AD 595

Khadija bint Khuwaylid

Muhammad marries Khadija in Mecca

The earliest surviving biography gives Muhammad’s age at the wedding — and says nothing about Khadija’s, despite the famous pairing of 40 and 25.

A conventional year, not a recorded one

Modern reference works conventionally place the marriage around 595, but no contemporary record supplies an exact year or day, and the surviving narratives were written or compiled generations later.

In the early Islamic biographical tradition preserved by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham, Khadija was a wealthy Meccan merchant who hired Muhammad to conduct a trading venture with her goods in Syria.

The same tradition says she subsequently expressed her desire to marry him, and that the marriage was arranged in Mecca.

The 40 is disputed

Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari give Muhammad’s age at marriage as 25.

The earliest surviving Ibn Ishaq narrative does not securely establish Khadija’s age. Ibn Sa’d and al-Baladhuri transmit 40, while other reports and one modern source-critical study argue for about 28.

Accounts also differ over Khadija’s prior marriages, and over which of Muhammad’s uncles — Abu Talib or Hamza — assisted with the proposal.

Employer first

The early account describes Khadija hiring men on profit-sharing terms, with Muhammad initially working as her compensated agent.

Calling the couple a “successful merchant partnership” projects a modern business arrangement onto the evidence: the sources document an agency arrangement before the marriage, not a formal joint enterprise afterwards.

The listing also compresses employment, the Syrian venture, the proposal and the wedding into a single dated event, though the tradition describes a sequence whose intervals are unknown.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~0595.

What the sources leave uncertain

The year 595 is a conventional reconstruction, not a contemporary recorded date.
The surviving narratives were written or compiled generations after the marriage.
The familiar claim that Khadija was 40 and exactly 15 years older than Muhammad is not in the earliest extant Ibn Ishaq narrative. Ibn Sa'd and al-Baladhuri transmit 40, while other reports and modern source criticism favor a younger age.
Accounts differ over Khadija's prior marriages and over which male relative represented each party.