Khadījah bint Khuwaylid
خديجة بنت خويلد
- Dates
- 555–619 CE / 68 BH–3 BH
- Relation to the Prophet ﷺ
- First wife of the Prophet ﷺ; mother of all his surviving children except Ibrāhīm
The first person to accept Islam. The Prophet ﷺ, after her death, never said her name without his eyes filling.
Life
Khadījah was 40 years old, widowed, and running a successful trading caravan when she proposed to the Prophet ﷺ — 15 years her junior and in her employ. She had seen his character as her business agent and preferred him over every suitor in Makkah. The marriage was extraordinary: 25 years of complete loyalty on both sides, monogamous in a polygamous culture, central to the earliest community.
When the first revelation came, the Prophet ﷺ returned to her terrified, asking her to cover him. She answered: "Allah will never disgrace you — you keep the ties of kin, you speak the truth, you carry the burdens of the weak, you help whoever deserves help." She took him to her Christian cousin Waraqah who confirmed the revelation. She believed before anyone else. She died in the Year of Sorrow — 619 CE — three years before the Hijrah. The Prophet ﷺ, in his twilight years, said: "Allah has not replaced her with one better."
Passages that mention Khadījah
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"What distresses you as you proceed to the messenger of Allah and to Ali Ibn Abi Talib your parents and to Khadija bint"
Also from this generation
- ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr
عائشة بنت أبي بكر
The most learned of the companions in matters of fiqh, the most prolific female narrator, and the primary source for the inner life of the Prophet ﷺ.
- Fāṭimah bint Muḥammad
فاطمة بنت محمد
The Prophet's ﷺ most beloved daughter. The only one of his children to survive him — by less than six months.
- Ḥafṣah bint ʿUmar
حفصة بنت عمر
The wife to whom the first collected muṣḥaf of the Qurʾan was entrusted after Abū Bakr's death.