The Marriage to Khadijah
storyThe story of the marriage to Khadijah رضي الله عنها begins with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as a young shepherd of about twenty-three or twenty-four. He was hired, along with another young man whose name has not been preserved, to graze the flock of Khadijah’s older sister. When the job was done and the time came to collect wages, the young man who had worked alongside him said: “Come, let us go and ask our wages from Khadijah’s sister.”
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم replied: “Why don’t you go on my behalf? I am too shy to go.” Because she was a woman, his ḥaya’, his innate modesty, prevented him from going to her door and asking for money. So his companion went and asked for both wages. Khadijah, who was at her sister’s house at that moment, asked: “Where is Muḥammad? He too has earned his share.” The man explained that he had been too shy to come. At that, Khadijah’s older sister began to praise him: she said she had never seen any man more shy, more noble, more honorable, and more chaste in his dealings with women. She kept on praising him.
The narrator of this report says: that was the first time Khadijah heard his name spoken in such a manner. And just as in any human heart, something entered hers.
Khadijah had been married twice. Her second husband was a wealthy merchant who died without siblings and without children; and so, contrary to the usual Ṣāhiliyyah practice by which women did not inherit, she inherited his estate. She then invested it as a businesswoman, sending goods to Syria, then to Yemen, then to Makkah, the two great trade routes of the Arabs. But she could not travel herself; she had to hire men to manage the caravans, and she hired them not for a fixed wage but on muḍārabah (مُضَارَبَة), a share of the profit: typically thirty percent to the agent, seventy to the investor. Yet every agent she sent would steal, lie, or give a false account, and she never realized the profit she deserved.
She was also single, and had closed that door. Many nobles of Quraysh had proposed to her, attracted by her lineage (she was of pure Qurashi stock) and by her wealth, which under Jāhilī law would have passed to a husband on marriage. She had turned them all down, feeling that none would treat her as she deserved.
So when she decided to send her caravan to Bosrā in Syria, the great marketplace at the edge of the Roman Empire, south of Damascus, where Arab, Nabataean, and Egyptian merchants all converged, she chose the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. She overlooked his total lack of business experience, he had been a shepherd, never a merchant, because she wanted someone honest. And she gave him a uniquely generous share: half of all profits, keeping half herself. She sent with him her servant Maysara to accompany the caravan.
❧Muḍārabah: the contract behind the caravan
The arrangement Khadījah used was not a wage but a muḍārabah (مُضَارَبَة), in the Ḥijāz also called qirāḍ (قِرَاض), the profit-sharing partnership that would become one of the foundational contracts of Islamic commerce. Its name comes from the root ض ر ب (ḍ-r-b): the expression ḍaraba fī al-arḍ (ضَرَبَ فِي الْأَرْضِ) means “to strike out through the land,” that is, to travel for trade, the very image the Qurʾān uses of merchants: “wa-ākharūna yaḍribūna fī al-arḍi yabtaghūna min faḍli-llāh” (وَآخَرُونَ يَضْرِبُونَ فِي الْأَرْضِ يَبْتَغُونَ مِنْ فَضْلِ اللَّهِ, “and others who journey through the land seeking the bounty of Allah,” al-Muzzammil 73:20). The muḍārib (مُضَارِب) is the one who “strikes out”, the working, travelling merchant.
In structure it joins two parties: the rabb al-māl (رَبُّ الْمَالِ), the owner of the capital, here Khadījah, and the muḍārib, who contributes only his labour, skill, and travel, here the Prophet ﷺ. They agree in advance on how the profit will be split (her earlier agents took thirty percent to her seventy; the Prophet ﷺ was given a full half). Any financial loss falls on the capital-provider alone, the agent losing only his effort, unless the loss came through the agent’s own dishonesty or negligence. This is precisely why Khadījah, cheated by agent after agent, prized an honest one so highly: a muḍārabah lives or dies on the trustworthiness (amānah) of the muḍārib, and she had found in al-Amīn, “the Trustworthy”, the one man who would neither steal nor lie, and whose caravan came back many times the usual profit.
The contract predates Islam and was affirmed and regulated by it, the Prophet ﷺ practised it himself before revelation and never forbade it. Its lasting importance is economic: because muḍārabah shares real risk and real reward rather than charging fixed interest (ribā), it stands as the classical Islamic alternative to interest-based lending, and it remains the backbone of modern Islamic finance, investment and savings accounts, fund management, and ṣukūk are all structured on the muḍārabah model.
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم first went to his uncle Abu Ṭālib and asked his opinion. Even though he was a grown man and needed no permission, he sought his uncle’s counsel out of respect. Abu Ṭālib said: “Khadijah is the wealthiest woman of Makkah, and this opportunity is far better than what you are doing now. Accept it.” And so he did.
The caravan went to Bosrā and returned. Maysara reported to Khadijah everything he had witnessed: the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم perfect honesty, his care and concern for the goods and for everyone with him. And the profit, it was ʿadʿaf, many times over what any previous agent had produced. SubhanAllah, whatever the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم touched was blessed; just as when he entered the household of Ḥalīmah as a nursing infant, her animals gave more, her she-goat gave milk, everything increased, so too here.
All of this deepened what Khadijah felt. She was a sensible and intelligent woman, and she understood that when a man is genuinely elegant and modest in his dealings with a woman, that same character runs through everything else he does. She made up her mind.
She told her close friend, an elderly woman named Nafīsa, of her feelings. Nafīsa said: “Leave it to me.” She went to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and asked: “O Muḥammad, why don’t you get married?” He smiled and said: “And who would marry me? I am the orphan, the poor man of the Quraysh.” Nafīsa said: “What if Khadijah wanted to marry you?” The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم went quiet, then said: “Why would she want me?” He did not say he was not interested, only that he was amazed she would want someone like him. Nafīsa took the message back to Khadijah.
According to Ibn Isḥāq, the marriage took place in the month of Ṣafar, three months after the Prophet’s return from Bosrā. There is a weak, poorly supported version of this story that claims Khadijah’s father was alive, was made drunk, and was tricked into approving the match; this account contradicts more reliable reports (Ibn Ḥajar and others clarify that her father had already died before this proposal), and carries the kind of narrative confusion that sometimes crept into early reports when different stories were mixed together. The stronger and more widely attested version is that her uncle ʿAmr ibn Asād served as her wali, her marriage guardian, as was proper.
Abu Ṭālib came with the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and delivered the sermon (khuṭbah) of proposal, praising Allah, speaking of the lineage of Quraysh as descendants of Ibrāhīm and Ismāʿeīl, and then saying: “My nephew is without comparison among the young men of Makkah in his manners, his nobility, and his lineage. He proposes to your noble lady Khadijah with a mahr of twelve ʿuqiyyah wa niṣṣan”, twelve nuggets of silver with a half, a sum that was modest but respectful. ʿAmr ibn Asād stood and said: “This is a young man who cannot be refused. We accept.”
Khadijah was a woman who had been married twice before. From her first marriage she had a son named Ḥalah, who eventually accepted Islam and lived in the Prophet’s صلى اللى عليه وسلم company. She was older than the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, twice widowed, with a child, and yet he was faithful to her alone for the rest of her life. He never took another wife while she lived. This alone answers those who charged him with worldly desires.
They were married for twenty-five years. Khadijah was the first to believe in him when the revelation came. She was the one who comforted him when he came trembling from the Cave of Ḥirāʾ, “Cover me! Cover me!”, and who took him to Waraqah ibn Nawfal to understand what had happened to him. Jibrīl would enter no other wife’s house; he came only into Khadijah’s household. And one day in Makkah, Jibrīl told the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم: “Here is Khadijah; Allah sends His salām upon her, and Jibrīl sends his salām upon her, and she has been given glad tidings of a house in Paradise where there will be no noise and no struggle.” Khadijah responded: “Innallāha Huwaʿs-Salām”, “Verily Allah Himself is Peace”, and then sent salām back upon Jibrīl and upon the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. She knew that you do not send salām “back” to Allah; Allah is as-Salām itself. Her response showed the depth of her theological understanding.
After Khadijah passed away, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم would send gifts of meat, even years later in Madīnah, to the friends she used to socialize with, because of how much he thought of her. When Khadijah’s older sister once came to Madīnah, the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم entire demeanor changed as she approached; he recognized his wife in her footstep, and when she asked permission to enter, those present could see the emotion on his face as all the memories of Khadijah came back.
ʿAisha, the Prophet’s صلى الله عليه وسلم beloved later wife, said: “I was never more jealous of any woman than I was of Khadijah, even though I never saw her.” Once, when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم spoke of Khadijah yet again, ʿAisha said words she should not have said, calling her “an old toothless woman” whom Allah had replaced with better. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was moved, and replied: “Lā wallāhi. No by Allah, Allah did not give me better than her. She believed in me when everyone rejected me. She gave me of her wealth when everyone had abandoned me. She supported me when the community gave me the cold shoulder. And Allah blessed me with children only through her.”