How old is Khadijah bint Khuwaylid?

Answer 1

Khadija married Muhammad in July 595. Early traditions give several versions of her age at that time: that she was 25, 28, 30, 35, 40, 44, 45 or 46 (see Ibn Kathir). Obviously they can't all be correct.

Some of the errors arise because historians confused the date of her marriage with the date of the rebuilding of the Kaaba, which was ten years later.

Important historians like Tabari and Ibn Saad say that she was 40. This is according to the word of her nephew, Hakim ibn Hizam, who said she was two years older than himself. The historians assume that her own nephew should have known the facts, and most modern histories repeat "age 40" as a certain historical fact. But in fact there are several problems with this theory.

1. Khadija bore Muhammad six children over a period of ten years. That would make her 50 when she gave birth to Fatima. This is just possible but it isn't very likely.

2a. Not very much is known about Hakim. The historians didn't like to contradict a Muslim "of good character", but we don't really know whether he was of good character or not.

2b. It's practically certain that he lied about his own age, for he claimed that he was 120. He and his friend Huwaytib ibn Abduluzza both claimed that they had been 60 years old in 630 and had lived another 60 years since - yet they both died in 674 (Tabari).

2c. When Hakim was talking about Khadija's age, he said that she was 15 and "prayer was already unlawful to her" when Muhammad was born. When someone pointed out that Muslim prayer and its regulations did not exist before Muhammad was born, Hakim said he had only been using a figure of speech to indicate that she was old enough to menstruate (Ibn Saad). (Muslim women do not attend corporate prayer on days when they are menstruating.) But this anachronism (talking about Muslim prayer as if it were a current event over forty years before it existed) is exactly the sort of mistake that people make when they are inventing a story instead of remembering a real event.

Why would Hakim and Huwaytib have lied about their ages? It was presumably to make themselves seem important by boasting that they were older than everyone else.

3. Among Ibn Kathir's alternative possibilities, the great hadith-master Abdullah ibn Abbas says that Khadija married Muhammad when she was 28. He never knew Khadija personally, which is why historians preferred Hakim's word to Abdullah's. But Abdullah spent a great deal of time with Muhammad (who was his first cousin), and both his parents had known Khadija well, so there was no reason why he couldn't have known her age. He had a very good memory and he was greatly admired for the amount of detailed information he could recite. In addition, Abdullah had no known reason to give a wrong story about Khadija's age, for nothing else he said depended on Khadija's being one age or another. So if he hadn't known an unimportant detail like Khadija's age, he would probably just have said he didn't know. The great Jewish scholar Meir Kister believed that Abdullah ibn Abbas's version was the correct one; but unfortunately he did not give the reasons for this conclusion.

In conclusion, we cannot be certain of Khadija's age. But if it is correct that she married Muhammad when she was 28 by the lunar calendar, then she was born about the year 568. At her death in April 620 she would have been about 52.

If Khadija was only three years older than Muhammad, this throws interesting light on various theories that people have held over why he married her. It has been said that he was looking for a mother-substitute, or that he married her for her character instead of for physical attraction, or that he only wanted her for her money. But if Khadija was an attractive woman who was close to Muhammad's own age, we have to consider the possibility that they just fell in love in the ordinary way. That theory fits quite well with everything else that is known about their married life.

Answer 2

At the time of the marriage, the Prophet was twenty-five years old, while Khadijah was forty years old. She died after 15 years marriage (at age 55 years). Within these 15 years they lived happily together, and Khadijah bore several children. Their first child, a son whom they named Qasim, died when he was only two years old. Two more sons, called Tayyib and Tahir, were also born, but they too died in their infancy. However, Muhammad and Khadijah also had four daughters who survived: Zaynab, Ruqayya, Umm Kulthum and Fatima.