Khadijah bint Khuwaylid: The First Believer

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (d. 619 CE) was the first wife of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the first person to believe in his prophethood. She was a woman of independent wealth in the caravan trade of Mecca, and she had employed Muhammad before their marriage.

Her place in the history of Islam rests on a specific and well documented moment. When the Prophet returned from the cave of Hira after the first revelation, frightened and uncertain, it was Khadijah who reassured him, and it was Khadijah who took him to a man capable of identifying what had happened. Both episodes are preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari in the opening chapter of the collection, and they are among the best attested reports in the entire biography of the Prophet.

Family and Background

Khadijah belonged to the clan of Asad, part of the tribe of Quraysh. She was therefore born into the leading tribe of Mecca, the custodians of the Kaaba, whose position gave them standing in the commerce and the religious life of the city.

Great Women of Islam names her father as Khuwaylid ibn Asad and her mother as Fatimah bint Za'idah, and places her birth at Mecca in 556 CE. Khuwaylid was a well-regarded leader among Quraysh and a prosperous merchant, and he was killed fighting at the battle of Fujjar — so the fortune Khadijah later managed was one she inherited and then enlarged, rather than one she built from nothing.

Beyond this the early sources record little about her childhood or her education. Accounts describing her schooling in commerce or her early character do not rest on the early material and are not given here.

Earlier marriages

Khadijah was married twice before her marriage to the Prophet. Her husbands are named in the biographical literature as Abu Hala al-Tamimi and Atiq ibn A'idh al-Makhzumi, and Great Women of Islam gives them as Abu Halah Malik ibn Nabash of the Tamim and Atiq ibn A'idh al-Makhzumi, with two children by the first — Halah and Hind — and a daughter by the second.

The two marriages ended differently, on that account: the first husband died, having been set up in a substantial business that Khadijah herself financed, while the second marriage ended in separation for incompatibility rather than in bereavement. The order of the marriages differs between sources and is not established here, and her son Hind ibn Abi Halah appears in the biographical literature as a Companion.

After the second marriage ended she turned to raising her children and to the business she had inherited from her father. Her children by the Prophet, and the reports concerning her earlier children, are set out in the article on the children of Prophet Muhammad.

Wealth and the Caravan Trade

Khadijah was a woman of substantial independent means who participated in the long-distance caravan trade on which Meccan prosperity depended. This is firmly established, and it is the reason she was in a position to employ agents to conduct trading ventures on her behalf.

Great Women of Islam describes the method rather than the scale, and the method is the informative part. Because there was no system of communication that would let an owner supervise a caravan at a distance, everything depended on the integrity of the men she sent, and her practice was to engage managers she judged hardworking and honest and to pay them half the profit — an incentive substantial enough to bind their interest to hers. Her goods went to distant markets, Syria among them, and her agents bought there for sale at Mecca, which sat on the caravan routes and hosted the international fairs. On that account hers became one of the most extensive businesses among Quraysh.

What the early sources do not document is the scale: the routes she controlled, the volume of goods, or the number of agents. Figures of that kind are reconstructions from general accounts of Meccan commerce rather than evidence about her, and they are not given here.

The employment of Muhammad

Khadijah had heard of Muhammad ibn Abdullah's reputation for integrity and honest dealing, and Great Women of Islam records that she sent him an offer to take charge of her trading caravans, which he accepted. She sent him to Syria, and her long-trusted servant Maysarah went with him. The sirah literature adds that she offered him terms more favourable than she gave others.

The venture proved unusually profitable, and Maysarah returned deeply impressed — by Muhammad's integrity and adherence to principle, by his dealings with people, and by his competence in the work.

Great Women of Islam also relays an encounter on the return journey. The Prophet lay down to rest under a tree, and a monk named Nestora, known for his learning in religion, asked Maysarah who he was. Told of the man's reputation for honesty and intelligence, the monk said that he would be raised to prophethood, since no one had ever rested beneath that tree but prophets. A further report, which the same work relays as something tradition holds rather than as a matter it establishes, has Maysarah see two angels shading the Prophet from the sun. The first is presented as an exchange between named people; the second is a report about the literature, and it is given here as that rather than as an account of events.

Marriage to the Prophet

How the proposal came about

Maysarah's report moved Khadijah, and Great Women of Islam presents what followed as her initiative, taken with some difficulty. She had already refused proposals from some of the noblest families of Quraysh. The obstacles she weighed were how to raise the matter at all, how her tribe and her family would take it, and whether a younger unmarried man of Quraysh would accept.

While she was turning this over she dreamt that the sun descended from the heavens into her courtyard and filled her house with light. She took the dream to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal — blind, learned in the Torah and the Injil, and known for interpreting dreams — who told her it was a promising dream: the prophet whose coming those scriptures foretold was to grace her house, and she would gain by his presence in her life.

The approach itself was made by a friend, Nafisah bint Munabbih, who went to Muhammad and asked leave to put a personal question. She asked why he had not married. He answered that he had not the means. She asked whether he would marry a woman of beauty, nobility and wealth who was inclined to him; he asked who, and on being told, said that he would if she were willing. The biographical literature also names her as Nufaysah bint Munya, and presents the approach as coming from Khadijah's side.

The formal proposal was then made in the ordinary way. Great Women of Islam records that the Prophet's uncles Hamzah and Abu Talib went to Khadijah's uncle Amr ibn Asad, that the offer was accepted and a date fixed, and that both families prepared for the wedding. Abu Talib, as the Prophet's guardian, acted for him in the contract.

One detail of the wedding is worth recording. Halimah al-Sa'diyah, who had nursed the Prophet in infancy, was invited specially and travelled to Mecca from her village; when she left, Khadijah gave her household goods, a camel and forty goats, in acknowledgement of her care of him as a child.

The marriage took place approximately fifteen years before the beginning of the revelation. The sources give Khadijah as the older of the two. Great Women of Islam gives the Prophet as twenty-five and Khadijah as forty, and notes in the same breath a tradition that puts her at twenty-eight — so the figure most often repeated is not the only one transmitted, and no age is asserted here as settled.

Two facts about the marriage are not in dispute and are of real historical weight. It lasted approximately twenty-five years, until Khadijah's death, and throughout that period the Prophet took no other wife. And every one of his children except Ibrahim was born to her: al-Qasim, Abdullah, Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah.

The First Revelation

Her response at Hira

The principal report is in Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Bad' al-Wahy, transmitted from Aisha, and is graded sahih. It is the opening narrative of the collection.

According to that report, the Prophet returned from the cave of Hira in a state of severe distress and asked to be covered. When the fear had left him, he described what had happened and said that he feared for himself.

Khadijah's reply is preserved in the report:

"Never! By God, God will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kin, you help the poor and the destitute, you serve your guests generously, and you assist those afflicted by calamity."

The reply is worth reading closely, because it does not appeal to a sign or a miracle. It reasons from his conduct: a man who behaves in these ways will not be abandoned by God. That is the ground on which the first believer believed.

Waraqah ibn Nawfal

The same body of reports in Sahih al-Bukhari records that Khadijah then took the Prophet to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian who had knowledge of the earlier scriptures. Waraqah listened to the account and identified what had come to the Prophet as the same that had come to Moses. He added that the Prophet would be called a liar and driven out by his people, and expressed the wish that he might live to support him when that happened. Waraqah died not long afterwards.

Khadijah's action here is the practical counterpart to her reassurance. She did not only comfort her husband; she took him to the one person available in Mecca with the learning to place the experience within a known prophetic tradition.

The first to believe

Khadijah was the first person to accept the Prophet's message. This is established across the sources and is not contested. She believed on the strength of her knowledge of his character and of what he told her, before the community existed and before any public preaching had begun.

The article on the Meccan period treats the years that followed.

The Meccan Years

Khadijah lived through the first decade of the Prophet's mission, the years of ridicule, pressure and open hostility toward the small community of believers in Mecca. Her wealth and her standing within Quraysh supported the household during that period.

From about 616 CE the Quraysh imposed a boycott on the clan of Banu Hashim, prohibiting trade and marriage with them and confining them to a valley outside the city — the episode known as Shi'b Abi Talib. Great Women of Islam places it in the seventh year after the Prophet declared his mission and describes the severity plainly: children went hungry and adults lived on the leaves of trees. Khadijah, brought up in her wealthy father's house, met those years with patience. The article on Umm Kulthum records that it was the two youngest daughters who cared for their parents through them.

Her house is itself part of the record. The Prophet lived in it, Jibril came there with revelation, and it became the place where the Companions gathered — in effect the first centre of the community. Great Women of Islam traces what became of it: after the Hijra it passed to a brother of Ali, and later Mu'awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan bought it and built a mosque on the site.

Two reports concern her worship. She prayed two rak'ahs morning and evening with the Prophet before the prayer was made obligatory in the form later established. And Great Women of Islam preserves an account from Afif al-Kindi, who used to visit Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib in Yemen on business in perfumes. Standing with Abbas at Mina, Afif saw a young man come up, wash his hands and feet, and stand with his arms folded; then a woman of dignified bearing and a boy joined him and stood in the same way. Afif asked what they were doing, taking it for some new form of exercise. Abbas told him the man was his brother Abdullah's son, the woman was his wife — a woman of great wealth and virtue — and the boy was Abu Talib's son, and that Muhammad had announced he was God's Messenger and was preaching a new religion. Afif accepted Islam in time, and afterwards regretted that he had not joined them in prayer that day.

What the sources do not preserve is a detailed record of her activities during the boycott. Accounts of her freeing enslaved Muslims, organising relief, smuggling supplies into the valley, or campaigning among the women of Mecca are not attested and are not given here.

Death

Khadijah died in 619 CE, in the tenth year of the Prophet's mission. Abu Talib, his uncle and protector, died in the same year, and the year is consequently known in the tradition as Am al-Huzn, the Year of Sorrow. The two deaths together removed both the Prophet's domestic support and his clan protection, and the period that followed was among the most difficult of the Meccan years.

Great Women of Islam gives her age at death as sixty-five and reckons her years with the Prophet at close to twenty-five. It records that when he saw her in her last extremity he told her that God had ordained it so, and that what she dreaded would prove favourable to her; and that she was buried at Hujun, near Mecca, where he went down into the grave himself to see that all was as it should be and lowered her into it with his own hands. Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah likewise places the burial at Hujun.

The cause of her death is not recorded. Accounts attributing it to the privations of the boycott, or supplying further deathbed scenes, are not attested and are not carried here.

She died before the Hijra, and before the obligation of the five daily prayers in the form later established, a point the classical commentators note when discussing her.

Abu Talib died in the same year, and Great Women of Islam draws out the double consequence: within a few months the Prophet lost the uncle whose authority had shielded him at critical moments and the wife who had given her wealth to the cause and carried the household — running it and raising four young daughters — while sustaining him against the abuse of the Meccans.

Khawlah bint Hakim, one of the women of Quraysh, came to console him and remarked on the state of his grief. His answer, as Great Women of Islam gives it, was that her absence was naturally felt: she had been a loving mother to children now left without her, a loyal wife who had shared his confidences, and present to him through his hardest years.

The Prophet's Regard for Her After Her Death

Several sound reports record that the Prophet continued to speak of Khadijah for the remainder of his life.

A report in Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Fada'il al-Sahabah, transmitted from Aisha, records Aisha saying that she was never jealous of any of the Prophet's wives as she was of Khadijah, though she had never met her, because of how often he mentioned her. The report is graded sahih. Its value is partly that it comes from a later wife: the testimony to his remembrance of Khadijah is given by someone with no interest in exaggerating it.

A further statement attributed to the Prophet, transmitted in Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, records him saying of Khadijah that she believed in him when people disbelieved him, that she affirmed his truthfulness when people called him a liar, and that she supported him with her wealth when people withheld from him.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim both preserve a report that the angel Jibril conveyed greetings of peace to Khadijah and gave her tidings of a house in Paradise. The report is graded sahih.

Khadijah is also named in reports listing the foremost women of faith. A report transmitted in Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet naming her among the best of the women of her time.

His remembrance also took a practical form that the sources record. Great Women of Islam relates from a Companion that whenever a gift was brought to the Prophet he would send it on to one of the women who had been Khadijah's friends, and from Aisha that when a goat was slaughtered he would send some of the meat to them. When Aisha remarked on it he told her that he held her friends in regard because she had a particular place in his heart. Aisha also said that whenever he spoke of Khadijah he would speak at length, praise her qualities, and pray for her forgiveness — which is the same testimony as the report on her jealousy, seen from the other side: it is the frequency and the warmth of the mention that she is describing.

Legacy

Descent

The Prophet's surviving line of descent runs through his daughter Fatimah, Khadijah's daughter. Through Fatimah's marriage to Ali ibn Abi Talib and their sons Hasan and Husayn, Khadijah is the ancestor of the families claiming descent from the Prophet across the Muslim world.

Standing in the tradition

Khadijah is counted among the Mothers of the Believers, the designation of the Prophet's wives established by Surah al-Ahzab 33:6, which places them in the position of mothers to the believers.

Her standing in Islamic tradition rests on the sequence set out above: she was the first to believe; she reassured the Prophet at the moment of greatest uncertainty in his life; she took him to Waraqah; she supported him through the Meccan years; and she bore all but one of his children. These are matters of record rather than of praise.

What the sources do not establish

Even with the biographical material set out above, a good deal of what is written about Khadijah has no support. Her childhood and education, the scale of her commercial operations, her reputation among merchants abroad, her activities during the boycott, the cause of her death, and her supposed influence on the later development of Islamic law concerning women are all subjects on which the sources are silent or nearly so. This article omits them.

Historiographical Note

This article draws on two kinds of source that sit at different distances from the events, and the difference decides how each statement above is framed.

The core rests on the canonical collections. Khadijah's reply at Hira and the consultation with Waraqah are in Sahih al-Bukhari at the very opening of the collection, transmitted from Aisha and graded sahih. Aisha's statement about her own jealousy is in the Book of the Virtues of the Companions. Jibril's greeting and the tidings of a house in Paradise are in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. The Prophet's summary of what Khadijah had been to him — that she believed when others disbelieved, affirmed his truthfulness when others called him a liar, and supported him with her wealth when others withheld — is in Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal. These are the firmest points in the article, and they are also the ones on which its assessment of her rests.

Around that sits the biographical and compilation literature, reaching this article through Great Women of Islam and Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah: her parents' names and the date of her birth, her father's death at Fujjar, the earlier marriages and their children, the terms on which she engaged her agents, Maysarah's journey, the dream and Waraqah's reading of it, Nafisah's conversation with the Prophet, the formal proposal to Amr ibn Asad, Halimah's gifts, Afif al-Kindi's account of the prayer at Mina, the later history of her house, and the details of her death and burial. This material is far richer than the Sahih reports and its individual items vary more in standing, which is why each is attributed in the text to the work that carries it rather than asserted flatly.

Three specific points are left unresolved.

Her age at marriage is given by Great Women of Islam as forty, and the same work records a tradition putting it at twenty-eight. Both are transmitted; neither is asserted here.

The order of her two earlier marriages differs between sources and is not settled.

One report is deliberately handled as a fact about the literature rather than as an account of events: the two angels said to have shaded the Prophet on the road from Syria. Great Women of Islam itself introduces it as something tradition holds, and this article reports it on the same footing. The exchange with the monk Nestora, by contrast, is presented as a conversation between named people and is reported as the work gives it.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:6 — "The Prophet is more worthy of the believers than themselves, and his wives are in the position of their mothers"
• Qur'an, Surah al-Duha 93:6–8 — addressed to the Prophet concerning his circumstances in the Meccan period
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Bad' al-Wahy (Book of the Beginning of Revelation) — the report from Aisha on the first revelation, Khadijah's reassurance, and the consultation with Waraqah ibn Nawfal; graded sahih
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Fada'il al-Sahabah (Book of the Merits of the Companions) — Aisha's report of her jealousy over Khadijah, and the report naming Khadijah among the best women of her time; graded sahih
• Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim — the report of Jibril conveying greetings to Khadijah and tidings of a house in Paradise; graded sahih
• Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal — the statement attributed to the Prophet that Khadijah believed in him when people disbelieved him

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. Vol. 8, the women. Edited by Eduard Sachau. Leiden: Brill, 1904–1940. [Compiled c. 845 CE] — the principal early biography
• Ibn Hisham. Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, recension of the Sirah of Ibn Ishaq. Edited by Mustafa al-Saqqa et al. Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955. — the employment of Muhammad, the marriage negotiation through Nufaysah bint Munya, and the boycott of Banu Hashim
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari. Cairo: al-Matba'ah al-Salafiyyah — the commentary on the reports of the first revelation
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1995. [Compiled c. 1449 CE]
• Al-Dhahabi, Shams al-Din. Siyar A'lam al-Nubala'. Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1981–1988. [Compiled c. 1348 CE]
• Ibn Abd al-Barr, Yusuf. Al-Isti'ab fi Ma'rifat al-Ashab. Cairo: Nahdat Misr, 1960. [Compiled c. 1070 CE]

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Great Women of Islam, the chapter on Khadijah bint Khuwaylid — the principal source for the biographical material in this article: her parents and the date of her birth; her father's death at the battle of Fujjar; the two earlier marriages, their children, and how each ended; the terms on which she engaged her trading agents and the reach of her business; Maysarah's journey and the encounter with the monk Nestora; her dream and Waraqah ibn Nawfal's interpretation of it; Nafisah bint Munabbih's conversation with the Prophet; the reports of her age at marriage, including the variant of twenty-eight; the formal proposal made by Hamzah and Abu Talib to Amr ibn Asad; the invitation of Halimah al-Sa'diyah and the gifts made to her; the severity of the boycott in Shi'b Abi Talib; the two rak'ahs prayed before the prayer was obligatory; Afif al-Kindi's account of the prayer at Mina; the later history of her house; her age at death, the words spoken to her, and the burial at Hujun; Khawlah bint Hakim's visit of condolence; and the gifts sent to her friends afterwards
• Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah — consulted on the household, the years in Shi'b Abi Talib, and the burial at Hujun

Further Reading

• The article on the children of Prophet Muhammad — the six children born to Khadijah, and the difficulty of ordering the four daughters' births
• Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah — her four daughters, treated individually
• Meccan period — the years of her marriage in which the mission began
• The following are named for the reader and lie outside the project's approved source base; nothing above rests on them: Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources; Ibn Kathir, Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, translated by Trevor Le Gassick; Aisha Bewley's translation of the women's volume of Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra; W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca; and Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, on the character and limits of the evidence for Meccan commerce