Fāṭima b. Abī al-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahmān b. Muhammad b. Ghālib al-Ansārī al-Sharrāṭ

Fāṭima b. Abī al-Qāsim ‘Abd al-Rahmān b. Muhammad b. Ghālib al-Ansārī al-Sharrāṭ

Biography

She was one of the most learned women in al-Andalus during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Her engagement with works of legal theory, jurisprudence as well as mysticism makes it apparent that she was familiar with a wide variety of Islamic sciences. She was the mother of the eminent professor Abū al-Qāsim b. al-Ṭaylasān. According to the Andalusi scholar Abū Ja’far al-Gharnāṭī (d. 1309): “She memorized enumerable books under the guidance of her father, including al-Makki’s Tanbīh, al-Qudā‘ī’s al-Shihāb, Ibn ‘Ubayd al-Ṭulayṭalī’s Mukhtasar, all three of which she knew by heart. She also memorized the Qur’an under the guidance of Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Madwarī, the great ascetic who is considered from among the abdāl [an important rank within Sufism]. With her father, she also learned Sahīh Muslim, Ibn Hishām’s Sīra [of the Prophet], al-Mubarrad’s al-Kāmil, al-Baghdādī’s Nawādir, and other works.”[Abū Ja’far Ahmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Gharnāṭī, Kitāb Silla al-Silla (Beirut, 2008), p. 460].