ever. You uphold the bonds of kinship, speak the truth, shoulder the burdens of those who cannot manage for themselves, and help people when a rightful calamity strikes.
She then brought him to her cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal ibn Asad, a man who had embraced Christianity during the Age of Ignorance. He was able to write in the Arabic script and had copied into Arabic whatever Allah willed of the Gospel; by then he was an elderly man who had gone blind.
She said, “Listen to your nephew and what he has to say.”
He asked, “My nephew, what do you see?”
The Prophet ﷺ informed him, and Waraqah replied, “This is the nāmūs (the Angel of Revelation) who was sent to Moses…”—and the report continues (1).
Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr said: “Khadijah was the very first of Allah’s creation to enter Islam, by the unanimous agreement of the Muslims” (2).
Al-Zuhri, Qatadah, Musa ibn ʿUqbah, Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, and Saʿid ibn Yahya stated: “The first to believe in Allah and His Messenger were Khadijah, Abu Bakr, and ʿAli—may Allah be pleased with them.”
(1) The complete version reads: “If only I were a sturdy youth! If only I could be alive when your people exile you.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ asked, “Will they drive me out?” Waraqa replied, “Yes. No man has ever brought what you have brought without being harmed. Should I live to see that day, I will support you with a decisive victory.” Waraqa then died shortly afterward, and the revelation paused.
Reported by al-Bukhari 8/549 (Quran commentary, the chapter on ‘Recite in the name of your Lord who created’), 1/21, 26 (The Beginning of Revelation), and 12/311, 316 (The first chapter on dream interpretation). In the last location al-Bukhari includes an additional passage that is not sound, for it belongs to the unattached reports (balaghat) of al-Zuhri: “Revelation stopped for a period, and—so we have been informed—the Prophet became so distressed that he went several times to the peaks of high mountains intending to throw himself off. Each time he reached a summit to cast himself down, Gabriel appeared and said, ‘Muhammad, you are truly the Messenger of Allah.’ His heart would then be reassured and he would return. When the pause in revelation grew long, he would do the same; upon reaching a peak, Gabriel would appear and repeat those words.”
(2) Asad al-Ghabah, 7/78. The honorific ‘Izz al-Din belongs to Ali ibn Muhammad al-Jazari (d. 630 AH/1232 CE), the historian known for al-Kamil. His brother was the hadith scholar Abu’s-Saadat al-Mubarak ibn Muhammad al-Jazari (d. 606 AH/1209 CE), author of Jamiʿ al-Usul and al-Nihayah fi Gharib al-Hadith. A third brother, Diya al-Din Abu’l-Fath Nasr Allah—the eloquent writer—authored al-Mathal al-Saʾir and died in 637 AH/1239 CE.