Before there was a single other Muslim on earth, there was Khadijah bint Khuwaylid — a successful businesswoman of Mecca who believed a trembling man's account of an angel before anyone else did, and who spent the rest of her life and fortune making sure he was never alone in his mission.
A merchant in her own right
Khadijah was born into the Quraysh tribe of Mecca and built, through her own ability, one of the city's most successful trading businesses, hiring agents to run caravans of goods to Syria and elsewhere. She had been married and widowed before, and by the standards of her time and place she was a rare figure: a financially independent woman of high standing who answered to no husband.346 When she needed a trustworthy agent to lead a caravan to Syria, she hired a young man from a respected but modest branch of Quraysh who had already earned a reputation across Mecca for his honesty: Muhammad ibn Abdullah, later the Prophet ﷺ. The caravan returned with unusually good profit, and Khadijah — about fifteen years his senior — was impressed enough by his character that she sent a proposal of marriage to him, an unusual reversal of custom that Meccan society nonetheless accepted given her standing. He accepted, and they married when he was about twenty-five.
3 4 6The first believer
Years later, when the Prophet ﷺ returned from the cave of Hira shaking with fear after his first encounter with the angel Jibril, not yet understanding what had happened to him, it was Khadijah who steadied him. The hadith records her response:
Khadijah said, "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 31
She then took him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian familiar with earlier scripture, who recognized the description as matching the revelation given to Moses, peace be upon him, and told the Prophet ﷺ that he had been chosen as a prophet to his people.1 Before Waraqah's confirmation, before any argument or evidence, Khadijah had already believed him — making her, in the unanimous memory of Islamic tradition, the very first person to accept Islam.345
The boycott years
As the Prophet's ﷺ message drew more hostility from Mecca's leading clans, the opposition eventually hardened into a formal boycott: the clan of Banu Hashim, Muslim and non-Muslim members alike, was cut off from trade and marriage with the rest of Quraysh and confined to a narrow quarter of the city for several years. Khadijah's wealth, built over a lifetime of successful trade, was drawn down substantially to help feed and support the boycotted clan through the worst of the hardship. By the time the boycott was lifted, her once-considerable fortune was largely spent.346 Through all of it — the ridicule the Prophet ﷺ faced in Mecca's streets, the loss of status, the years of privation — Khadijah remained his first source of comfort and his most consistent supporter. For the fuller picture of how the early Muslim community absorbed persecution before the migration to Medina, see The Life of the Prophet ﷺ.
Greeted by Jibril
Among the honors Khadijah received in her lifetime was a direct greeting relayed from her Lord. Abu Hurairah narrated:
Gabriel came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "O Allah's Messenger, this is Khadijah 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 house made of reed [qasab] in Paradise wherein there will be neither any noise nor any fatigue."
— Sahih al-Bukhari 38202
The Prophet ﷺ himself spoke of Khadijah with lasting devotion for the rest of his life, and even after her death he continued to honor her memory, sending gifts to her friends and speaking warmly of her whenever she was recalled.46
The Year of Sorrow
Khadijah died in Mecca, traditionally dated to around 619-620 CE, the same year as the death of Abu Talib, the Prophet's ﷺ uncle who had shielded him from the worst of Quraysh's hostility. Losing his wife's steady support and his uncle's clan protection within months of each other was such a blow that the year is remembered in Islamic history as 'Aam al-Huzn, the Year of Sorrow. It was only after this period, once the door to further growth in Mecca seemed closed, that the path toward the migration to Medina began to open.345 The Prophet ﷺ did not remarry during the roughly twenty-five years of his marriage to Khadijah, and their children together included Fatimah, whose own life is told in Fatimah bint Muhammad.
A model still cited today
Khadijah's life is often invoked in response to the claim that Islam confines women to the home: a financially independent businesswoman who initiated her own marriage proposal and never stopped working or spending her wealth as she judged best, she remains one of the most cited examples that Islamic teaching does not require women's economic dependence. See Does Islam Oppress Women? for the fuller discussion of what Islamic sources actually say about women's rights to property, work, and independent contracts.
In short
Khadijah bint Khuwaylid was the Prophet's ﷺ first believer, his first source of comfort, and for many years his only means of support against a hostile city. Her example — as a merchant, a wife, and the mother of Fatimah — opens the story that continues in Aisha bint Abi Bakr and Fatimah bint Muhammad.