Overview

Al-Suyuti in "History of the Caliphs" says that the Umayyads used to curse Ali ibn Abi Talib in the sermon. When Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz became caliph he abolished it. ²

What he did

He wrote to his deputies to abolish it, and in its place he recited the verse of justice and beneficence, al-Nahl 16:90. The book says that its recitation in the sermon continued from that time. ²

The event occurred in his caliphate (99–101 AH) according to the book, and the Gregorian date is derived.

Umar's Expulsion of the Christians of Najran

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 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 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.

Abolition of Cursing Ali in the Sermon

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What he did

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Umar's Expulsion of the Christians of Najran