Female Religious Authority in Shi'i Islam

13 case studies of women exercising religious authority in Shiʿi Islam from the classical period to the present Islamic religious authority is conventionally understood to be an exclusively male purview. Yet when dissected into its various manifestations – leading prayer, preaching, issuing fatwas, transmitting hadith, judging in court, teaching law, theology, and other Islamic sciences and generally shaping the Islamic scholarly tradition – nuances emerge that hint at the presence of women in t