Khadija bint Ali Zayn al-Abidin

Khadija's basic identity as a daughter of Imam Ali Zayn al-Abidin is preserved in the child list attributed to Shaykh al-Mufid. The list places her with Ali, the youngest son of Zayn al-Abidin, among children born to an unnamed umm walad. Her mother's personal name is not preserved, so it would be unsafe to identify her mother with a famous woman or to create a separate conjectural person.

Nasab Quraysh lists Umar, Abdullah, Ubayd Allah, and Umm Kulthum among the children of Muhammad ibn Umar ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib and names Khadija bint Ali ibn al-Husayn as their mother. The biographical entry for Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Umar in Tahdhib al-Kamal likewise identifies Khadija as his mother and Imam Muhammad al-Baqir as his maternal uncle. Together these reports strongly establish her marriage to Muhammad ibn Umar, although abbreviated biographical summaries do not always preserve every child's name.

No strong early material establishes an independent scholarly, political, or public career for Khadija. Her historical presence is preserved mainly through her father's family, her marriage, and genealogical and transmitter notices concerning her children. Her son Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Umar was a Medinan transmitter whose biography appears in recognized rijal works, but the son's scholarly activity should not be converted into evidence for an independent teaching or transmission career for Khadija herself.

Reliable early sources do not preserve her year or place of death or her actual burial site. The present shrine known as Khadija Khatun, about thirty-five kilometres south of Qom, was built in 770 AH by order of Ghiyath al-Din Amir Muhammad, and its stucco and inscriptions are associated with eighth-century craftsmen including Ali ibn Muhammad Abu Shuja. One inscriptional tradition calls the buried woman a daughter of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, but Fayz Qummi argued from the name, the title “Khatun,” and the record of sayyid migration to Qom that she was not an immediate daughter of the Imam and was more likely a later sayyida from the family of Ali ibn Jafar al-Uraydi. The site is therefore not presented as the certain grave of Khadija bint Imam Zayn al-Abidin, but as a respected, later and historically disputed Qom attribution.