Early pious and Sufi women participated fully in the ascetic and Sufi communities as teachers, preachers, and companions undertaking a mainly ascetic practice involving pious service, fasting, night vigils, and poverty.

The first/seventh and fourth/tenth centuries cover the early period of Islamic ascetic piety and much of the period of pre-institutionalized Sufism ending in the fifth/eleventh century. A number of Islamic movements look back on the early pious ascetics as the forebears of their own practice and attitudes, and…