Khadijah bint Khuwaylid: The First Believer

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (c. 555–620 CE) was the first wife of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the first person to accept his prophethood. She was a merchant of Mecca trading on her own account, with a caravan that Ibn Sa'd's informant reckoned the equal of the rest of Quraysh's combined. She engaged Muhammad to carry her goods to Syria, proposed the marriage herself, and remained his only wife for the twenty-five years until her death. She bore all his children but one. When the first revelation came to him at Hira and he returned home shaken, it was she who reassured him, took him to her Christian cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal for an opinion, and then bore witness that he was the Messenger of God.

Her importance to the history of Islam is not that she was wealthy, though her wealth mattered. It is that at the moment when the revelation had reached one man and no one else on earth accepted it, she did. Ibn Kathir, weighing the various reports of who believed first, concluded that she was the first woman to accept Islam "and also she preceded the men".

Lineage and the clan of Asad

Khadijah was the daughter of Khuwaylid ibn Asad, of the clan of Asad ibn Abd al-Uzza of Quraysh. Her descent meets the Prophet's in their common ancestor Qusayy, four generations above her. Her father was among the notables of Quraysh, and he died before she married the Prophet — a point which, as will appear, settles a question about that marriage. The sources tie his death to the Fijar war but not identically: the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that most of them place it before the war, while Ibn Sa'd, on Ibn Abbas's authority, says he died on the Day of Fijar itself.

Her mother was Fatima bint Za'ida, whose own line meets the Prophet's at Lu'ayy ibn Ghalib. Ibn Sa'd preserves her maternal descent through seven generations on the authority of Ibn Abbas: Fatima bint Za'ida ibn al-Asamm; her mother Hala bint Abd Manaf ibn al-Harith; her mother al-Araqa, also given as Qilaba, bint Su'ayd ibn Sahm; her mother Atika bint Abd al-Uzza ibn Qusayy; her mother al-Khutya, also given as Rayta, bint Ka'b; and her mother Na'ila bint Hudhafa. A genealogy carried to that depth on the female line is unusual in this literature, and it indicates the standing of the family.

The TDV entry gives her birth at Mecca in 556 CE. Ibn Sa'd's own figures point to much the same date by a different route: her nephew Hakim ibn Hizam said she was born fifteen years before the Year of the Elephant and that he himself was born thirteen years before it, which makes her two years his senior; and al-Waqidi, cited in the same chapter, likewise places her birth fifteen years before the Elephant. Hakim added that she was fifteen years older than the Prophet.

Before Islam she was known as al-Tahira, "the pure". Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, quoted by Ibn Kathir, states that in the jahiliyya she was called "al-Tahira, daughter of Khuwaylid", and the TDV entry gives the same title and attributes it to her chastity. The further epithet al-Kubra, "the elder" or "the greater", came into use only in later centuries, from her position as the first of the Prophet's wives.

A family apart from Meccan practice

Two reports place her at a distance from the religion of her city before there was any alternative to it.

Ibn Sa'd relates on the authority of Ibn Abbas that the women of Mecca gathered for a festival they kept in the month of Rajab, which they held to be the most important occasion of their year. While they were at their observances a figure in the shape of a man came up and called out at the top of his voice that a prophet would appear in their land who would be called Ahmad, and that any woman able to be his wife should do so. The women threw pebbles at him and were harsh with him. "Khadija ignored what he said," the report ends, "but did not treat him as the women did."

Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah, citing Ibn Ishaq, gives the same episode in fuller form and places it at the Kaaba, with Hubal's idol set up nearby and the pilgrims prostrating before the idols as well as circumambulating the House. In this version the speaker is a Jewish man; the women took him for a mocker of their gods, and some shouted while others threw stones. Every woman present joined in scorning him except Khadijah, who, the same account records, chose not to speak in defence of the false deities and remained silent. That work states plainly that she did not sympathise with the idol worshippers even before Islam, and that her family stood apart from the practices of Meccan society, among them the burying of infant daughters.

Two marriages before

Ibn Sa'd records that before anyone married her, Khadijah was offered to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, but that no marriage took place between them. The TDV entry gives the same, adding that the match was thought suitable when she reached marriageable age. Waraqah would appear again at the decisive moment of her life, more than forty years later, in a different capacity.

She was then married twice. Abu Hala, whose name Ibn Sa'd gives as Hind ibn al-Nabbash ibn Zurara of Tamim, was the son of a noble of his people; he had settled at Mecca and entered into alliance with the Banu Abd al-Dar ibn Qusayy, and Ibn Sa'd notes that Quraysh were accustomed to marry their allies. To him Khadijah bore two sons, Hind and Hala. The second husband was Atiq ibn Abid of Makhzum, to whom she bore a daughter, also called Hind, who married her cousin Sayfi ibn Umayya and bore him a son named Muhammad; the family was afterwards called the Banu Muhammad on account of Khadijah's standing, and Ibn Sa'd records that it survived at Medina and then died out. From her eldest son she took the kunya by which she was known, Umm Hind.

Her son Hind ibn Abi Hala lived to accept Islam. Golden Stories records that the Prophet had a share in his upbringing, that he was present at Badr and Uhud, and that he died in 36 AH at the Battle of the Camel; he is known in the literature for his description of the Prophet's appearance. The same work, citing Ibn Hajar, reports that al-Harith ibn Abi Hala was killed at Mecca in the early days of Islam defending the Prophet when he was set upon, and calls him the first martyr of Islam.

The order of the two marriages is disputed. Ibn Sa'd's own chapter puts Abu Hala first and Atiq second, and the TDV entry follows that order as its primary account. But al-Zuhri, quoted later in the same volume of Ibn Sa'd, has it the other way about — that before the Prophet she had been married to Atiq ibn Abid al-Makhzumi and bore him a daughter called Hind — and Golden Stories, citing Ibn al-Athir, likewise gives Atiq first and notes that some biographers reverse it. The Encyclopaedia of Islam states the position without resolving it: "The order of these marriages is disputed, as is also the ism of Abu Hala and his genealogy."

How each marriage ended is also unsettled. Watt judged in the Encyclopaedia of Islam that she was probably divorced from Abu Hala, divorce being common at Mecca, while Atiq is said to have died and left her a widow. The TDV entry speaks of her second husband's death without characterising the end of the first.

The merchant

By the time of her third marriage Khadijah was a merchant of substance, trading in her own name. Ibn Sa'd preserves an account from Nafisa bint Umayya — the sister of Ya'la bint Umayya, and a woman who would herself become a Companion — that gives the scale of the business: "Khadija had nobility and great wealth. She used to dispatch goods to Syria. Her caravan was equal to the general caravan of Quraysh. She hired men and paid them on the basis of a partnership."

Watt observed in the Encyclopaedia of Islam that her ability to own property and to trade was shared by at least one other Meccan woman of the period, Asma bint Mukharriba, the mother of Abu Jahl, and he suggested that such independence most probably reflected the persistence of older practices resting on matrilineal kinship. That is his reading of the evidence rather than a statement in the sources, and it is given here as such.

The TDV entry adds that after her second husband's death a number of the leading men of Quraysh sought to marry her, on account of her birth, her person and her wealth, and that she accepted none of them; and that she traded in partnership with men she found trustworthy.

The commission to Syria

Nafisa's account continues into the episode that brought Khadijah and Muhammad together, and it is worth following in her words, since she was a party to what followed. "When the Messenger of Allah reached the age of twenty-five and was known in Makka as 'the Trusty (al-Amin)', Khadija bint Khuwaylid sent for him to ask him to take her goods to Syria with her slave Maysara. She said, 'I will give you double what your people give.'" He accepted, went to the market of Bosra, sold what he had brought and bought other goods, and returned with double her usual profit; and she paid him twice the sum she had promised.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam dates the journey to 605 CE or earlier and describes him as going to Bosra as steward of her merchandise. Ibn Kathir, following Ibn Ishaq, adds the detail that Maysara reported to her what he had seen on the road, and gives Ibn Ishaq's characterisation of her as a woman of decision, nobility and intelligence.

The marriage

What happened next is recorded by both Ibn Sa'd and Ibn Kathir, and the two accounts differ only in emphasis: Khadijah proposed the marriage.

Ibn Kathir, following Ibn Ishaq, gives her words to him directly: "Cousin, I am interested in you because of your being related to me, because of your high reputation among your people, and because of your trustworthiness, fine character and truthfulness." Ibn Ishaq adds that she was the highest-born, most respected and wealthiest woman of Quraysh, and that her people would have been glad of what she was offering if they could have had it.

Ibn Sa'd has the proposal carried by an intermediary, and the intermediary tells it herself. Nafisa said: "She sent me to him secretly to ask him to marry her, and he agreed." The TDV entry records Nafisa's mediation as the second of two accounts in the sources, the first being that Khadijah spoke to him directly; the two are not incompatible, and the benchmark account of the Prophet's life gives her name in the variant form Nafisah bint Munyah.

Muhammad took the matter to his uncles. Ibn Kathir records that Hamza went with him to Khuwaylid ibn Asad and made the engagement. The TDV entry has Abu Talib address the gathering, held at Khadijah's own house in the presence of his brothers and his nephew, asking her uncle Amr ibn Asad for her hand and naming a mahr of five hundred or four hundred dirhams, or, in some accounts, twenty she-camels; and it notes that some narrations put Hamza in Abu Talib's place and her father Khuwaylid in her uncle's.

On the question of who contracted the marriage the sources are unusually firm. Ibn Sa'd, on the authority of Ibn Abbas, states that her uncle Amr ibn Asad gave her in marriage, her father having died on the Day of Fijar — and al-Waqidi adds, in the same passage, "Our companions agree about this and there is no disagreement about it." Amr's words at the contract are preserved: "This marriage shall not be rejected." The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives the same, with Hamza acting for the Prophet.

Their ages

Khadijah was forty years old at the marriage, and the Prophet twenty-five. Both figures carry the weight of the sources, and both have recorded alternatives.

For her age, Ibn Sa'd gives forty twice over: al-Waqidi states that she was born fifteen years before the Elephant and was forty when she married, and Hakim ibn Hizam says that the Prophet married her when she was forty and he was twenty-five. The TDV entry judges forty probable and classes two other reports as weak — thirty-seven, from al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, and twenty-eight, from Ibn Sa'd. It makes one observation in favour of the lowest figure that deserves recording: twenty-eight accords better than forty with her having borne seven children by this marriage, all of them before Islam. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives her age as "forty (or twenty-eight)" without preferring either.

For his age, Ibn Hisham, quoted by Ibn Kathir, reports twenty-five on the authority of several scholars including Abu Amr al-Madani, and Nafisa's account in Ibn Sa'd says he married on his return from Syria when he was twenty-five. The TDV entry treats twenty-five as the prevailing report and classes thirty, from al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, and twenty-one, from al-Tabarani and al-Haythami, as weak. Watt lists twenty-three as a further variant.

Ibn Sa'd's figures form a consistent whole: born about fifteen years before the Elephant, married at forty, and — as the reports of her death record — sixty-five when she died.

The household

He married no other woman while she lived. Ibn Ishaq's statement, preserved by Ibn Kathir through Yunus ibn Bukayr, is flat: "He did not marry any other woman during her lifetime."

Six children were born to them at Mecca, and a seventh, Ibrahim, was born long afterwards at Medina to Mariya al-Qibtiyya. Al-Mubarakpuri states the position compactly: "With the exception of Ibrahim, Khadijah bore all of his children: al-Qasim, Zaynab, Ruqaiyah, Umm Kulthum, Fatimah and Abdullah who was also called Taiyyib and Tahir." The sons died in childhood; the daughters all lived to accept Islam, and all but Fatimah died in their father's lifetime. The children are treated in their own article, The Children of Prophet Muhammad.

Ibn Sa'd preserves the domestic detail. Her midwife was Salma, the client of Uqba. There were two years between each two children. She would find wet-nurses for them and made the arrangements before they were born — with one exception, which Ibn Abbas records in Ibn Kathir: of all her children she nursed only Fatimah herself.

Two members of the household came into it through her. Umm Ayman, who had nursed the Prophet in his infancy, was freed when he married Khadijah. And Zayd ibn Harithah, brought as a boy from Syria, was Khadijah's client: Ibn Sa'd records that she gave him to the Prophet, who freed him. The Encyclopaedia of Islam adds that Zayd reached her through her nephew Hakim ibn Hizam, who had either brought him from Syria or bought him at Ukaz, and that for a time the couple lived in a bayt within Hakim's own dar at Mecca.

The TDV entry records that in the years before the revelation, when Muhammad withdrew from the city to worship in solitude and particularly at Hira, Khadijah's attention was constantly on him, and when his return was delayed she would send her servants to find him.

The first revelation

What happened at Hira is given at length in the article on the Prophet's life. What belongs here is what happened when he came home.

He returned shaken, having been seized three times by an angel he had never met and taught the opening verses of Surah al-Alaq. He told her what had passed and said, in the TDV entry's rendering of the report, "What is happening to me, Khadija?", saying that he feared for himself.

Her reply is preserved in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. She told him not to speak so, and swore that God would never shame him or grieve him; and she set out the reasons, which were not visions or portents but the conduct of his life — that he kept the ties of kinship, spoke the truth, bore the burden of those unable to manage their own affairs, gave to the poor, honoured the guest, and helped those who met with injustice. Ibn Kathir, commenting on the phrase rendered "you help them out when tragedy strikes", explains it as standing by a person struck by misfortune until they find a livelihood again.

The reply is worth reading closely. It does not appeal to a sign or a miracle. It reasons from a known character to a conclusion about God's dealing with him. That is the ground on which the first believer believed.

Her test

Ibn Kathir preserves an episode in which she set out to settle the question for herself, and it survives through Ibn Ishaq with a chain running to Fatimah, who had it from Khadijah.

When the angel next came, she had the Prophet sit in her lap and asked whether he could still see him; he said he could. She then took him inside her shift and asked again. He answered, "No." She said: "This is no devil then, cousin; this is an angel! Take heart and rejoice!" The report ends: "She then believed in him and gave witness that it was the truth he brought." Al-Bayhaqi's comment on the episode, quoted by Ibn Kathir, is that this was something Khadijah did in order to settle the matter, to preserve her faith and to affirm her credence.

Waraqah ibn Nawfal

She then took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal — the same man she had once been offered to in marriage. Ibn Kathir records that by this time Waraqah was an old man and blind. He had become a Christian before the coming of Islam, one of a small circle at Mecca that also included Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl, Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith and Ubayd Allah ibn Jahsh; Ibn Kathir says of them that they became Christians because they found Christianity to be, at that time, the religion closest to the truth.

The TDV entry records that Waraqah knew Hebrew and therefore read the Torah and the Gospel, and that after hearing the account he told him the angel who had appeared to him was the angel who brought revelation to all the prophets. On hearing this Khadijah said: "I bear witness that you are the Messenger of God."

The first believer

Several figures in the earliest community have a claim to have been first in some respect, and Ibn Kathir sets out the reports and then resolves them:

"Combining these various accounts we see that Khadija was the first woman to accept Islam, the leader of the pack, as it were, and also she preceded the men. Among slaves, the first to accept Islam was Zayd b. Haritha. And the first boy to accept Islam was Ali b. Abu Talib … The first free man to accept Islam was Abu Bakr."

Ibn Sa'd records the same priority more briefly, from Aishah and from Nafi' ibn Jubayr: "Khadija was the first to become Muslim." Elsewhere in the same volume he notes that Umm al-Fadl was the first woman at Mecca to become Muslim after Khadijah. Al-Zuhri adds that the Prophet and Khadijah prayed in secret as long as God willed.

For a period the religion had three adherents. The TDV entry records that in those first days, when there were only three Muslims on earth, she worshipped with the Prophet and with Ali, sometimes near the Kaaba and sometimes at home, and that Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, coming to Mecca to trade, saw the three of them making the circuit of the Kaaba together.

The most striking testimony is from an outsider who did not understand what he was looking at. Ibn Sa'd preserves the account of Afif al-Kindi, who came to Mecca in the jahiliyya to buy clothes and perfume for his family and stayed with al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib:

"While I was with him, looking at the Ka'ba when the sun was high, a young man came up to the Ka'ba. He raised his head towards the heaven and concentrated his attention. Then he faced the Ka'ba standing upright. Then a boy came and stood at his right. A woman soon came and stood behind them. Then the young man bowed and the boy and woman bowed … I said, 'Abbas, I see something immense.'"

Al-Abbas named them for him one by one — his nephew Muhammad, his nephew Ali, and "Khadija bint Khuwaylid, the wife of this nephew" — and said that his nephew professed that his Lord was the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and that so far as he knew there was no one on the face of the earth following that religion except those three. Afif's own comment, looking back after his conversion, was: "Later I wished I had been their fourth."

The years of opposition

As the preaching became public and Quraysh turned against it, Khadijah's part was support rather than public action, and the sources are consistent about its weight. The TDV entry records that she never left him alone in the face of the hostility of the idolaters and did not hold back from spending her wealth in his cause.

When Quraysh confined the Banu Hashim in Shi'b Abi Talib, she endured the siege with him; the TDV entry gives its duration as two or three years, and sets the boycott itself in the years 617 to 620. The Encyclopaedia of Islam preserves a detail of how the household survived it: her nephew Hakim ibn Hizam carried food to his aunt while she was among the Banu Hashim.

Watt suggested that the marriage is probably the subject of the verse "Did he not find you needy and enrich you?" (Qur'an 93:8), on the ground that her wealth enabled him to trade on a larger scale; and he noted that although no further journeys to Syria are recorded, the Prophet appears to have traded in partnership with al-Sa'ib ibn Abi al-Sa'ib, a nephew of her second husband. The identification of the verse is Watt's reading and is reported here as his.

Her death

Khadijah died at Mecca in Ramadan, three years before the Hijra, after a marriage of about twenty-five years. The TDV entry gives the date as 10 Ramadan, corresponding to 19 April 620, and the place of burial as the Hajun cemetery. Ibn Sa'd's reports give the twentieth of Ramadan.

The fullest account of the burial is Hakim ibn Hizam's, in Ibn Sa'd: "Khadija bint Khuwaylid died in the month of Ramadan in the tenth year of prophethood. She was sixty-five then. We took her out of her house and buried her at al-Hajun. The Messenger of Allah went down into her grave. At that time we did not have the sunna of the funeral prayer." Asked when this had been, he answered that it was three years before the Hijra or thereabouts, and shortly after the Banu Hashim came out of the ravine. Aishah's report in the same chapter dates it the same way and by the same marker: "Khadija died before the prayer was made obligatory. That was three years before the hijra."

Her death and that of Abu Talib fell in the same year, and the year is known on that account as the year of sorrow, sanat al-huzn. Ibn Ishaq states simply that the two died in the same year. How the two deaths stood to one another is not settled, and the variants are set out in the Historiographical Note below.

The TDV entry records that a tomb was built over her grave by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and that it was demolished in 1926, with the other tombs there, when Mecca passed under Saudi rule.

How he remembered her

Several reports of how the Prophet spoke of Khadijah after her death are preserved in the two sahih collections, and they are the strongest evidence for her standing in the community's memory.

Gabriel brought her greetings from her Lord. Abu Hurayrah reported the Prophet saying that Jibril came to him and said: "O Allah's Messenger! This is Khadija, coming to you with a dish having meat soup (or some food or drink). When she reaches you, greet her on behalf of her Lord and on my behalf, and give her the glad tidings of a palace in Paradise built of qasab, wherein there will be neither any noise nor any fatigue" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3820; the same report at Sahih al-Bukhari 7497, and Sahih Muslim 2432). Asked directly whether the Prophet had given her such tidings, Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa answered that he had — "a house of pearls in Paradise in which there is no clamour or toil" (Sahih Muslim 2433). Al-Suhayli, quoted by Ibn Kathir, read the word qasab as carrying a second sense: she was given a house of qasab because she had won the qasab, the first prize, in the race to faith.

Ali reported the Prophet saying: "The best of the world's women is Maryam, and the best of the world's women is Khadija" — the Darussalam edition glossing each clause "at her lifetime", so that each is named the foremost woman of her own age (Sahih al-Bukhari 3815).

Aishah, who never met her, left several reports of how often he spoke of her. "I did not feel jealous of any of the wives of the Prophet as much as I did of Khadija, although she died before he married me, for I often heard him mentioning her; and Allah had told him to give her the good tidings that she would have a palace of qasab" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3816). In a variant preserved by Ibn Kathir she adds that when he slaughtered a sheep he would cut portions from it and send them to Khadijah's friends.

Ibn Kathir also preserves the exchange in which she pressed him on the subject and was answered. She had said something slighting about an old woman long dead, and he replied: "God has not given me better than her in exchange. She believed in me when the people disbelieved, and trusted me when they distrusted. She shared her wealth with me when others denied me. And God endowed a son to me from her, yet He withheld from me having sons with other women." Ibn Kathir records the chain as fair and notes that it comes through Mujalid, whose reliability is disputed; he also reasons that the closing clause must belong to a time before the birth of Ibrahim. The report is given here with that qualification attached, as he gives it.

One report turns on nothing more than a voice. Hala bint Khuwaylid, Khadijah's sister, once asked leave to come in, and the manner of her asking was so like her sister's that the Prophet was moved and said, "O Allah! Hala!" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3821).

The last of these reports belongs to the aftermath of Badr. Her daughter Zaynab's husband, Abu'l-As ibn al-Rabi', was taken prisoner, and Zaynab sent as his ransom a necklace of Zafar onyx that Khadijah had given her when she went to her husband's house. Ibn Sa'd records that when the Prophet saw the necklace he recognised it, and it moved him, and he remembered Khadijah and felt pity; and he said to the Companions that if they could see their way to releasing her captive to her and returning her property, they should do it. They did both.

Historiographical Note

The sources on Khadijah are comparatively rich, and their disagreements are mostly disagreements of detail rather than of substance. They are set out here because the alternative — choosing silently among them — would leave a reader unable to tell a settled fact from a contested one.

Her age at the marriage. Forty is the figure given twice in Ibn Sa'd, by al-Waqidi and by Hakim ibn Hizam, and judged probable by the TDV entry. Thirty-seven is reported by al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar and twenty-eight by Ibn Sa'd; the TDV entry classes both as weak, while noting that twenty-eight sits better with her having borne seven children after the marriage. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives forty or twenty-eight without preference. Her age at death is given as sixty-five in two separate reports in Ibn Sa'd, which is consistent with forty at the marriage.

His age at the marriage. Twenty-five predominates. The TDV entry classes thirty and twenty-one as weak; Watt adds twenty-three.

The order of her earlier marriages. Ibn Sa'd's chapter and the TDV entry's primary account put Abu Hala first; al-Zuhri, in the same volume of Ibn Sa'd, and Ibn al-Athir as cited in Golden Stories, put Atiq first. Watt states only that the order is disputed, and that the personal name and genealogy of Abu Hala are disputed with it.

The date of her death. The TDV entry gives 10 Ramadan, 19 April 620; Ibn Sa'd's reports give the twentieth of Ramadan. Both place it in Ramadan, three years before the Hijra, and both are anchored to the same external marker — that it fell before the five daily prayers were made obligatory, and shortly after the Banu Hashim left the ravine.

Her death and Abu Talib's. That the two fell in the same year is agreed, and the name given to that year rests on it. The interval is not agreed. Al-Bayhaqi was informed, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam follows the report, that Khadijah died three days after Abu Talib. Al-Waqidi, quoted by Ibn Kathir, has her die thirty-five days before him. The TDV entry has Abu Talib die about a month after her, in Shawwal, and records variants at three days and fifty-five days after her, and others placing his death before hers. Ibn Kathir himself remarks that it would have been more appropriate to treat the two deaths before the account of the night journey, as al-Bayhaqi had done.

Two stories not carried here. The scholarly sources reject two accounts that circulate about the marriage. The first is that Khadijah was persuaded by miracles connected with Muhammad; the second is that she obtained her father's consent by making him drunk. Watt holds that both "may be discounted", and the TDV entry, citing the Musnad, Abd al-Razzaq al-San'ani and al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar as the places where the second is found, states that these narrations are not reliable. The second is independently excluded by the point established above: her father was already dead at Fijar, and al-Waqidi records no disagreement that it was her uncle who contracted the marriage.

A question deliberately not entered into. Classical scholars discussed at length the relative precedence of Khadijah and Aishah. Ibn Kathir sets out the positions taken on both sides and declines to settle the question, concluding that it is best deferred to God. This article follows him in not pursuing it.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3815 — "The best of the world's women is Maryam, and the best of the world's women is Khadija", narrated by Ali
• Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3816 — Aishah on the Prophet's remembrance of Khadijah and the tidings of the palace of qasab
• Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3820, and the same report at 7497 — Abu Hurayrah on Jibril's greeting from her Lord and the glad tidings of the house in Paradise
• Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3821 — Aishah on Hala bint Khuwaylid asking leave to enter
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Bad' al-Wahy, and Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Iman — her words of reassurance after the first revelation, and Waraqah's identification of the angel
• Sahih Muslim, hadith 2432 and 2433 — Jibril's greeting, and Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa on the house of pearls
• Qur'an 93:6–8, the chapter al-Duha — the verse Watt reads as referring to the marriage

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, vol. VIII, The Women of Madina, trans. Aisha Bewley — the dedicated chapter on Khadijah, and the primary source for her genealogy, her earlier marriages, Nafisa bint Umayya's account of the Syrian commission and the proposal, her children and household, and the three reports of her death
• Ibn Kathir. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya (The Life of the Prophet Muhammad), trans. Trevor Le Gassick — Ibn Ishaq's account of the marriage, her test of the angel, the resolution of who accepted Islam first, and the reports of her death and of the Prophet's remembrance of her
• Ibn Hisham. Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, the recension of Ibn Ishaq — quoted by Ibn Kathir for the Prophet's age at the marriage
• Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar. Kitab Azwaj al-Nabi — quoted by Ibn Kathir and by the TDV entry for her title al-Tahira and for a variant age
• Al-Waqidi, al-Bayhaqi, al-Zuhri and Hakim ibn Hizam — quoted in Ibn Sa'd and Ibn Kathir for the marriage contract, the chronology of her death, and the age reports

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Watt, W. Montgomery. "Khadidja", in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, vol. IV
• "Hatice", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 16 (Istanbul, 1997; revised 2025)
• Al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. The Sealed Nectar (Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum)
• Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah
• Great Women of Islam

Further Reading

• Kister, M. J. "The Sons of Khadīja", Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, XVI (1993), pp. 59–95 — a dedicated study of the disputed question of her sons, cited in the bibliography of the TDV entry
• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah — the biographical notice on Khadijah
• Al-Dhahabi. Siyar A'lam al-Nubala' — the notice on Khadijah, cited by the TDV entry for Abdullah ibn Mas'ud's sight of the three at the Kaaba