for our subject is that he wrote a work called Mujam alshuyakh, which contains extremely important information about his teachers. This article tries to assess women's participation in scholarly activities and social positions in Mamluk society, based on his female teachers. This work, made up of two parts, first deals with women's opportunities to pursue academic studies and their subsequent contributions to science. The second part is about their position in social life which stemmed from the families they belonged to and from their marriages. In this article, in which sixty-seven female scholars of Najm al-Din Ibn Fand are discussed, some important results have been reached. This look into his sixty-seven female teachers shows how widespread women's relationships with scholarly circles were in Mamluk society, and that especially girls of families with scholarly traditions were included in academic circles from a young age. These girls were able to get their initial education from close relatives and ...