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Khadija the Great

Khadija bint Khuwaylid (خديجة بنت خويلد‎) was Muhammad’s first wife and she was his only wife as long as she lived.^[1] She is known to Muslims as al-Kubra (“the Great”)^[2] and al-Tahira (“the Pure”).^[3] Twelve of Muhammad’s wives are credited with the title Umm al-Muminun (“Mother of the Faithful”),^[4] but Khadija occupies a unique position as the Mother of Islam itself.

Khadija’s Background

Khadija was born in Mecca, a member of the dominant Quraysh tribe. Her grandfather Asad, chief of her clan, was a grandson of Qusayy ibn Kilab, Keeper of the Ka’aba and despot over Mecca.^[5] This Qusayy had also been a great-great-great-grandfather of Muhammad.^[6] Her mother, Fatima bint Za’ida, was from another Quraysh clan, the Amir ibn Luayy.^[7] The name Khadija means “premature”,^[8] suggesting the circumstances of her birth.

The traditions about Khadija’s early life are scanty and often contradictory. It is generally accepted that she was born “fifteen years before the Elephant” and that she was 65 (lunar) years old when she died,^[9] indicating a birthdate between July 556 and July 557. However, the source of this tradition is Khadija’s nephew, Hakim ibn Hizam,^[10] who was one of the many early Muslims who claimed his own age to be 120.^[11] By contrast, Abdullah ibn Abbas, the cousin who lived at Muhammad’s side through the final years in Medina,^[12] stated that “on the day Khadija married Allah’s Messenger, she was 28 years old.”^[13] If this is correct, she was born between March 568 and March 569. Variant traditions claim other years.^[14] Whatever her precise date of birth, she was still of childbearing age as late as 605.

Khadija’s personality is described as “determined and intelligent”.^[15] Although it is not explicitly stated that her father was a merchant, “the Quraysh were a people given to commerce,”^[16] so Khadija probably spent her childhood sitting in the bazaars learning to drive bargains. Her known siblings were two brothers, Hizam^[17] and Al-Awwam,^[18] two sisters, Ruqayqa^[19] and Hala,^[20] and a paternal half-brother, Nawfal.^[21] At one stage, there was talk of marrying Khadija off to her cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, but this never happened.^[22]

Khadija and her Husbands

Khadija’s first husband was Atiq ibn A’idh (or Abid), a junior member of the Makhzum clan.^[23] The Makhzumites had grown wealthy on trade, and their generosity had won them the loyalty of their neighbours. They were now serious contenders for the leadership of the city.^[24] This match was therefore a step up the social scale for Khadija, though perhaps a small step if her family also had money. Atiq and Khadija had two children, suggesting – since Khadija produced her children within two-year intervals^[25] – that the marriage lasted between two and four years. From their daughter, Hind, Khadija derived her kunya Umm Hind.^[26] Their son, Abdullah,^[27] died in infancy.^[28] Most sources state that Atiq died,^[29] although there is a variant tradition that the marriage ended in divorce.^[30]

Khadija then married a Bedouin nobleman, Malik ibn An-Nabbash, who was from the Tamim tribe. In the way of nomads who aspired to an urban lifestyle, Malik and his two brothers had immigrated to Mecca and formed an alliance with the Abduldar clan of the Quraysh.^[31] Given their highborn origins, the Tamim brothers would have interacted with their new allies as equals rather than as vassals. To complete their Meccan citizenship, they sought Quraysh wives, to whom they could offer rank, connections and probably also money. It is interesting that Malik chose Khadija, for the Asad clan was the traditional rival of Abduldar.^[32] Their marriage produced three children, suggesting that it lasted between four and six years. From their first son, Hala, Malik took his kunya Abu Hala.^[33] Their second son was, confusingly, also named Hind.^[34] Their daughter, Zaynab,^[35] probably died young, as no more is heard about her, and Khadija later mentioned that she had borne each of her first two husbands a child who had died in infancy.^[36]

In contradiction to all this, some sources state that Khadija married Abu Hala first and Atiq second.^[37] However, a kunya was usually taken from a firstborn child, indicating that Umm Hind and Abu Hala did not share the same firstborn.

It is not known when or how Abu Hala died, but the Sacrilegious War against the Qays-Aylan tribe dominated the years 591–594.^[38] Khadija’s brother Hizam was killed in the second round of the conflict,^[39] and their father Khuwaylid, who must have been some sixty years old, was a commander on the field.^[40] After Abu Hala’s death, several prominent citizens proposed marriage to the widowed Khadija, some of them investing great sums of money into their courtship, but her father vetoed every match.^[41]

Khadija’s Business

The reason why Khadija attracted so many suitors was that she was the richest woman in Mecca. By the time Abu Hala died, she had become “a merchant woman of dignity and wealth. She used to hire men to carry merchandise outside the country.”^[42] While the legends that “half the trade in Mecca” belonged to Khadija^[43] are doubtless exaggerated, she may well have been the wealthiest single trader. The traditions do not state in what commodity she dealt, but among the exports of Mecca are mentioned leather, wool, perfume, silver, cheese and dried raisins.^[44] Nor is it known how she originally acquired her business. Perhaps her father helped to set her up, but this opens the question of why Khadija became more prosperous than any of her siblings. If she had a backer not available to them, it was probably one or both of her husbands. Or perhaps the business flourished because of Khadija’s personal talents and efforts.

Muslim apologists sometimes point to Khadija’s independence and success as an example of the great opportunities that Islam grants to women. Typical claims are:

This is illogical, since Khadija’s career was established before Islam existed. What it really demonstrates is the opportunities that pre-Islamic Arabs (sometimes) granted to women, who not only mingled freely with men in the market-place but were also respected for doing so. Most merchants were men, but among the women were the very pagan Hind bint Utba^[45] and the perfumer Asma bint Mukharriba.^[46][47] After Khadija died, Muslim women were ordered to stay at home and wear veils,^[48] and it became impossible for an adherent Muslim woman to conduct any such enterprise. Khadija had no way of knowing that within a decade of her death, her lifestyle would be forbidden to her spiritual descendants.

In the spring of 595, Khadija required a new agent to accompany her camels to Syria. Her brother’s wife’s brother, Abu Talib ibn Abdulmuttalib,^[49] recommended the services of his ward, a nephew whom he could no longer afford to keep. Hearing that the young man was honest and reliable, Khadija agreed to hire him for a higher commission than she usually paid.^[50] His name was Muhammad.^[51]

Two months later Muhammad returned to Mecca with merchandise worth nearly double what Khadija had expected.^[52] Goods commonly imported from Syria included grain, oil, wine, weapons, cotton and linen.^[53] As Khadija worked on a profit-share basis,^[54] she doubled Muhammad’s commission.^[55] It is said that Khadija later dispatched him on a second trip, this time to Tihama^[56] in Yemen to import frankincense, myrrh and fine textiles.^[57] It is not clear whether Khadija took the unusual step of sending her agent southwards in the heat of summer^[58] in order to import a near-monopoly; or whether this second venture occurred during a subsequent winter, after Muhammad and Khadija were already married, and the detail that she “employed” him is an error; or whether the whole timeline has been confused, and these events occurred over a longer timespan than is usually assumed. What is certain is that by the summer of 595, Khadija had decided to marry her agent.^[59]

Why Muhammad Married Khadija

Khadija sent as her intermediary Nafisa bint Umayya, a half-negro freedwoman from Abu Hala’s tribe.^[60] Nafisa approached Muhammad at the bazaar and asked why he had never married. He replied that he could not afford to support a family. “But if money were no obstacle,” Nafisa persisted, “would you be willing to marry a lady of wealth, rank and beauty?” Muhammad asked which lady of that description would be willing to take him, and Nafisa named Khadija. Muhammad instantly expressed his willingness.^[61] When Khadija next sent for Muhammad, it was to make a formal proposal. She spoke of how his noble ancestry, good reputation and personal honesty rendered him eligible, and offered herself as his wife.^[62]

When Muhammad told Nafisa that he had always wanted to marry but could not afford it, he was speaking directly from his personal experience. He had hoped to marry his cousin Fakhita, but Abu Talib had prevented it by giving her to a wealthy man and telling Muhammad that the family needed to marry money.^[63] So Muhammad was looking for a wife and was in a frame of mind to consider any reasonable offer. Khadija’s offer, of course, was beyond reasonable. She was the Arab equivalent of a multi-millionaire, and her patronage was the most extraordinary luck for Muhammad.

Muslim commentators have stressed how Khadija was a “much older” woman and therefore Muhammad must have been noble and high-minded to marry her for her character rather than her physical charms.

It would be difficult, however, to prove that Muhammad was attracted only to Khadija’s character and not to her money. While she was to prove both loyal and sympathetic,^[64] it is not clear that Muhammad had had the opportunity to assess these character-qualities in advance. It is certain that he had had the opportunity to assess her wealth.

Nor is there any reason to assume that Khadija was physically unattractive. If the report of Abdullah ibn Abbas is correct, she was a mere three years older than Muhammad, which hardly qualifies as an age-difference. While a modern hagiography that describes her as “beautiful, tall and light-skinned”^[65] does not cite early sources, the servant Nafisa had also mentioned that she was “beautiful”.^[66] Even if Nafisa was exaggerating (the word “beautiful” in this context usually means “normal-looking” as opposed to deformed or ugly), she achieved no purpose in telling an outright lie to a man who already knew what Khadija looked like.

Camels and Swords at the Wedding

Khadija asked for a dower of 20 camels.^[67] Twenty camels would have been worth about £8,000,^[68] which was four times the dower that Muhammad gave to any of his subsequent wives.^[69] This suggests that Khadija was “worth four women” to him, i.e. that it was part of their marriage contract that he would not take another wife in her lifetime. A poor man like Muhammad would have had some trouble amassing such a hefty gift, even if he returned all the beasts that Khadija had personally given him (she had paid his commissions in camels).^[70] His good fortune in attracting the wealthiest woman in Mecca must have delighted the investment-seeking Abu Talib, and we can only assume that the family combined resources to raise the dower.

Marriage required the consent of the bride’s guardian, and Khadija’s father had refused her previous suitors. She therefore plotted to secure his permission through trickery. She plied the old man with wine until he was drunk. Then she slaughtered a cow, covered his shoulders with a new striped robe and sprinkled him with perfume, whereupon Muhammad and his uncles entered the house. Khadija extracted the legally binding words from her father while he was too inebriated to know what he was saying. As the day wore on and the wedding party was in full swing, Khuwaylid recovered his sobriety enough to ask, “What is this meat, this robe and this perfume?” Khadija replied, “You have given me in marriage to Muhammad ibn Abdullah.” The old man was as furious as his daughter had expected, protesting that he had never consented to any such thing and even unsheathing his sword. Muhammad’s kin also brandished weapons before everyone realised that the matter was not worth actual bloodshed. It was too late. Muhammad was Khadija’s husband.^[71]

Although the Muslim historian Waqidi denied this embarrassing story (even while reporting it), the British historian Muir points out that nobody had any reason to fabricate it. The tradition is from two independent sources, both of whom were biased in Muhammad’s favour and neither of whom had any reason to disparage Khadija’s father or his clan. Two further independent sources, without mentioning the drunken party, state that it was Khuwaylid who married Khadija to Muhammad. Although Waqidi claims that it was Khadija’s uncle who gave her away because her father had died before the Sacrilegious War (591-594), his pupil Ibn Saad names Khuwaylid as a commander in that war. Muir therefore concludes that the tradition of Khuwaylid’s death “has been invented, to throw discredit on the story of his drunkenness.”^[72]

This story highlights the Arab assumption that marriage was a contract between bridegroom and father-in-law in which they transferred the guardianship of a woman. It was somewhat similar to buying a camel: the purchase required the consent of the vendor. Muhammad never questioned this view of marriage. It would have been highly convenient for him to perceive some of his marriages, including the one to Khadija, as purely a contract between husband and wife. Yet there is no evidence that this concept ever occurred to him, even after he declared himself the final prophet who was wise for all time and had authority to change all the rules. To the end of his life, he was particular about meeting the legal requirement to contract with a guardian;^[73] he never questioned that every woman belonged to some man. Khadija, in outwitting the system that worked against her, showed herself a more creative thinker than her bridegroom.

This story also reveals how Khadija and Muhammad understood consent. It did not need to be “free” or “informed”; any type of consent was legally binding. This theme was to recur in Muhammad’s life. He was to extract consent at sword-point,^[74] under duress,^[75] from an immature or unsound mind,^[76] by withholding essential information,^[77] by offering a false dichotomy between two bad alternatives,^[78] by exploiting spiritual beliefs,^[79] through bribery^[80] or by making promises that he intended to break.^[81] Yet he never suggested there was any kind of ethical problem in extracting consent in whatever manner might succeed; it was the one who consented to Muhammad, no matter how, who was morally obliged to stand by his word.

Khadija and Muhammad

Muhammad and Khadija were married for 25 years. Modern biographies of Khadija sometimes include such statements as:

These creative interpretations do not accord with early records that Muhammad went into partnership with a Makhzumite, Qays ibn Saayib, and sold merchandise in his shop.^[82] Since Muhammad was not producing anything by means of a craft, he could only have sold items in Mecca if he had imported them from elsewhere; and if he could pay for imports, he must have been exporting at a profit. In other words, Khadija’s business continued after their marriage exactly as it had beforehand.

This circumstance explains a great deal about Muhammad’s relationship with Khadija. His assertion that “Khadija spent her wealth for me”^[83] indicates his keen awareness that the money was hers and not his. However important his managerial position in the family firm, and however generously Khadija shared her wealth, she remained in control of her own money. Muhammad was effectively his wife’s employee. He was in no position to displease her, for he would have lost everything if he had dared to stray. Therefore he was not only faithful to Khadija but he also allowed her to make all their major decisions.^[84] He was neither so faithful nor so obliging to any of his subsequent wives. In other words, Muhammad made the best husband to the only one of his wives who was able to dictate the terms of their relationship.

It should not be assumed that Muhammad’s fidelity to Khadija caused him any particular hardship. She was equally faithful to him; and to judge by the regularity of her childbearing, his quickness to “draw close to her” for comfort,^[85] and her deliberate ploy of using sex to distract him from his troubles,^[86] she made herself very sexually available to him. Muhammad’s compliance with this convenient arrangement therefore reveals more about his common sense than about his virtue.

Khadija and her Children

Khadija brought three stepchildren into the marriage. It is striking how little is known about them. Later historians eagerly collected every possible scrap of information about Muhammad, down to how he cleaned his teeth^[87] and his attitude to a broken sandal.^[88] People who had lived under his roof should have been in high demand as eyewitnesses. Yet by the time the traditions were committed to writing, almost everything about his stepchildren had been forgotten. This implies that their lives did not intersect very much with those of the Muslim community.

Given that girls were often married off at puberty, it is possible that Muhammad never lived with his stepdaughter, Hind bint Atiq. She married a Makhzumite cousin, Sayfi ibn Umayya, to whom she bore at least one son, Muhammad ibn Sayfi. Though this Muhammad in his turn had descendants, it was said that none of the family survived; yet there is not a word about how they met their demise.^[89]

Khadija’s two sons lived with Muhammad for several years,^[90] and it is known that he liked to play with children.^[91] Of Hala it is recalled that “the Prophet arose and saw Hala in his room. He pressed him to his breast and uttered joyously: ‘Hala, Hala, Hala!’”^[92] If this was all anyone could remember, then nobody remembered very much. Hala was later killed in a street-brawl after he challenged a man who had insulted Muhammad.^[93] This was probably before Islam,^[94] as the Muslims never complained that their Prophet’s own stepson had been martyred for the cause.

The younger stepson, Hind, reminisced to his nephew, Hussayn ibn Ali:

Perhaps Hind’s affection for his stepfather was real; there is no evidence of any conflict between them. However, he gave this memoir – and much more in similar vein – long after the Islamic empire was established, when only good things could be spoken of Muhammad; and he did not include any specific events from his childhood. It is clear that Hind was never in Muhammad’s inner circle. His name does not appear in Ibn Hisham’s recension of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat, which lists all the early converts and describes, name by name, the doings of the emigrants in Medina. Nor does he appear in the ahadith covering that period. This suggests that he did not become a Muslim until the conquest of Mecca in 630, when Muhammad appointed him a governor in Yemen.^[95] The distant location of this post would have continued to keep him away from Muhammad’s intimate affairs. Hind died after 656 at Basra in Syria. “The market was cancelled that day, and there was no loading or unloading of ships.”^[96] He had at least one son, also named Hind; but it is again reported that no descendants survived to the time of writing.^[97]

Over the next ten years, Khadija bore six more children to Muhammad, attended at each birth by a midwife named Salma.^[98] From their first son, Qasim, Muhammad took the kunya Abu Qasim. There followed Zaynab, Abdullah, Ruqayya, Umm Kulthum and Fatima.^[99] Some historians name two additional sons, Al-Tahir (“the Pure”) or Al-Tayyib (“the Good”), but this is a misreading of Waqidi, who clearly states that these were both bynames given to Abdullah.^[100] Qasim and Abdullah both died in infancy; the girls all grew up.^[101] Fatima, who looked like Muhammad^[102] and was his favourite,^[103] is known to Muslims as az-Zahra (“the Dazzling”) and is regarded as a great saint.^[104]

In addition to their biological children, Muhammad and Khadija freed and adopted their slave-boy, Zayd ibn Haritha. Zayd was a small, flat-nosed black boy from the Udhra tribe. At a young age he was kidnapped by slave-traders and sold on the slave-market for 400 dirhams (about £2,000). He was purchased by Khadija’s nephew, who made her a present of him. When it became clear that Muhammad and Khadija would not have a son of their own, Muhammad took Zayd to the steps of the Ka’aba and declared before the assembled citizens that he took Zayd to be his heir.^[105] Although Muhammad kept Zayd close to him^[106] and conferred many small favours on him,^[107] when the two finally had a conflict of interest, Muhammad ignored Zayd’s rights and served only himself.^[108]

When a drought caused widespread hardship, Khadija presented Muhammad’s former foster mother with 40 sheep and a camel loaded with supplies.^[109] Muhammad volunteered to relieve his uncle Abu Talib by taking charge of one of the latter’s children. Thereafter Muhammad and Khadija brought up Muhammad’s young cousin Ali but they did not adopt him legally.^[110] Again, Muhammad always made a great show of affection towards Ali^[111] and even gave him Fatima as his wife.^[112] But the apparent success of this family arrangement has to be set against the reality that Ali grew up with a remarkable lack of empathy for other human beings.^[113]

Khadija and Polytheism

Modern hagiographers sometimes claim that the virtuous Khadija could never have been an idolater.

The early sources state otherwise. Khadija kept in her house an idol of Al-Uzza, a virgin star-goddess who was the patroness of Mecca and was supposed to be powerful in war.^{[114][115][116]} The family used to worship it just before bedtime.^[117] Muhammad sometimes sacrificed a white sheep to the goddess,^[118] and Khadija sacrificed two kids at the birth of each son and one at the birth of each daughter.^[119] When Muhammad complained of the Evil Eye, Khadija used to send for an elderly sorceress to charm it away.^[120] In 605 a severe flood damaged the Ka’aba, and the principal citizens of Mecca cooperated to rebuild it. Muhammad played a prominent part by arbitrating a dispute over who should have the honour of reinstalling the Black Stone.^[121] He gave no hint at that date that he had rejected any of the 360 gods whom he thus rehoused.

However, at an unspecified date and for an unknown reason, Muhammad and Khadija became disillusioned with their traditional religion. Muhammad and his son Zayd came under the influence of the outspoken monotheist Zayd ibn Amr al-Adiyi, who told them that he never ate meat offered to idols. Muhammad then decided that he too would never again sacrifice to Al-Uzza.^[122] Finally he confessed his unbelief to Khadija.

(Al-Lat was an earth-mother goddess who was revered in Ta’if.^[123]) Such a placid acceptance of her husband’s apostasy suggests that Khadija in her turn had already lost faith.

It is not stated what Muhammad and Khadija did with their idol; nor is it known which religious group, if any, they joined next. Monotheists who lived in or travelled through Mecca included Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and Sabians;^[124] but Zayd ibn Amr did not identify with any of these groups. However, there is little doubt that Muhammad and Khadija learned monotheistic ideas – Heaven, Hell, holy books, prophets – from Khadija’s cousins Waraqa ibn Nawfal and Uthman ibn Al-Huwayrith and from Muhammad’s cousin Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh.^[125] Khadija began to speak as if there was only one God,^[126] though why she referred to this deity as “Allah” is a more complex question than can be addressed here.

Khadija and Islam

Muhammad took to meditating in caves, often leaving his family for days at a time to focus on his devotions.^[127] In August 610, when he was 39 years old, these meditations were interrupted by some terrifying experience. It could have been an epileptic fit, a psychotic episode or an ordinary nightmare, but he staggered home to Khadija under the conviction that he had seen the angel Jibreel (Gabriel) and that he was demon-possessed.^[128] Khadija wrapped him in a blanket and consoled him.^[129] If she had soothed away his terrors as a bad dream, history might have been different. But at this point, Khadija’s religious convictions intervened. She did not believe that Muhammad could be possessed. “Allah would not treat you thus since he knows your good character. So rejoice and be glad! I have hope that you will be the prophet of this community.” Then she put on her cloak and took Muhammad to consult her cousin Waraqa.^[130]

Waraqa was a blind old man who had converted to Christianity and had studied an Arabic translation of the Gospels.^[131] According to Muhammad, Waraqa declared: “Holy, holy! This was the great Namus [law] that came to Moses. You are the prophet of these people. Should I live till you receive the Divine Message, I will support you strongly.”^[132] If Waraqa really said this, he did not keep his promise. Although he lived for at least another three years,^[133] people afterwards had to ask whether he had even been a Muslim.

In other words, Waraqa never made a public profession of Islam. Nobody except Muhammad and Khadija ever heard him endorse Muhammad as a prophet. Muhammad even admitted to Aisha that he had required prompting from Khadija before he could answer this straightforward question.

It was not Waraqa whose confidence moved Muhammad to discard his terrors and believe in his own mission, but Khadija herself.^[134] Within hours of deducing that her husband was a prophet, she secured the conversion of her next-door neighbour.^[135] When he next announced that Jibreel was in the room, Khadija tested the visitor (whom she could not see) by standing in his supposed line of vision, stripping off her gown and enticing Muhammad to have sex with her. Muhammad then reported that Jibreel had departed, and Khadija declared that Jibreel’s modesty was a certain sign that he was an angel and not a demon.^[136]

Soon after this, Muhammad reported that Jibreel had stopped visiting him. Despite his initial terror of his strange experiences, he was now distraught by their absence.^[137] Several times he became so depressed that he considered committing suicide by throwing himself off a cliff. Although he returned home from each attempt saying that Jibreel had reappeared in time to prevent him,^[138] the angel did not remain long enough to give him any new prophecies. Eventually Khadija taunted him: “I think that your Lord must have come to hate you!”^[139] This goading, the only recorded incident in which her sympathy for her husband failed, suggests a profound disappointment with the possibility that Muhammad might not be a prophet after all. It was very soon afterwards that Muhammad reported a new prophecy: “Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, nor doth He hate thee...”^[140]

Muhammad never again mentioned being afraid of the angel. Thenceforth he reported regular visits from Jibreel, who brought new revelations from Allah.^[141] One of the earliest messages concerned the correct ritual for the five daily prayers. After this Muhammad was often to be seen in full public view, first abluting then standing face to the Ka’aba to pray, with Ali at his side and Khadija a pace behind them.^[142] Khadija, the First Lady of Mecca, accepted from the beginning of Islam that a woman’s place was behind the men. Their four daughters and Zayd were also among the earliest converts.^[143] After the conversion of Abu Bakr, of course, there was no turning back.^[144]

Khadija in the Persecution

After three years and some fifty converts,^[145] it was known throughout Mecca that Muhammad considered himself a prophet. Nobody really cared^[146] until the day when he gathered his relatives together for a dinner-party and invited them to forsake their idols and submit to Allah. But no mass-conversions followed;^[147] the Meccans doubted, questioned and ignored him. Discouraged, Muhammad confided his troubles to Khadija,^[148] who was quick to console him. The citizens of Mecca accused him of outright lying, and Khadija continued to reassure him that he was a prophet.^[149] Debates led to angry arguments and mockery, and Khadija disparaged their folly. Notwithstanding this concise summary of Khadija’s attitude, surprisingly few specifics are recorded. The exact words of her counter-mockery do not survive, and nor is it precisely described how she “helped him in his work.”^[150] There are very few ahadith about her everyday life with Muhammad or her involvement in community affairs, although there must have been multiple witnesses to both.

Muhammad kept preaching, and the public arguments led to fights in the streets. It was a Muslim who struck the first blow,^[151] but when Muhammad continued to mock the idols in the Ka’aba, the pagans began a systematic campaign of punishing Muslim slaves and teenagers.^[152] One of the worst offenders was Khadija’s brother Nawfal, whom the Muslims called “a satan of the Quraysh.” He once tied Abu Bakr to his kinsman Talha ibn Ubaydullah and left them helplessly roped together.^[153] His attitude raises interesting questions about Khadija’s relationship with her brother – especially as Nawfal’s own son was an early convert to Islam.^[154] However, while his spiteful prank no doubt caused Abu Bakr and Talha some inconvenience, if this was deemed the action of a “satan”, then the general harassment of freeborn adults was far from life-threatening. The majority of the freeborn Muslims fled to Abyssinia, where the Christian King extended his unqualified protection; but Muhammad and Khadija, being under the protection of Muhammad’s uncle Abu Talib, persevered in Mecca.^[155]

Muhammad warned his opponents of Hellfire, graphically describing how sinners would be “thrown headlong”^[156] into “a fierce blast of fire and boiling water, shades of black smoke,”^[157] to drink “a boiling fluid, and a fluid dark, murky, intensely cold,”^[158] allowing nothing to survive and nothing to escape, “darkening and changing the colour of man.”^[159] Khadija had to take her share of the warning.

Muhammad’s conclusion is interesting in the light of the fact that all the children in question had died before Islam. He did not explain why Khadija’s subsequent conversion was retrospectively effective to save some of her children but not all of them.

After the conversions of two famously violent citizens, Hamza ibn Abdulmuttalib^[160] and Umar ibn Al-Khattab,^[161] the ruling clans of Mecca declared a boycott against Muhammad’s clan, including its non-Muslims. Thenceforth no Meccan might trade, socialise or intermarry with the Hashimites.^[162] The clan inferred that they had been condemned to outlaw status and would not be protected against theft or violence. Fearing worse hostility to follow, in September 616 Abu Talib evacuated the Hashimites from Mecca proper. They camped out in a mountain gorge “formed by one of the defiles, or indentations of the mountain, where the projecting rocks of [Mount] Abu Cobeis pressed upon the eastern outskirts of Mecca. It was entered on the city side by a low gateway, through which a camel passed with difficulty. On all other sides it was detached from the town by cliffs and buildings.”^[163] Such a narrow entrance could be constantly guarded, leaving the Hashimites safe but effectively trapped.

“The Quraysh blocked food-grain and other necessaries.”^[164] For supplies the Hashimites had to depend on smuggler-friends who were willing and able to bypass the Meccans.^[165] For example, Hisham ibn Amr “used to bring a camel laden with food by night, and then when he had got it to the mouth of the alley, he took off its halter, gave it a whack on the side, and sent it into the alley to them. He would do the same thing another time, bringing clothes for them.”^[166] As the Hashimites had no way of earning money to pay for this food, they had to expend their savings. Over the next three years, Khadija exhausted all her wealth to support the community.^[167] Whether everyone else’s money also ran out, or whether the Quraysh became more efficient at intercepting the smugglers, “the severity of the blockade became so intense that the screams of their children could be heard from behind the mountain pass. Some of the Quraysh were happy at this, while others felt sorry. [The Hashimites] remained in the mountain pass for three years.”^[168]

Khadija and her Co-Wives

Muslims speak with pride of how Muhammad was faithful to Khadija. Typical remarks are:

In one sense this is true. For example, when the Quraysh chiefs wanted to end the boycott, they offered Muhammad “as many wives as he wanted in marriage,” together with wealth, political power and a competent exorcist, if only he would stop reviling their gods. Muhammad scorned this bribe.^[169] In this case, however, his loyalty to Khadija can scarcely be disentangled from his loyalty to his own prophetic office. He responded to Khadija’s support with a nepotistic revelation that the Virgin Mary had been the best woman of her generation while Khadija was the best woman of the present generation.^[170] He claimed that although there were many perfect men, there had only ever been only three perfect women: Asiya “wife of Pharaoh,” who had rescued the infant Moses; Mary the virgin mother of the Prophet Jesus; and Khadija. He later allowed that their daughter Fatima was also one of the four “best among the women of Paradise.”^[171] How his three elder daughters reacted to such open favouritism is not recorded. When Khadija once brought Muhammad a bowl of soup, she was granted a personal message from Jibreel (of which Aisha was later intensely jealous): “Give her Allah’s greeting and the good news that in Paradise she will have a palace built of a hollow pearl, where there will be no noise or fatigue.”^[172]

Yet despite this outward loyalty to Khadija, it was exactly at this period when Muhammad frankly admitted that he was thinking about other women. It was only after 614 that he introduced to his descriptions of Paradise the “modest houris” (virgins) with “lustrous eyes” and “swelling breasts” who reclined “like pearls or rubies” on “green cushions”.^[173] According to Muir, all of the Qur’anic descriptions of houris date to the last few years of Khadija’s life; after Muhammad moved to Medina, remarried to a younger woman, there were only two brief and tame references^[174] to “companions pure”.^[175] Muir might have miscalculated, as the most detailed reference to the divine virgins^[176] is sometimes dated to the Medina period,^[177] although the German historian Nöldeke assigned even this one to Khadija’s lifetime.^[178] Regardless of the exact date when Muhammad eventually shifted his focus, it is certain that the ageing Khadija knew about the houris.

Khadija’s Death

The boycott against the Hashim clan was lifted “in the tenth year” (between August 619 and August 620), and Muhammad’s clan returned to their houses in Mecca.^[179] By this time, Khadija was dying.^[180] Muhammad comforted her in her final illness with the reminder that she was going to her jewelled palace in Paradise – so she must convey his best wishes to her co-wives. When Khadija expressed surprise at the news that Muhammad already had deceased wives, he explained that Allah had wedded him in Paradise to Queen Asiya, to “Kulthum the sister of Moses” and to the Virgin Mary. The theme of having four wives appears to have been on his mind even in his last moments with Khadija. She responded with the conventional congratulation to a newlywed: “May the union be blessed.”^[181] Khadija died on 10 Ramadan “in the tenth year of prophethood, three years before the Hijra,” i.e., on 22 April 620, and was buried in Mount Hajun Cemetery near Mecca.^[182]

“The Messenger of Allah was so grieved about Khadija that people feared for him.”^[183] For the rest of his life, he spoke warmly and often of her^[184] and sometimes seemed overwhelmed by sorrow at her absence.^[185] He used to say: “Khadija believed in me when they doubted me; she financed me when they tried to starve me out; and she is the mother of my children. Allah himself nurtured love for her in my heart.”^[186]

Islam changed direction after Khadija’s death. Within seven weeks Muhammad had become a bigamist.^[187] At the same time he began negotiations for military alliances with foreign tribes,^[188] although it was to be another two years before he succeeded in declaring war on Mecca.^[189] Even the sections of the Qur’an that were composed at the end of Muhammad’s Meccan period, though narrative rather than legislative, read more like the flat prose of Medina than the poetry of Khadija’s lifetime.^[190] It is frequently said that “Islam arose by Ali’s sword and Khadija’s wealth.”^[191] It is clear that what Khadija contributed to the foundations of Islam was far more than money. It is doubtful that she intended or foresaw the enthusiasm with which later Muslims would resort to the sword.

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