‘Information about Learned Women is Hidden in Texts about Male Scholars’

27 June 2025

Photo: Britta Frede

Britta Frede is the new guest professor of ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. In this interview, she shares insights into her search for traces of women’s roles within Islamic scholarly culture, as well as the challenges that make uncovering these hidden histories so difficult.

Britta Frede, please tell us a little about your background. What is the main focus of your research, and what originally sparked your interest in this field?

I grew up in southern Germany and later studied in Freiburg, Damascus, and Berlin. Before starting university, I travelled through North and West Africa, the Middle East, India, and China.

In Sokoto in Northern Nigeria, I saw Arabic manuscripts in private collections for the first time. I visited the Abdullahi Smith Centre for Historical Studies and bought my first books on African history; I then decided to study something that would allow me to write African history based on local sources. However, by the mid-1990s, Islamic studies in Germany were Middle East-focused. That’s why I combined Islamic studies as a major with African History and Political Science as my minors. In my MA thesis, I started to work on African Islamic history, exploring a set of letters between Saharan and Sahelian Islamic scholars. This became the foundation for my PhD topic that dealt with the Tijānīya, an essential African Sufi movement. I worked on Sufism in the Sahara and later on Islamic education in African urban settings, Nouakchott, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Cape Town. Especially in the Mauritanian context, Arabic manuscripts were important as source material.

You have studied Mauritanian scholarly culture since the 18th century in great depth and argue that women played an essential role in this culture. What exactly were these roles, and why did women leave far fewer traces than male scholars?

Women in Saharan scholarly culture taught, wrote, and copied Islamic texts. They also took over roles of spiritual guidance or issued, in some cases, fatāwā, which are legal opinions following Islamic jurisprudence. Although they were active in all these fields, no texts explicitly deal with their legacy. In texts about male Islamic scholars, we occasionally find a name of a woman who achieved something extraordinary – whether it be writing a great didactic poem, becoming an expert in a specific discipline of Islamic knowledge, or having a beautiful handwriting. It seems that these comments serve as ornaments to enhance the male scholar’s status. The sources are manuscripts, and many manuscripts written by female scholars seem to be lost. That is true for many written artefacts, but probably to a much higher degree for female-authored ones than for male-authored ones.

How do you deal with the difficulty of finding historical records of female writing?

I became interested in the history of female Islamic scholars while working on a project on contemporary women teaching Islamic disciplines in Nouakchott. First, I found a booklet in a local bookshop, and some university theses. Knowing some names is already a good point of departure; you can then ask around. Slowly, I found more materials. Since the mid-2010s, the internet has also been a good source. People discuss women’s roles and are interested in their history, so you find the same information repeatedly. This made me think about what we can do with this information and the lack of sources.

Contrary to other nations in the Sahara Sahelian region, traditional Islamic education has been inscribed into the national identity of Mauritania

Can you give an example of a female scholar you discovered during your research? What was characteristic of this person, and what impact did she have on her social environment?

It’s challenging to evaluate the impact and characteristics of historical figures. In this context, we are dealing with a tribal society where praise oftentimes serves political goals. When does praise indicate that a scholar is truly exceptional, and when does it serve to honour the family associated with the scholar? As mentioned, information about learned women is hidden in texts about male scholars; how, then, can we distinguish between genuine information about a learned woman and mere compliments? This isn’t easy to answer, especially if we only have sources dealing with erudite men to refer to.

Take, for example, ʾUmm al-Khairāt (1938–1971), who lived in the region of Kiffa in central Mauritania. I often heard that she was famous for her brilliant knowledge, taught many men, and was considered ‘the most learned scholar of her time’. Nevertheless, there is no documentation about her life or scholarly activities. We have two surviving texts because her nephew produced a printed commentary on them, and some mention a few events with her. Had these texts been lost, it would have been very difficult to determine whether these events were a sign of her or the male scholar’s erudition. But the texts show that she was extraordinarily learned for her time, and it is highly possible she was an influential authority in her community.

Your research examines the development of Mauritanian society from the 18th century to the present day. A remarkable aspect is that traditional manuscript production declined very late there, at the beginning of the 21st century. Why is this the case?

To answer this question, we still need to do more research into local writing traditions. Still, one key factor is the vital role of traditional Islamic education. Contrary to other nations in the Sahara Sahelian region, traditional Islamic education has been inscribed into the national identity of Mauritania, and is protected by narratives of cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the shift towards public education is ongoing. In combination with digital technologies, the last decade witnessed a rupture that might signal the end of local manuscript culture, at least as a means of writing Islamic texts. However, as a cultural practice involving art and craft, there is a high likelihood that local knowledge of manuscript production will be preserved.

What specifically do you want to work on during your time at the CSMC? Are there any working groups that you would like to collaborate with?

During my last research projects, I collected manuscripts from several female scholars. I want to use my time at the CSMC to work with the digital copies and learn more about the manuscripts’ materialities. My background is in Islamic studies; we were only trained to work with texts. However, the discipline is now opening to more inclusive approaches to studying texts, considering also their social context – an aspect I have extensively worked on – and their materialities, an element I want to learn more about. Another important point for me is the critical engagement with the archive constituted by these manuscript collections. This research field at the CSMC will inspire me to understand the archives and reflect on our role as researchers in the archiving process.