Khadijah bint Khuwaylid

Khadijah was a wealthy merchant of Quraysh, known before Islam as at-Tahirah — "the pure." Impressed by the honesty of the young Muhammad ﷺ whom she had engaged to trade on her behalf, she proposed marriage; he was twenty-five, she was the elder. For the next quarter-century she was his only wife.

When revelation first descended upon him in Hira and he came home trembling — "cover me, cover me" — it was Khadijah who wrapped him, steadied him, and answered with the words the sirah has never forgotten: Allah would never disgrace him, for he kept ties of kinship, carried the weak, earned for the destitute, honoured guests, and helped in every rightful cause. She then took him to her learned cousin Waraqah, who confirmed the visitation was the same brought to Musa.

She was the first person — before any man, woman, or child — to accept Islam, and her wealth and standing shielded the Muslims through the cruellest Makkan years, above all the boycott of Banu Hashim, during which her fortune was spent down to nothing.

She died around 619 CE, three years before the Hijrah, in the same period as the Prophet’s ﷺ uncle Abu Talib — a year of such loss the sirah calls it the Year of Sorrow. He never stopped mentioning her; Aisha said she was never jealous of any wife as she was of Khadijah’s memory.

Islam’s survival through its first decade is inseparable from Khadijah: the first believer, the Prophet’s ﷺ refuge on the day of revelation itself, the mother of Fatimah (and through her, of the Prophet’s ﷺ entire line), and the financier of the community when no one else would stand with it. The Prophet ﷺ said: “The best of its women is Maryam bint Imran, and the best of its women is Khadijah” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3432); in another narration he counted her — with Maryam, Asiyah, and Fatimah — among the four best women of the worlds (Musnad Ahmad 2668, graded sahih).