Khadijah, the first to believe

A woman specific to Islam

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (may Allah be pleased with her) has no counterpart in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, so this page is not a three-way comparison. She is part of the Muslim story of how the Qur'an began, and Muslims of every school honour her. If you are Jewish or Christian, this page tells you who she is, in the words of the sources Muslims themselves use. Where her story touches Moses and the Gospels, we say so.

Her story begins with the first words of the Qur'an to the Prophet ﷺ: "Read: In the name of thy Lord".

Who she was

Khadijah lived in Makkah (Mecca) in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. She was a widow and a successful merchant, who sent trading caravans to Syria and Yemen. Sources disagree on some dates. Her birth is placed in the middle of the sixth century, and most sources put her death in 619.

She hired a younger man known for his honesty, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, to lead a caravan to Syria. She then proposed marriage. Most sources give her age as about forty and his as about twenty-five, although some say she was younger. They were married for about twenty-five years, and while she lived the Prophet ﷺ took no other wife. The Encyclopaedia Britannica records the same.

The cave of Hira

The Prophet ﷺ used to go to the cave of Hira, above Makkah, to pray in solitude. There the angel Gabriel came to him. Aisha reports in Sahih al-Bukhari that he returned "with his heart beating severely", went to Khadijah and said, "Cover me! Cover me!" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3). The first words revealed to him were these:

Read: In the name of thy Lord Who createth, Createth man from a clot. Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous, Who teacheth by the pen, Teacheth man that which he knew not.

Qur'an 96:1–5 · Pickthall

He told her he was afraid. She answered him with words that Muslims have remembered ever since:

Never! By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kith and kin, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests generously and assist the deserving calamity-afflicted ones.

Sahih al-Bukhari 3 (Aisha)

She then took him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, who in the same report had become a Christian and used to write from the Gospel. Waraqa said: "This is the same one who keeps the secrets (angel Gabriel) whom Allah had sent to Moses." So in this account a Christian elder places the vision in the line of Moses. See Moses.

In Muslim tradition Khadijah was the first person to accept Islam, before any man or any other woman.

Honoured by the Prophet ﷺ

The sources preserve how he remembered her. Aisha, who was married to him after Khadijah's death, said she never felt jealous of any woman as she did of Khadijah, "because Allah's Messenger used to mention her very often" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3817). In another report she says he sent portions of meat to Khadijah's friends (Sahih al-Bukhari 3818).

Abu Huraira reports that Gabriel told the Prophet ﷺ to "greet her on behalf of her Lord", and give her glad tidings of a palace in Paradise "wherein there will be neither any noise nor any fatigue" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3820).

Ali reports that the Prophet ﷺ said: "Mary, the daughter of ʿImran, was the best among the women (of the world of her time) and Khadija is the best amongst the women (of this nation)" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3432). Our Mary page sits beside this one.

She died in 619, in the tenth year of the revelation. The same year his uncle and protector Abu Talib died. Muslims call it the Year of Sorrow. She is buried in Makkah, at Jannat al-Mu'alla.

Sunni and Shia

Sunni and Shia Muslims both honour Khadijah. She is the mother of Fatimah. Shia Muslims revere her too as the grandmother of Hasan and Husayn, from whom the Imams descend.

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