Question:
What is the age of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (Mother of Beleivers) when she married the Prophetﷺ .?
Answer:
Most Muslims commonly say that when the Prophetﷺ married her, he was 25 years old and she was 40. This is widely repeated in sermons and books. But what is the evidence for this?
When we examine hadith collections such as Sahih Muslim or Sahih al-Bukhari, we do not find rigorously authenticated hadith stating her age. Instead, the information appears mainly in historical works.
One famous historical work is Tabaqat Ibn Sa’d, written by Ibn Sa’d. In that book there is a report stating that the Prophetﷺ ﷺ married Khadijah when she was forty years old.
But when scholars examine the chain of that report, they find that it passes through Muhammad ibn Umar al-Waqidi. Many hadith critics considered him unreliable and accused him of fabricating reports. Because of this, the report about the age of forty cannot be treated as authentic.
Another report in the same historical literature says that Khadijah (Mother of Believers) was twenty-eight at the time of marriage. But that narration comes through Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, who was also criticized for unreliable narrations. So, we have two commonly quoted ages—forty and twenty-eight—but both reports come through weak narrators. That means we cannot state her exact age with certainty.
What we do know for sure is that Khadijah(Mother of Beleivers) was previously married and was a widow when the Prophetﷺ married her. A widow does not necessarily have to be forty years old. She could have been in her twenties or thirties as well. Therefore, the precise age is uncertain.
Muslims often repeat the age forty simply because it became widespread in historical narration. But strictly speaking, the evidence for it is not strong. And this issue does not affect any religious ruling, because the marriage happened before the Prophetﷺ received revelation.