Marriage to Khadijah (RA)

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وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ أَنْ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنْ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَزْوَاجًا لِّتَسْكُنُوا إِلَيْهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَكُم مَّوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً

And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy.

— Quran 30:21

In the Service of a Merchant Queen

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid was among the most respected and prosperous merchants of Mecca, a widow of noble Qurayshi lineage who managed her own extensive trading business through hired agents rather than traveling herself. Having heard of the young Muhammad's reputation for honesty and skill, she asked him to take a caravan of her goods to Syria on her behalf, offering him a generous share of the profit, greater than she typically gave. Accompanied by her servant Maysarah, Muhammad conducted the trade with such integrity and success that the venture returned unusually handsome profits, and Maysarah returned with reports not only of his business acumen but of a character marked by honesty and remarkable grace.

A Proposal Through Nafisah

Impressed by what she heard, and by his reputation already well known throughout Mecca, Khadijah, then about forty years old, resolved that she wished to marry Muhammad, who was around twenty-five. Rather than approach him directly, tradition holds that she sent her friend Nafisah bint Munyah to sound out his interest and then to convey her proposal of marriage. Muhammad consulted his uncles, and finding the proposal both honorable and welcome, the marriage was arranged. Khadijah, despite having declined offers from wealthy and prominent men of Quraysh, chose the young man known above all for his character rather than his wealth or standing.

Twenty-Five Years of Partnership

Their marriage endured for around twenty-five years, until Khadijah's death, and by every account it was a union of deep companionship and mutual devotion. Khadijah brought not only financial security to a man who had known poverty and loss since childhood, but also emotional steadiness and unwavering belief in him. During this marriage, Muhammad took no other wife, a notable fact given the customs of the time, and he would speak of her with tenderness for the rest of his life, even many years after her passing, to the point that it was said he never forgot her kindness or her sacrifices on his behalf.

Their Children

Khadijah bore Muhammad several children. Their sons, Al-Qasim and Abdullah, both died in infancy, sorrows that added to the long list of losses in his life. Their daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah, survived into adulthood, and it was through Fatimah in particular, who married Ali ibn Abi Talib, that the Prophet's direct descendants would continue. Khadijah is remembered as a devoted mother as well as wife, raising her children within a household grounded in the honesty and warmth that defined her husband's character, even in the years before prophethood arrived to transform their lives entirely.

The First to Believe

Though this chapter of the Sira precedes the events of revelation, it is impossible to understand what came after without appreciating the foundation Khadijah provided. It was to her that a shaken Muhammad would run home after the terrifying first encounter with the Angel Jibril in the Cave of Hira, and it was her calm reassurance and, later, the confirmation of her learned cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, that steadied him in the earliest, most disorienting moments of prophethood. Their marriage, formed years earlier in mutual respect and trust, had quietly prepared the emotional bedrock upon which the entire mission of Islam would soon be built.

Long before she became the first believer in his message, Khadijah had already become the first to believe in the man himself.

Sira reports can differ in chronology and detail. Read narrative claims with the cited Quranic passage and the site's editorial methodology in view.