© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341277 Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013) 53-88 brill.com/jesh Female Mystics in Mediaeval Islam: he Quiet Legacy Arezou Azad* Abstract Historians and analysts of current affairs alike are interested in the role that women have played in Islam, including the extent to which women were the agents and creators of Islamic mysticism. We still know surprisingly little about premodern learned women, par- ticularly from the eastern Iranian world. his article describes one female mystic, Umm ʿAlī, who lourished in ninth-century Balkh and has so far eluded modern scholarship. A historiographical study of her provides insight into how the representations of mystical women changed over time. From the earlier sources, we learn that Umm ʿAlī applied cre- ative and interesting strategies that provided her access to the highest sources of learning. Umm ʿAlī’s case also allows for some tentative conclusions on the importance of pedigree, and the practice of strategic marriages that connect local power-holders with the ʿulamāʾ. Keywords mysticism, Islam, scholarship, eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, mediaeval history, gender, women. Zanān-i īn pākān chunīn būda-and, tā mashāyikh-i aʿẓ ām bi chi ḥ add būda bāshand! If the wives of these pure [ones] were such, [just think] at what levels the great shuyūkh must have been! 1 * ) Arezou Azad (arezou.azad@orinst.ox.ac.uk) is a Leverhulme Research Of icer of the Ori- ental Studies Faculty, University of Oxford. he author thanks the Leverhulme Trust for its generous support of the Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project from which this article emerges, as well as Luke Treadwell and Edmund Herzig, for reviewing drafts of this article. he author also thanks John Gurney and Christopher Melchert for sharing their expertise, which improved my translation of the Persian and Arabic texts respectively. 1) Shaykh al-Islām al-Wāʿiẓ and ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥ ammad b. al-Qāsim al-H ̣ usaynī, Faḍ āʾil-i Balkh, ed. ʿAbd al-H ̣ ayy H ̣ abībī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān, 1350/1971): 227.