Fatima al-Kabbaj

Fatima al-Kabbaj
Born	1932
Nationality	Moroccan
Education	University of al-Qarawiyyin
Known for	One of the first female students admitted to al-Qarawiyyin University

Fatima al-Kabbaj (Arabic: فاطمة القباج) was one of the first female students to attend the University of al-Qarawiyyin. She later became the sole female member of the Moroccan Supreme Council of Religious Knowledge.[1]

Education

Fatima al-Kabbaj began her education at Dar al-Faqiha, a traditional Moroccan Islamic school for girls, where she learnt Quran.[2] Then, she moved to Madrasa al-Najah for her elementary studies. After finishing her studies, al-Kabbaj and her family realized that there were limited opportunities for higher studies for women. After several discussions and debates about the introduction of women to the University of al-Qarawiyyin, al-Kabbaj was admitted to the university along with nine other female students. She stayed there for 10 years and graduated in the mid-1950s.[1]

She would later provide education in sharia to the king and his family. She argued that women were often better able to engage the illiterate and poor than the state-appointed imams.[3]

Her experience was said to "challenge assumptions about Moroccan women’s historical access to religious authority and their mobility within the male-dominated field of Islamic scholarship."[1]

References

1. Ahmed, Sumayya (2016). "Learned Women: Three Generations of Female Islamic Scholarship in Morocco". The Journal of North African Studies. 21 (3): 470–484. doi:10.1080/13629387.2016.1158110.
2. Belhachmi, Zakia (2008). Women, Education, and Science Within the Arab-Islamic Socio-Cultural History. Brill. p. 6. ISBN 9789087905798.
3. Mehdi Parvizi Amineh (2007). TheGreater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World Politics. Leiden: Brill. p. 266. ISBN 978-90-04-15859-7.