ḥadīth which show that the Holy Prophet had given orders not to prohibit women from going to the mosque. For instance, there is one which quotes the Holy Prophet as saying: “Do not prohibit the handmaids of Allāh from going to the mosques of Allāh” (Bu. 11:12). According to another, the Holy Prophet is reported to have said that, if a woman wanted to go to the mosque at night, she should not be prohibited from doing so (Bu. 10:162). The words of a third ḥadīth are more general: “When the wife of one of you asks permission to go out, she should not be prohibited from doing so” (Bu. 10:166). There was an express injunction that on the occasion of the ‘Īd festival women should go out to the place where prayers were said; even women in a state of menstruation were to be present, though they would not join the prayers (Bu. 13:15, 20). The practice for women to be present in the mosques at the time of prayer seems to have continued long enough after the Holy Prophet’s time. Within the mosque they were not separated from men by any screen or curtain; only they formed into a line behind the men (Bu. 10:164); and though they were covered decently with an over-garment, they did not wear a veil. On the occasion of the great gathering of the Pilgrimage a woman is expressly forbidden to wear a veil (Bu. 25:23). Many other ḥadīth show that women formed themselves into a back row and that the men retained their seats until they had gone out of the mosque (Bu. 10:164). This practice seems to have existed for a very long time. Thus we read of women calling out Allāhu Akbar along with men in the mosque during the three days following ‘Īd al-Adzhā as late as the time of ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, the Umayyad Caliph, who ruled about the end of the first century A.H. (Bu. 13:12). In the year 256 A.H., the Governor of Makkah is said to have tied ropes between the columns to make a separate place for women (En. Is., art. Masjid). Later on, the practice grew up of erecting a wooden barrier in the mosque to form a separate enclosure for women, but by and by the pardah conception grew so strong that women were altogether shut out from the mosques.
Another question connected with this subject relates to the entrance of women into mosques during their menstruation. It must be borne in mind, in the first place that in Islām a state of menstruation or confinement is not looked upon as a state of