The First Muslim and the First Protector

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid died in Ramadan of the tenth year of prophethood — approximately 619 CE — at approximately sixty-five years of age. She had been the first person to believe the Prophet ﷺ, the first Muslim, the woman who had held him in the terrifying first moments after the revelation of Surah al-Alaq and told him with absolute certainty that Allah would not disgrace him. She had spent twenty-five years as his wife, the anchor of his domestic life, the provider of the material security that allowed him to contemplate and then to preach, and the companion through every year of the mission from its beginning to the moment of her death.

Her death, coming days after or in close proximity to the death of Abu Talib, defined what the Prophet ﷺ would name Aam al-Huzn — the Year of Sorrow. He never fully recovered from the grief of losing her. The narrations of his words about Khadijah in the years after her death — preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim — are among the most humanly moving records in all of Islamic literature.

Her Life and Her Marriage

Khadijah had been twice widowed and was a successful merchant of the Quraysh when she proposed marriage to Muhammad ibn Abdullah, who was then twenty-five years old and working as the manager of her trading caravans. She was approximately forty at the time of the marriage — a woman who had built a commercial enterprise of genuine scale and knew how to read character in men. Her assessment of Muhammad ﷺ — before prophethood, before any claim to revelation, based purely on what she had observed in him — was that he was the most truthful, the most trustworthy, and the finest human being she had ever encountered.

She was the first woman of the Quraysh to be his wife and the only wife he had during her lifetime. The Prophet ﷺ did not take other wives while Khadijah lived, a fact that distinguishes his marriage to her from all subsequent marriages and speaks to both his contentment with her and her position in his life. They had six children together: two sons who died in infancy (al-Qasim and Abdullah) and four daughters (Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah).

Her Role in the First Revelation

When the first revelation came — when Jibril appeared in the Cave of Hira and commanded the Prophet ﷺ to read, and the Prophet ﷺ returned home trembling and fearing for himself — Khadijah's response defined the subsequent history of Islam. She did not doubt him, did not express alarm at his state, did not ask for evidence or time to think. She said: "By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You maintain family ties, you bear people's burdens, you provide for the destitute, you treat guests generously, and you help people in genuine distress." Then she took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a learned Christian who confirmed that what had come to the Prophet ﷺ was the same Namus that had come to Musa.

She declared her faith before anyone else. Before Abu Bakr, before Ali, before Zayd ibn Harith — before any of the companions whose conversion is celebrated in Islamic history — there was Khadijah. She is the first Muslim in the truest sense: the first person to hear the message and affirm it. The Prophet ﷺ said: "She believed in me when people denied me, she accepted my truthfulness when people called me a liar, she offered me wealth when people deprived me, and Allah gave me children through her when He gave me none through other wives."

The Three Years in the Valley

The three years of the Qurayshi boycott of Banu Hashim, from approximately 617 to 619 CE, were the years that directly preceded Khadijah's death. The community was confined to Shi'b Abi Talib, cut off from trade, unable to purchase food, enduring genuine privation. During this period, Khadijah spent the remainder of the wealth she had built over a lifetime of commerce to provide for the community and for the family. She was already in her sixties, and the physical hardship of the boycott years — the hunger, the confinement, the stress — accelerated whatever illness or physical deterioration had already begun.

When the boycott ended, Khadijah did not recover. She died within weeks of Abu Talib's death, in the same year, in a period of overlapping grief that was the most difficult the Prophet ﷺ would face in Mecca.

The Death and the Burial

Khadijah died and was buried in Mecca. The Prophet ﷺ himself placed her in her grave — a practice that was his sunnah for those he buried. There was no formal salat al-janazah (funeral prayer) for the dead at this point in the Islamic calendar; the funeral prayer as a formal practice was established after the Hijra. Khadijah was buried in the cemetery of Jannat al-Mu'la in Mecca, where her grave remains a place of visitation for Muslims performing Hajj and Umrah.

Jibril had conveyed the greetings of Allah and of himself to Khadijah while she was alive — a distinction given to no other wife of the Prophet ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ informed her of this greeting, she responded with the measured dignity that characterized her throughout her life: she asked the Prophet ﷺ to convey her own salutations back to Jibril and to Allah, the Peace, and said that Allah is the Peace and from Him all peace returns.

The Prophet's Grief and His Love for Her After Her Death

The Prophet ﷺ spoke of Khadijah throughout the years after her death with love and honor that provoked, on at least one occasion, the jealousy of Aishah — who was herself among the most beloved of the Prophet's ﷺ later wives. Aishah said: "I was not jealous of any of the Prophet's wives as I was jealous of Khadijah, though she died before he married me, because I heard him mention her so much." When a sacrifice was made, the Prophet ﷺ would send portions to the friends of Khadijah. When her sister Hala came to visit, her voice sounded like Khadijah's, and the Prophet ﷺ would become visibly moved and say: "O Allah, it is Hala" — and Aishah understood that in that moment, memory and love had carried him across the years.

Aishah also reported asking the Prophet ﷺ about Khadijah, to which he replied: "She believed in me when people denied me." This statement — the one the Prophet ﷺ returned to again and again when speaking of Khadijah — is the foundation of her status in Islamic memory. Before Islam had any power, any community, any protection, any external validation of any kind — Khadijah believed. That she spent the entirety of her life thereafter in service of the mission, and died in poverty from having given everything she had to sustain it, is a complete life well-lived.

Her Station

The Prophet ﷺ said: "The best women are four: Maryam bint Imran, Asiya bint Muzahim, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, and Fatimah bint Muhammad." (Bukhari and Muslim). He also said she was the greatest woman of her time. Allah's greeting to her through Jibril places her in a category of divine acknowledgment that transcends the ordinary categories of virtue. She is Umm al-Mu'minin — Mother of the Believers — in the literal and the spiritual sense: her children formed the lineage through which the Prophet's ﷺ descendance continues, and her faith formed the first foundation on which the community of believers was built.

Sources: Sahih al-Bukhari (Kitab Manaqib al-Ansar, Kitab al-Adab); Sahih Muslim (Kitab Fada'il al-Sahabah); Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak