Fatima al-Kabbaj

Fatima al Kabbaj was one of the few first female students to attend the University of al-Qarawiyyin. And she later on became "the sole female member of the Moroccan Supreme Council of Religious Knowledge"

Fatima al-kabbaj started her education at the a dar al faqiha where she learnt Quran. Then she moved to Madrasa al-najah for her elementary studies. After finishing her studies, al-Kabbaj and her family realized that there is limited opportunities for higher studies. 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 9 other female students. She stayed there for 10 years and graduated in the mid-1950s.

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

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