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Marriage: The Ottoman miniature from 1595 shows Chadija (left) and Mohammed (right) to whom the Archangel Gabriel appears.
According to the convention of the time, the Prophet and his wife were depicted faceless.
Photo:
akg-images / Steffens image archive
Mohammed is beside himself with fear: the archangel Gabriel has appeared to him in a cave on Mount Hira outside the gates of Mecca.
The divine messenger held him down, pressed him to the ground with a cloth, urged him to recite a confession to God.
Mohammed fears for his life and crawls away, rushing straight to Chadija.
"Cover me!
Wrap me up!” he shouts – according to the chronicler Mohammed Ibn Ishak, the distraught man even sits on his wife's lap.
Chadija wraps Mohammed in a sheet and encourages him.
"Rejoice, son of my uncle, and be steadfast," says Khadija.
"I hope you will be the prophet of this people."
He despairs, she calms him down.
He is weak, she is strong: In the central founding moment of Islam, the appointment of Muhammad as a prophet in the month of Ramadan in the year 610 AD, his wife Chadija played a key role - all early Muslim historians agree on this.
She has his back when he is afraid of being possessed by demons, when he is later insulted and attacked, and in his distress he may even consider suicide.
It is Khadija who was the first person to profess Islam - even before Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law Ali Bin Abi Talib and Abu Bakr, who later became the first caliph.
It is Chadija who brings Mohammed to her cousin Waraka Ibn Naufal, the Judeo-Christian scholar who assures the prophet: He really is the one chosen by God.
And after all, it is Chadija that finances the new religion – and thus makes it possible in the first place.
Mohammed lived monogamously with her for 25 years before he is said to have had at least twelve other wives after her death.
Who is behind this "mother of the believers", this crucial emotional and financial support of the prophet?
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