?–619 CE · Merchant; first wife of Muhammad

Khadija bint Khuwaylid

Khadija's trading career, which included Muhammad's own employment under her before their marriage, is documented in the sira literature (Ibn Ishaq, trans. Guillaume, 1955) and is treated in modern scholarship as the paradigmatic early counter-example to claims that women's economic activity is a late departure from original practice.

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Research Paper
Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice
A historical-critical review testing whether practices commonly described as Islamic requirements for women — segregation, face-veiling, travel guardianship, exclusion from mosques and public office — rest on the Qur'an itself or on later hadith, jurisprudence, dynastic custom, and regional practice.

Khadija bint Khuwaylid

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Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice