Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz

Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was given allegiance to the caliphate after the death of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik ^{1 2}. In his time he dealt with the governors and the Kharijites, and he had a dispute with Yazid ibn al-Muhallab ³.

al-Tabari reports that when people dispersed from the writing after the death of Sulayman, Umar feared that something of the matter had been assigned to him, so he asked Raja' ibn Haywa ⁴. Umar led the funeral prayer over Sulayman after his death, according to the report ¹. When the news of the people's allegiance to him reached Abd al-Aziz ibn al-Walid, Umar said: "If you had given allegiance and taken up the command, I would not have disputed it with you" ².

Umar sent Ibn Hatim ibn al-Nu'man al-Bahili against the Turks who had raided Azerbaijan, and they killed them ⁵. His agent in Medina was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Amr ibn Hazm (may God be pleased with him), according to the annals ⁵. He sent the letter of appointment of Abd al-Rahman ibn Nu'aym to the war in Khurasan and Sistan, together with Abd Allah ibn Sakhr al-Qurashi ⁶.

Umar wrote to Abd al-Hamid ibn Abd al-Rahman, his agent in Iraq, about the rising of the Kharijites, ordering him to call them to act by the Book of God and the sunna ⁷.

Umar disliked Yazid ibn al-Muhallab and his household, and said they were tyrants, according to the report of Hisham from Abu Mikhnaf ³. He told him that he could find no way but to take all his money ⁸. When he wanted to exile him, he was spoken to about him ⁹. When he came to the caliphate, he wrote to him saying that Sulayman had been a slave of God's slaves. Yazid said that this was not the speech of those of his household who had gone before ¹⁰.

• Most of the reports are "according to the report": al-Tabari transmits them from named narrators, above all Abu Mikhnaf. They have not yet been compared with other sources.
• The references use the scan page number. The years are not given, because their reading in the OCR is not reliable, except what is reported from the annals.
• The sentence on page 91 is rendered in sense, and should be checked against the scan before it is relied on.
• Reports with OCR damage have been left out of the entry, and will be added after the page images are checked.

The Sheikh relates that the Umayyads put poison in the food of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz after they had grown weary of his conduct toward them, and that when he knew the end was near he told his wife Fatima to leave the room (needs_source) ¹¹.

He says that he told her he saw faces in the room that were neither human nor jinn, who neither eat nor drink and love only a sweet fragrance and the remembrance of God, and that Fatima went out but did not wish to miss those historic moments (needs_source) ¹².

He then recounts that a shepherd in the desert, not knowing that Umar had died, said that the wolves had attacked the sheep, and the Sheikh concludes that the presence of righteous people is a security for the earth (needs_source) ¹³.

He relates that Fatima put her ear to the door and heard him welcoming Adam, father of mankind, then Nuh, then Ibrahim, then Musa, one after another (needs_source) ¹⁴.

He adds that Umar welcomed Isa and the Prophet ﷺ, then welcomed the angel of death as a visitor who had come at an appointed time, then pronounced the two testimonies and his soul departed (needs_source) ¹⁵.

He tells how Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, on entering the mosque, stepped on a man's foot, and the man jumped up in fright and seized the Commander of the Faithful by the collar (needs_source) ¹⁶.

He says the man asked him, are you blind, and Umar answered no; the members of his retinue wanted to discipline the man, but Umar said he had only asked him a question and he had answered it; the Sheikh then moves on to al-Hasan al-Basri, saying that his fame spread across the horizons (needs_source) ¹⁷.

The Sheikh narrates an anecdote: a boy went in to Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, and the caliph told him to leave speaking to someone older. The boy replied that if the matter depended on age, someone in the gathering would be older than the caliph and more entitled to the command of the believers (needs_source: anecdote with no source given in the lecture). ^{18 19}

Sheikh Omar Abdelkafy says that when Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz governed Egypt on behalf of his father, he secured the people's religion and their livelihood ²⁰. He cites Umar's letter to his governor of Egypt: "Reform their hereafter, and their world will be reformed" ²¹.

He describes an assembly of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who held five sessions a week, one of them a session on literature, poetry and proverbs, in which Umar wept when a verse from the Mu'allaqa of Tarafa was recited before him ²². He says Umar listened to those who chose the finest speech, as one picks the finest fruit, and walked among the people at night ²³.

He recounts that when Umar sent officials to collect zakat in Africa, they returned saying they had found no poor person to take it ^{24 25}. He says Umar returned to officials the gifts they offered him, and did not take them for himself ²⁶.