Khadija bint Khuwaylid

Khadija bint Khuwaylid (may God be pleased with her) was a wealthy Meccan merchant who employed the young trader Muhammad, and then married him around 595 CE. Muslims count her as the first to believe in his message.

Born around 555 CE into the clan of Banu Asad ibn Abd al-Uzza of Quraysh, she ran a trading business that sent caravans to Syria and Yemen ¹. Impressed by what reached her of the truthfulness of Muhammad, she hired him for her trade and then proposed marriage to him. Their marriage is recorded in the event his marriage to Khadija, when he was about twenty-five ².

When the Prophet returned trembling from the first revelation, the account relates that Khadija said to him, "By God, God will never disgrace you," and then took him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, who explained that what had come to him was prophethood ². For about twenty-five years she was his only wife and the mother of his daughters, among them Fatima. She shared the hardship of the boycott of Banu Hashim. She died around April 619 CE, in the same season in which her husband's protector Abu Talib died; that year is known as the Year of Sorrow ¹.

In Sunni tradition, Khadija is among the most honoured women: the first to believe, the mother of the Prophet's daughters, and a model of trust and generosity. She was buried in the Hajun cemetery in Mecca.

The author describes her, quoting Ibn Ishaq, as a woman merchant of honour and wealth who hired men to work her money on terms of profit-sharing ^{3 4}. When news reached her of the truthfulness of Muhammad's words, the greatness of his trustworthiness and the nobility of his character, she offered him a journey to Syria with her goods, on better terms than she gave others, together with her servant Maysara (the Syria journey) ³. When he returned, she saw in her goods a trustworthiness and blessing she had never seen before. The leading men of the Quraysh kept seeking her hand, but she refused. So she confided what was in her heart to Nafisa bint Munya, who went between them until the marriage was concluded two months after his return, with a bridal gift of twenty young she-camels, when she was forty and he was twenty-five ^{5 6 7}. She was then the finest of her people in lineage, wealth and intellect. She was the first woman he married, and he took no other wife while she lived. All his children were from her except Ibrahim ^{5 8}.

The Prophet returned from Hira trembling in heart, entered upon her, and asked to be wrapped up. He told her he feared for himself. She said that God would never disgrace him, because of his keeping of family ties, his bearing of others' burdens, his earning for the destitute, his hospitality to guests and his aid in the calamities of truth. Then she took him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal (the beginning of revelation) ^{9 10}. In Ibn Hisham's account, when he was slow to return she sent messengers to seek him. When he came back and told her what had happened, she gave him good news and said she hoped he would be the prophet of this community. Then she went to Waraqa and informed him ^{11 12}. She is among the foremost of the early believers who embraced Islam on the first day of the call (the secret call) ^{13 14}.

She died in Ramadan of the tenth year of the mission, aged sixty-five, while the Prophet was fifty. This was about two or three months after the death of Abu Talib (the death of Khadija) ¹⁵.