This paper analyses female prayer leadership within the wider context of 10-11th c. arguments on leadership and governance found in jurisprudence and hadith scholarship. The core of my research rests on the observation that for some scholars the arguments provided when discussing prayer leadership, especially of Friday prayer, paralleled those used in analysing the nature and structure of government. Accordingly, the office of prayer leader came to be seen as a reflection and an expression, at local level, of the supreme authority of the caliph himself. Specifically, some Shi‘i Imami scholars considered leadership in prayer as being representative, or suggestive, of a more encompassing leadership, whereby the qualities of the rightful prayer leader could be linked to those associated with the Imam or with the missionary. In the midst of these equations, gender was problematic. It is therefore significant that in Shi‘i, and particularly Fatimid, jurisprudence we find that - at least in legal theory - gender accommodations were made. As argued by a few modern scholars, juristic debates on prayer leadership introduced characteristics which were not only linked to the individual person leading, but were also relational and contextual. I contend that it was from such a relational-contextual standpoint that Shi‘i scholars introduced and discussed female prayer leadership. On the evidence of hadiths by ‘Ali and Ja‘far al-Sadiq, Shi‘i traditionists (Al-Kulayn?, d. 329/940-1; Ibn B?bawayhi al-Qumm?, d. 381/991) argued that a woman can lead other women “from the front” for supererogatory prayer (al-nafila); however, for the prescribed prayer (al-maktuba) a female can still “lead” but should position herself in the middle of the female congregation. Within Fatimid law, and focusing on the Da‘a’im al-Islam by al-Qadi al-Nu‘man (d. 363/974) and its Ta’wil, I will investigate the rationale that brought al-Qadi al- Nu‘man to select some hadiths in order to codify the acceptability of a woman leading other women in prayer. While he agreed with most of his contemporaries that a woman could not lead men in prayer and should sit behind them in mosques, he nevertheless codified leadership roles for women such as leading other women, uttering the adhan or pronouncing the iqama. The paper will conclude with some possible implications of such a “leadership from the middle”. The question will be raised of whether any specific Shi‘i, or Isma‘ili, elaborations can be identified on the topic of prayer leadership during the Fatimid period against a majority Sunni, mainly Maliki, legal milieu