The great Mamluk era expert on chancery practice and the author of the monumental Subh al-a’sha’, al-Qalqashandi, comments favorably on the Fatimid chancery, noting that it was one of the earliest in Islam. He obviously knew of others before it but appears to mean here that the Fatimids were the first to create a formal bureau of government precisely for this purpose. A history of the Fatimid chancery has as yet not been written although the material for it is abundant. Its work is often mentioned explicitly in the historic chronicles, perhaps more often in fact than any other single bureau of government. Two treatises by members of the diwan al-insha’—Ibn Khalaf’s Mawadd al-bayan and al-Sayrafi’s al-Qanun diwan al-rasa’il—survive. Names of heads of the bureau are often given in the sources, frequently in association with this or that decree which the person in question composed. Examples of a full range of chancery products exist, many copied by al-Qalqashandi himself as illustrations of how to write a particular type of document (for examples: letters to a foreign power or decrees of appointment to office). In all we have perhaps as many as 300 examples. Prominent experts working in the Fatimid chancery were often not Ismaili, and more than a few not even Muslim. Yet seemingly any of them could at will draft a text that conformed to the religious doctrines supporting the Ismaili imamate, that expressed the wishes and policies of the Fatimid state, and yet that sounded fairly normal and uncontroversial, thus avoiding arousing enmity needlessly. In short the skill of the clerks was impressively adaptive to the needs of both politics and religion.

To date, the study of the role of medieval Muslim women in the transmission of hadiths and –more generally - dissemination of learning remains an understudied field of research. While there are a number of important studies that address the phenomenon in general, contextualised analyses of contributions by individual figures are limited. In this paper I propose to investigate the contribution of women as transmitters of Sunni learning in Egypt under the Fatimids as part of a broader project I am conducting on the intellectual history of Sunnism in Fatimid Egypt. This study attempts to charter the careers of prominent 6th/12th century female figures such as Zaynab bint ‘Awf and Khadija bint al-Silafi who were active in Alexandria, but also lesser known female transmitters who came to prominence in Fustat in the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries. The Fatimids offer us the chance to explore a rather unique phenomenon in medieval Islamic history: the ‘survival’ of the intellectual tradition of a Muslim religious majority that came to be under a Muslim religious minority rule for some 250 years. The paper will focus on the role that women played in securing the continuation, dissemination and even prosperity of the Sunni intellectual tradition in a Sh?‘a Ismaili environment. The first part of the paper will consider familial circles and the domestic sphere as flexible and informal centres of learning exchange which favoured women’s participation as both learners and transmitters. In the second part I will consider the impact that the establishment of madrasas in the late phase of the Fatimid regime had in raising the profile of women as authoritative vehicles of learning. The convergence of three trends will be explored in contextualising the lives and activities of these female ?ad?ths transmitters: 1) the paradigm that linked hadiths transmission to mercantile activities and home-based learning; 2) the role of the educational culture favourable to women that the Fatimid regime promoted; 3) the emergence of regime-sponsored pietism in the last phase of the Fatimid dynasty. For my research I will rely primarily on information gathered from biographical dictionaries such as al-Dhahabi’s Siyar alam al-nubala?, al-Habbal’s Wafayat al-misriyyin, al-Maqrizi’s Kitab al-Muqaffa al-kabir and al-Subki’s Tabaqat al-shafi‘iyya al-kubra to name but a few.

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

The Fatimid assertion to the universal caliphate was predicated on their claim to be sole designated successors of the Prophet Muhammad. This descent made them part of a larger and distinct social group, the ashr?f, the recognised descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Whereas the veracity of the Fatimid genealogical claim has arguably been over played in the sources resulting from anti-Ismaili polemic, and perhaps therefore over emphasised in contemporary scholarship, the interactions of the Fatimids with the various segments of the ashr?f in North Africa as well as in Egypt has remained relatively under examined. This paper seeks to address this lacuna. A close reading of the sources reveals that the Fatimids had a ubiquitous yet intricate relationship with the ashr?f. This ranged from close co-operation to that of outright hostility. On the one hand, the ashr?f were depicted as being among the most outspoken opponents of the Fatimid claim of their genealogical descent from the Prophet. This is evident by the well-known anecdote of Shar?f al-?ab??ab?‘? supposed questioning of the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mu‘?zz’s ancestry upon his arrival in Egypt in 973 CE. The pivotal role of the ashr?f in rejecting the authenticity of Fatimid descent was exemplified by their signing of the so-called ‘Baghdad Manifesto’ in 1011CE. Equally, the sources also reveal instances of conciliation and cooperation between the Fatimids and the ashr?f. These include Fatimid mediations to resolve blood-feuds among the various ashr?f clans who held leadership positions in the Hijaz in the 10th century, and their special pardon and exclusive privileging of the Idr?sid rebels in the Maghrib. Similarly, the ashr?f also utilised their kinship links with the Fatimids to negotiate favourable treatment, as is evident from the Egyptian delegation that met with Fatimid Commander Jawhar upon his arrival in Egypt in 969 CE. In studying these interactions, the paper aims to develop a rounded understanding of how and to what end were the kinship ties between these two socially important groups calibrated.