Umar's Expulsion of the Christians of Najran

إجلاء نصارى نجران

640 CE · 20 AH

Najran → al-Najraniyya

In al-Baladhuri: under Umar the people of Najran took usury and multiplied, so he feared them for Islam and exiled them to al-Najraniyya by Kufa — the settlement named after them — buying up their estates and writing for them that wherever they settled in Syria or Iraq they were to be granted arable land in place of their land in Yemen; the Jews of Najran had entered the treaty with the Christians as their followers; in Salim ibn Abi al-Ja'd's report the people of Najran reached forty thousand, quarrelled among themselves, asked Umar 'exile us' — which he did, already fearing them for the Muslims — then regretted it and sought reversal which he refused, and when Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him) took office they came to him and he said 'Umar was of sound judgement and I dislike opposing him'; the rulings then ran on: Uthman remitted two hundred hullas by letter to his Kufa governor al-Walid ibn Uqba after Uthman ibn Hunayf (may God be pleased with him) told him their exile had harmed the dihqans by driving them off their land; Mu'awiya or Yazid completed them to four hundred hullas; al-Hajjaj restored eighteen hundred after Ibn al-Ash'ath's revolt, accusing them of backing it; Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz set them at two hundred hullas worth eight thousand dirhams on finding them at a tithe of their former number — 'I see this treaty is a jizya on their heads, not a treaty on their lands, and the jizya of the dead and the Muslim lapses'; Yusuf ibn Umar restored them under al-Walid ibn Yazid out of solidarity with al-Hajjaj; Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah confirmed two hundred hullas after they scattered basil on his procession at Kufa and Abdullah ibn al-Rabi' al-Harithi interceded for their kinship claim through Banu al-Harith ibn Ka'b his maternal uncles, seconded by al-Hajjaj ibn Arta; and Harun al-Rashid confirmed it by a letter the transmitters saw, ordering them freed from dealing with the tax agents to pay directly to the treasury at the capital.