2 of 5 · c. 595 CE · fifteen years before the revelation · Makkah
Khadijah bint Khuwaylid رضي الله عنها
She Chose Him
After the young Muhammad ﷺ returned from trading her goods in Syria, Khadijah did something unusual and brave: she made the first move. Through her friend Nafisah bint Munyah she let him know that she would welcome a proposal. He had little wealth; she had much. What she was choosing was his character.
He agreed, and the two families met. His uncle Abu Talib spoke for him, praising the young man's worth over any wealth, and her family gave her in marriage. He was about twenty-five. The well-known report puts her at forty, though other reports make her younger.
So began a marriage of some twenty-five years. For as long as she lived, he took no other wife.
She looked past wealth and status to the one thing that lasts in a spouse: character.
When you choose the people closest to you, what do you actually weigh most?
- Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah al-NabawiyyahHistorical report
- Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-KubraHistorical report
- Sahih Muslim 2436 Sahih · in the two Sahihs
What the hadith grades mean
- Sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of trustworthy, precise narrators, free of hidden flaws or contradiction. It is acted upon.
- Hasan (good): like sahih, but a narrator's precision is slightly lighter. It is also accepted and acted upon. "Hasan sahih" means it reaches sahih by its routes.
- Da'if (weak): a break in the chain or a narrator who is not reliable enough. It is not used to establish beliefs or rulings.
- Very weak (munkar, matruk): a seriously flawed chain or a narrator accused of lying. It is not relied on at all.
- Mawdu' (fabricated): falsely attributed to the Prophet ﷺ. It may not be narrated as his words except to warn against it.
- The two Sahihs: every hadith with a full chain in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is accepted as sahih by the scholars of hadith.
- Historical report: biographies and histories (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari) record events with chains that are often incomplete. They are used for the story, not for rulings.
- Hadith scholars grade a narration; the four madhhabs do not. Where a hadith carries a ruling, the page shows which schools act on it.
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