The Life of Khadijah (RA)

- by Khadijah Al-Hashim

The first woman to follow the religion of Islam was Khadijah ul-Kubra'. Every Muslim knows who she was and what a role-model she was and continues to be. We also know that she was according to the Prophet (saw), one of the four greatest women from among the whole earth.

Khadijah was born in the year 555 C.E. (Christian era). Her parents were Khuwailid and Fatimah bint Zaidah. By the time she reached the age of forty she had attained quite a reputation for herself. She was known as a wealthy, noble, fine-natured business woman.

Khadijah heard about Mohammed's (saw) reputation for being an honest and upright young man. She sent him a proposal to ask him to handle some of her business affairs. On the return from one trip to Syria, he reported a profit that doubled that which anyone else had done for her. Needless to say, that impressed her greatly!

Khadijah's satisfaction with her new employee was soon to turn into love. Despite their age difference of 15 years, she desired to marry him. She confided this desire to he friend, Nufaysah, who in turn approached Mohammed (saw). This confused him. How could such a noble woman, who had turned down the marriage proposals of the noblest and wealthiest Quraysh men, desire to marry him?! Mohammed uncle Abu Talib and Khadijah's uncle 'Umar ibn Asad sat down to arrange the completion of the marriage. Little did any of them know just what the future had in store for this new couple!

Allah bestowed upon them six children. They were given two boys, Qasim and 'Abdullah, but neither survived infancy. They were also given four daughters, Zainab, Ruqaiyyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah.

Mohammed would often go to Mount Hira for meditation. On returning one day, Khadijah could see he was quite shaken and upset. She inquired about this and he told her what had happened. She found out that today had been unlike any other in that, today, he had been given revelations from God! He had thought that he was possessed and was going mad. Khadijah tried to console her terrified husband by saying:

"Rejoice, O son of my uncle, and be of good heart. Surely by Him in whose hand is my soul, I have hope that you will be the prophet of this people. You have never done any wrong to anyone. You are kind to others and you help the poor. So Allah will not let you down."

He then asked for a blanket and she quickly fulfilled his request. Shortly thereafter, he fell asleep. when Mohammed woke, Khadijah took him to her cousin, Waraqah bin Nawfal. He was Christian and quite knowledgeable of the scriptures of the Torah and Bible. He confirmed Mohammed's prophethood and said:

"This is the same one who keeps the secrets (angel Gabriel) whom Allah had sent to Moses. I wish I were young and could live up to the time when your people would turn you out."

Just a few months later Gabriel came again and ordered him to start warning the people. Khadijah supported him in this by financially supporting the family and his teaching. She was also content to raise the children and handle the family affairs so that he could preach.

During the next 10 years, she proved herself to be a loving wife. She supported him when nobody else would. She consoled him when rough time hit them. She comforted and encouraged him when the Quraish did all they could to stop him from preaching. She remained the only wife of Mohammed until her death at the age of 65. She died on 10 Ramadan 620 C.E. in the 10th year of prophethood. Long after her death, Mohammed(SAW) remembered and honored her often.

There is a lesson in Khadijah's life. She accepted and started working for the religion of Islam after the first revelation. This not only made her the first Muslim but also a role-model for women today. She led the example of a good, loving wife. She also showed us how to forget the desires of this life and work only for the good of Islam. Khadijah(RA) truly was a righteous woman.

The 'first true scientist' - al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham

- By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey

Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.

At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics,­ or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.

Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.

For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is an Iraqi scientist born in AD 965 who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.

Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.

As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.

Modern methods

Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.

But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.

Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.

Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.

As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.

This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.

But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.

In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".

Understanding light

He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.

It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago - Prof Jim Al-Khalili

He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.

What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.

So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.

He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.

He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.

Enforced study

In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.

An unwelcome opportunity was granted him, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.

While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer¹s droughts.

But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.

Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.

This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.

Planetary motion

He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.

While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.

It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.

It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January.