The Khilafa of Sayyidina Umar - Days of Glory
By Abdal Hakim Murad | 2026-01-13T23:01:39.387942+00:00 | Topic: Sahaba
The Khilafa of Sayyidina Umar - Days of Glory
Opening
"[Peace be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings]"
"[In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful]"
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the best of Allah's creation.
And upon his family, his companions, and all his followers. May Allah make it easy for us, O' generous one, and open with truth. Indeed, You are the Opener, the All-Knowing.
Introduction
Welcome to everybody in the Cambridge New Muslims group, and welcome to those who are also following on the internet, inshallah. This will be the second in our planned four lectures on the Khulafa Rashidun, the first four caliphs or successors to the authority of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. And last time we were looking at the short but amazing caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq.
And we took the story up to his death only two years after assuming the supreme office in the new city-state of Medina. And we saw the challenges that he faced, and the way in which he, despite his gentle temperament, successfully reunited Arabia in the face of a succession of rebellions. We're going to take up the story from that point, but rewinding first of all in order to trace the, as it were, pre-khalifa story of Sidna Omar.
The Early Life of Umar ibn al-Khattab
To know how the man was shaped, and to learn what kind of factors were at work in creating this extraordinary individual. This person who really was one of the perhaps four or five influential political and religious leaders in world history. His name was Omar ibn al-Khattab ibn Nufayl ibn Abdul Uzza.
And he was from the Quraysh tribe, and from the Bani Adi, which was one of the branches of the tribe of Quraysh. So he's from Makkah, and he's related somewhat distantly to the Holy Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). We know quite a bit about his family, and some of his offspring actually become quite significant in the early history of Islam. From his first wife Zaynab ibn Maz'un, he has Abdullah, who is perhaps his best-known son.
Known as Akhul-Layl, the brother of the night. Because following instructions from the Holy Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) Abdullah ibn Omar becomes particularly famous for his fondness for the tahajjud, the night prayer. But also somebody who is an expert in hadith, narrating hadith, and people travel to Medina to seek his fatwa.
And it is through him in particular, and through other sahabas, that the fiqh of Omar starts to develop in particular. And in a sense, you could say that the fiqh of Imam Malik, and of the Maliki Madhhab, is al-fiqh al-Omari. Because so much of his fatwa, and his particular orientation in transmission of hadith, and also in fatwa, is something that comes from the second of the khulafa.
There are other sons by Zaynab, there's Abdur-Rahman, and there's also Hafsa, his famous daughter, who becomes particularly well known, as we'll see as we get into the story, as one of the wives of the Holy Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). So he also becomes a father-in-law of the Prophet. And then another wife, Um Kulthum, is significant because she is the daughter of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib. So Fatima becomes Hazrat Omar's mother-in-law.
There's a particularly close relationship between the two men, as is instanced by the fact that Hazrat Ali entrusts his daughter to Hazrat Omar. And they have a number of offspring, including Zayd and Ruqayya, who go on to play their own particular role. We know quite a bit about him, and particularly about what he looked like, because he was a very formidable person.
Of the four early khalifas, and each one represents a particular form of human virile possibility, he was the one who was the most formidable, and some people were frankly afraid of him. He was very tall, walked with a slight stoop, so tall and so strong, that he was one of those semi-legendary characters who could actually jump onto a horse. He didn't need to hoist himself up on a stirrup, he could just grab onto the horse's neck and pull himself up.
He walked very fast. People say, he used to walk like a mounted man. He had a pale face, he was balding, very humble, as we'll see later, famous for this. He used to walk barefoot in the city of Medina, very often. And a great horseman, not only could he jump on a horse, but people used to say in the Arabs, respected for horsemanship, they used to admire Hazrat Omar in his style of riding, and his mastery of the horse.
The Conversion of Umar
He converts six years into the beginning of Islam, the sixth year of the nubuwwah, when he was himself 26. And this seems to have been the consequence of a dua, of a prayer, of the Holy Prophet himself. Omar was an enemy of the Prophet, and an enemy of Islam in his pagan times, and used to persecute the Muslims. And the Prophet used to say:
(Sahih al-Bukhari Hadith 3684)
"O Allah, strengthen Islam with Omar ibn al-Khattab or Amr ibn Hisham."
And Amr ibn Hisham was Abu Jahl, one of the leaders of the pagan opposition in the city of Mecca. And the prayer is answered, and Abu Jahl is the one who is out of luck.
So we have a narrative on Ibn Abbas. 39 had converted along with Allah's Messenger, and then Omar converted and they became 40. And then Jibreel came down with the verse that says:
"Allah is sufficient for you and for those who follow you among the believers."
So when they were 40, this verse was revealed, and the divine indication was that this would be enough, this would be a sufficiency. And actually one of the remarkable things about Hazrat Omar, and again, we'll talk about this later inshallah, is his particular relationship with Allah's book, and the way in which verses would be revealed shortly after Hazrat Omar had had a particular kind of inspiration.
But before he converts, he is, as we said, an adversary of the Holy Prophet. And he sees the hijrah to Abyssinia, and it angers him. And the failure of Quraysh's attempt to extradite the asylum seekers in Ethiopia, they return empty-handed. And it seems that his opposition was not just that the Holy Prophet was rejecting the gods and the idols of his people, but that he was dividing the city of Mecca.
He saw himself as the great Meccan citizen, who wished the city to be united. And he saw these two groups, the pagans and the Muslims, as a source of weakness for the city. So he saw this as a political as well as a spiritual issue.
The Story of Umar's Conversion
Anyway, the narrators recount how one day he took his sword, with the intention of going out and physically attacking the Holy Prophet. But he meets somebody in the street first, and the famous story begins. Umar Ibn al-Khattab said to us:
"Would you like to hear how my Islam began?"
We said, yes. So Umar once said to us, according to this narrative, Would you like to hear how my Islam began? And we all said, of course. He said, I was one of the most powerful people against the Holy Prophet.
He said, I was one of the most hostile of people, the fiercest of people against God's messenger. And then he describes how he met somebody in the street. So he's going off to attack the Prophet.
He has his sword. He's ready to do the deed. And he meets somebody, Nu'aym bin Abdullah, who looks at him and says, where are you going? And he says, I'm going to kill Muhammad.
And Nu'aym says, but... He tries to stall him because Nu'aym is a Muslim. But you'll be killed. Don't you know what the consequence will be? He's from the Quraysh tribe and there'll be consequences.
That doesn't deter him. He tries to push past him. He's going to proceed with the assassination.
So then, in order to hold his attention, because he knows that Umar is a family man, He says, why don't you go back to your own family and set them to rights? And Umar says, who? Who is now in Islam of my family? And he said, your own brother-in-law, Sa'ad, and your sister, Fatima. So he turns around at this horrifying news and he goes to see his sister. And Khabab, who's one of the Mustadhafeen, one of the poor Makkan Muslims, is there with them in this small, covert group of new believers to recite some pages from the Qur'an that he has with him.
And so Umar basically pushes in and starts shouting at his sister. Ya aduwat nafsihah, enemy of her own self. Balaghani annaki qad sab'at. I've heard that you've changed your religion. And of course, everybody knows Umar's reputation and she hides the pages under her dress and Khabab is hiding in the corner of the room. And Umar picks a fight with his brother-in-law and starts throwing punches.
Fatima tries to intervene and he hits her as well. Fasaladdam. And her face starts to bleed.
Falamma ra'ati almar'atu aldam, bakat, thumma qalat. And when the woman saw the blood, she started crying. And then she said:
"Oh, ibn al-Khattab, do whatever you're going to do. It's true, I've become a Muslim. I'm Muslim."
And then Umar takes up the story. Fadakhaltu wa'ana mughdab. I went in and I was furious, enraged.
Fajalastu ala sarir. And I sat down on the bed. But at this point, it seems that he's seen his sister's blood and he's starting to calm down.
This is something that's causing him a certain amount of guilt. So he sits on the bed. Fanazaltu fa'itha bi kitabin, finahiyati al-bayt.
So I looked around and there were some pieces of paper, what would have been parchment then, in the corner of the house. Faqultu, and I said, ma'adha al-kitab? What's this writing? A'tini, give it to me. Faqalat, and then his sister said, la'u'tik, lasta min ahli.
I won't give it to you because you don't deserve it. Anta la taqtasil min al-janaba. Wa ha'dha la yamasuhu illa al-mutahharun.
You don't deserve this because you don't make ghusl from your janaba. And this is something which only the purified may touch. She's afraid, she's been hurt.
She knows the anger that her brother is capable of, but still such is her love for Allah's book that she won't put it in his hands. He hasn't made his wudu. So what happens? He's curious, he wants to know what is going on.
He's calmed down a little bit. His sister's been hurt. So he takes off his sword belt, puts it down, and swears by his gods not to harm the text.
He just wants to look at it. And he washes himself. She, of course, wants him to know.
She wants him to experience the beauty of Islam. And so she gives the pages to him. And what does he read? He reads the first ayahs of Surah Taha, which we all know:
"Ta Ha. We have not sent down the Qur'an that you might be distressed. It is only a reminder for him who fears Allah. A revelation from the one who created the earth and the seven heavens. The all-merciful, who is established upon the throne."
So he doesn't know what he's expecting. And he reads something that he was not expecting. It's the voice of heaven, the sound of eternity, that goes, as the word of God can do, right into his heart.
He's not a sinful person. He's not an arrogant person. He's just somebody whose sincerity has been for the wrong cause.
And with such people, the voice of God can go in and can transform them like a bolt of lightning. Such people, as it were, lightning conductors. And if the lightning is there, it'll hit them first.
These beautiful verses from Surah Taha. We have not sent down the Qur'an that you might be distressed. It is only a reminder for him who fears Allah. A revelation from the one who created the earth and the seven heavens. The all-merciful, who is established upon the throne. All of these beautiful verses.
And suddenly, this amazing passage with its beautiful lilting syncopations and the rhyming, it goes through to him. The circuit is completed and there he is. So, he puts it down and he says:
"I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."
Exactly the words which he hated to hear others saying.
He's now been broken, transformed, a new man. And it's significant that he comes to Islam through the Qur'an because, as I said, he does have a particularly strong relationship to it in late years. And actually, because he was known to be a man whose anger was fearful.
The Sahaba eventually realized that the way of calming him down when he was in a state of righteous anger was to recite the Qur'an to him. Bilal used to say:
When he got angry, it was something really tremendous.
And when he was angry, when Omar was angry, we used to recite Qur'an to him until he calmed down.
His anger would be settled and he'd stop what he had intended to do.
So what does he do now? Having made the decision of his life, he says, Where is Muhammad so that I may declare my shahada to him in person? And they say he's with some Muslims in the house of Al- Arqam. And so he goes there.
And he takes up the story:
So I went out until I banged on the door.
And the voice came, who's that?
It's Omar Ibn Al-Khattab
And nobody inside had the courage to open the door.
(Source Name)
And the holy prophet said to them, open for him, if Allah wants good for him, he will guide him.
They opened the door for me.
(Source Name)
And two men took me by the sides, as it were, holding me in case I was going to attack the prophet.
And he said, let him go.
So they let me go and I sat down right in front of him.
Enter Islam, O Ibn al-Khattab.
And he reached out and he grabbed me to him.
O Allah, guide him.
And I said, I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that you are the messenger of Allah
And all the Muslims present said, Allahu Akbar, with such a loud Takbir that it could be heard in the streets of Makkah outside the house.
So he's taken this bold step and he's gone to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم to announce his bold step. And because of his boldness, what does he want to do now? He wants to tell all of the Prophet's enemies.
That's the kind of impetuous, strong, decisive individual here. So he goes out of the house of Al-Arqam, Ibn Abi Al-Arqam, to find the greatest opponent of the Prophet. And he goes to the house of Abu Jahl, bangs on the door.
And Abu Jahl says, Welcome, best of welcomes to you, my sister's son. What brings you here? And Omar said, I've come to tell you that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger and that I believe in what he has been brought. May God curse you, says Abu Jahl and slams the door in his face.
And may God curse the news that you bring. So Omar's conversion is really important because he's this hero and completely fearless. He's not going to be hiding anything.
So Suhaib relates, When Omar converted, he called to Islam openly. And we would go to the Kaaba and pray at the Kaaba and do tawaf of the house. And despite the opposition, Omar used to go with Hamza and a group of the believers to the Kaaba and pray openly.
And Quraysh were just afraid of him. They were afraid to intervene. And this annoyed Quraysh so much that this was actually the trigger for the boycott, the Muqata'ah that was placed upon Bani Hashim, the Prophet's tribe, so that nobody could marry into that tribe, nobody could do business with that tribe.
The idea being to pressure them into expelling him or killing him or for him to change his mind, to renounce prophethood. And because of this decisiveness, Sayyidina Omar, acquires his name of Al- Farooq. Abu Bakr is called Al-Siddiq, the true believer.
The Title Al-Farooq
Hazrat Omar is called Al-Farooq. So, The Prophet said:
Allah has placed the truth upon the heart and tongue of Omar.
The Holy Prophet said, Allah has placed the truth upon the heart and the tongue of Omar.
He is Al-Farooq. Allah has distinguished between truth and falsehood. So, he is Al-Farooq, which means the great distinguisher, the discerner.
By him, Allah distinguishes truth from falsehood. So, this title, just as Al-Siddiq is the Prophet's title for Abu Bakr, Al-Farooq is the Prophet's title for Hazrat Omar.
Reference: Sahih Ibn Majah Hadith 103
The Hijra and the Battles
And then, of course, the episode of the Hijrah, and we looked at the Hijrah last time, and Abu Bakr has the great privilege of becoming Sani's name, the second in the two.
Omar also has a remarkable story on the Hijrah. Because, and this is one of the stories about Omar that comes from Hazrat Ali. Qala Ali ibn Abi Talib:
I don't know that any of the muhajireen, the migrants from Mecca to Medina, didn't do it secretly, except for Omar.
Because when he had decided to make his Hijrah, he put on his sword, and he shouldered his bow, and he took a handful of arrows, and he went in front of the Kaaba. And a group of the leaders of Quraysh
were in the courtyard of the Kaaba.
So then he said a strong, slow prayer. And then he did the tawaf seven times around the Kaaba. Then he went to the maqam of Ibrahim and prayed solidly, confidently.
And then he said to them, May the faces perish, may they be ugly. It's a way of holding people's attention. Whoever wants his mother to be bereaved, and his wife to be a widow, and his children to be orphans, let him just come and meet me in this valley.
And Ali said, nobody wanted to accept the challenge. Nobody went off to fight with him. But a group of the weak Muslims who he knew went with him on the Hijrah.
So that was very characteristic of his personality. He certainly wasn't going to go off furtively. As a hero, of course, he participates, as one would expect, in many of the great marazi, the great campaigns and battles.
And even though we think of battles nowadays as the Battle of the Bulge or the Battle of Midway, enormous conflicts. In fact, the Prophet's campaigns in Arabia involved a few hundred people. Many of them, only a few people.
They were skirmishes. The totality of casualties in the wars that united Arabia was probably between 1,000 and 1,500. So we think of battles, but these are relatively small events.
But no less fearsome for that, and Sayyiduna Omar is at the thick of them. So he's in Badr and Uhud and Khandaq and Khaibar and the conquest of Mecca and Hunayn. And he's at the Bayat al-Ridwan, the great pledging, the Tree of Ridwan.
And he is one of those who didn't run away at Uhud and was strong with the Holy Prophet and stayed to defend him. And because of his strength and his strong voice and his imposing presence, the Holy Prophet would often use him to rally people or to summon people. So at the Bayat al-Ridwan, the Holy Prophet, alaihi salatu wasalam, asks him to summon people to the Bay'ah.
The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah
There's a famous episode where at the Sulh of Hudaybiyyah, which is the Peace of Hudaybiyyah, which as you'll recall from last time, was when the Muslims don't enter Mecca for the pilgrimage but return, having made a treaty, even though they're in the Ihram. Quraish are sending Suhail ibn Amr as their negotiator.
Matters are nearly resolved and it just needs the agreement, the treaty document, to be written out.
And Amr finds this hard to accept. He doesn't want any kind of truce with these people. He wants the pilgrimage to take place.
They're in Ihram, so he jumps up. And he went to Abu Bakr and said:
Oh, Abu Bakr, isn't he Allah's messenger?
He said, yes.
Aren't we Muslims?
He said, yes.
And he said, why should we accept some kind of humiliation in our religion?
And then he went to the Prophet, salallahu alaihi wasalam, and said the same things. And the Holy Prophet, salallahu alaihi wasalam, just said:
I'm Allah's slave and His messenger.
I shall not go against His command and He will not cause me to be lost.
From that time on, I was constantly praying and fasting and freeing slaves and giving sadaqah from that which apparently went against the will of the Holy Prophet, salallahu alaihi wasalam.
He also leads some of the maghazi, some of the expeditions. He leads the expedition to the Hawazin.
And that's so successful that when the Hawazin tribes hear of his approach, they actually just run away because he's such a formidable person. His reputation has preceded him. He has the standard, the banner of the Holy Prophet at the Ghazwa of Khaybar and so on.
Omar as Spokesman
Also appointed as a spokesman, this is very characteristically Omar. At Uhud, you recall the Quraysh have basically won this skirmish and Abu Sufyan and his people contentedly getting ready to depart. And the Holy Prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam tells Hazrat Omar to go up and reply to Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan has said, aadha yawmun bi yawm, you had your day and this is our day. And then he calls, Abu Sufyan says, ya hubal azhir dinak, oh hubal, make your religion victorious. So Omar is told to go within earshot of the camp of the Quraysh.
Qum fa ajibhu, he says to Omar, get up and reply to him. Fa qal, allahu a'la wa ajal la siwa. So he's calling out in this huge voice across the desert night, it's quiet.
He can be clearly heard by everybody on the Meccan side. Allah is higher and more majestic. There is no God but him.
Qatlana fil jannati wa qatalakum finnaar. Our dead are in paradise and your dead are in hellfire. Qala Abu Sufyan, so Abu Sufyan calls out, hallumma ilayya ya Omar.
He knows his voice. He says, come to me Omar. And the Holy Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) says, go, find out what he wants.
Fa ja'ahu fa qala lah. So he came to him and said to him, Abu Sufyan said to him, unshiduka billahi ya Omar. By God, Omar.
Aqatalna Muhammadan, have we killed Muhammad? Because they've heard from this Ibn Qami'ah that the Prophet had been killed. So he wants to know, tell me, is it true that we've killed him? Qala lah. He said no.
Wa innahu la yasma'u kalamana. And he can even hear our words. His listening is within earshot.
Fa qala Abu Sufyan, anta astaqu indi min Ibn Qami'ah. Abu Sufyan said, I think you're more likely to be right than Ibn Qami'ah. So even in that situation, he is the one who is, as it were, the Prophet's diplomat, the Prophet's spokesman.
Hafsa's Marriage
After Uhud, another example of the closeness of the two men comes about with Hafsa's marriage to the Holy Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). She's a widow. Very tragically, at the age of only 20, she has been widowed.
Her husband had died suddenly. Omar suggested her to Abu Bakr, who declined. Omar became angry at this and offered her to Uthman.
When Ruqayya, the Prophet's daughter Ruqayya, had died, he didn't have a wife, but Uthman declined, saying, la ara an atazawwaja al yawm. He said, I didn't wish to marry at the moment. Fa antalaqa Umar ila Rasulillahi, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam).
So Hazrat Umar goes to the Holy Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), fa shaka ilahi Uthman, and kind of complains of Uthman, he's not marrying my daughter. And the Holy Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), delights him by offering marriage to the widow himself. And Hafsa turns out to be a remarkable individual.
And again, this particular relationship that Hazrat Umar has with the Qur'an is plain. Because Hafsa has, of all of the wives of the Holy Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), a special relationship with the Qur'an. She's memorized the entire text.
She's Hafiza. And for that reason, because of her strong knowledge of the text and her strong memory, Abu Bakr, when he orders that the various pieces of the Qur'an be gathered together, it's not a complete Mus'haf at that time, but it's a kind of collection, orders that that be left in the house of Hafsa for her safekeeping.
Hafsa is also significant in that in later years she was sometimes used as a mediator with Umar. People were afraid to approach him directly with some thing they wanted to put to him. They would give to him through his daughter. On several occasions when he was Khalifa, the Muslims are so mortified to see that taxes and booty and all kinds of stuff is coming into Medina from the far horizons.
And Umar is still wearing his woollen shirt that's patched with kind of leather patches. And he's not happy that he's got a winter shirt as well as a summer shirt. Most of the time he's walking barefoot.
We are now the masters of the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, and our ruler is hungry. So on several occasions they tried to get Hafsa to sort of speak to her father to get him to up his living standards.
So that he would eat more delicate foods and wear something more comfortable.
And they said to him, say that the Muslims are happy for him to take something from this, the spoils of war.
The Muslims are happy for him to do this.
But he refused.
Omar's Character as Khalifa
And he kept to the Sunnah as he understood it as a real ascetical figure partly to be an example to his governors because he wanted the governors of these new provinces not to copy the palatial ways of the
Byzantine and the Persian governors but to be simple desert people who would live as did the poorest of their populations.
In any case, last time we covered the death of the Holy Prophet (عليه الصلاة والسلام - عليه الصلاة والسلام) when he saw the key role that Omar plays, his courage at the Saqif of the Bani Sa'idah when it looks as if tribalism is going to prevail again and that the Ansar, some of them will go their way and the Aus and the Khazraj will split and then there will be an Amir in Mecca and it's the end of this impossible dream that's actually been realized of the unity of Arabia. And Omar is the one who pledges his Bay'ah first of all to Abu Bakr.
Put out your hand, O Abu Bakr, and I will pledge your allegiance
and then Abu Ubaidah does that and then slowly the Aus and the Khazraj follow and the catastrophe is averted and that was essentially Omar's heroism and Omar's initiative.
Omar Becomes Khalifa
Abu Bakr dies after two years of rule and it's been, as we saw, a difficult time with the rebellion, the apostasy of the tribes of Najd in particular. But the succession is very easy because before he dies, Abu Bakr simply nominates Omar to be his successor.
He feels that he's going to die. He asks Uthman to write down his last testament and in that specifically he designates Omar to be the second ruler. And he says, if Allah asks me whom I appointed, I will say that I appointed khayr al-ijalikum, the best man amongst you.
Why did he choose Omar? Partly because of Omar's particular closeness to the holy prophet and partly because he saw that real strength was required.
The borders were being breached. The Byzantines were a threat.
The Persians were a threat. They were starting to get together for the first time ever to wipe out the new religion, Arabia. Desert tribes had been rebelling.
Everything was very new. The world had been changed but it could easily snap back into its old millennial ways again and he knew that somebody really tough, a real hero man should be in charge. So this seems to be why he chose him, that he saw that somebody rigorous was required because of Omar's anger.
But the anger was never for himself, it was for Allah. He was a man of jalal, a man of majesty. You can say, and we'll be looking at this a little bit later, that the different kinds of perfection that the four jaharyar, four friends represent is Abu Bakr is the jamaal and Omar is the jalal and Uthman is the kind of beautiful adab, aristocratic principle and Hazrat Ali is the principle of futuwa, sacred warriorhood.
Each different aspects of the integrated perfection of the holy prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam. So he accepts and he makes his acceptance speech. One of the things about Omar is that he speaks very beautifully and one of the reasons for his political success is that.
And about, he says, I am being tested through you and you are being tested through me. It's almost like speaking to the population. You're my misfortune and I'm your misfortune.
It's not a very proud thing to say. And I have been appointed to be the deputy, after my two friends, after the holy prophet and Hazrat Abu Bakr. And then he makes a dua.
Much of his acceptance speech is a dua. Oh Allah, I am tough, so make me gentle. And I am weak, so strengthen me.
And I am mean and avaricious, so make me generous. And indeed, he turns out to be a majestic ruler. But somebody of the four caliphs who is most feared, I think, the holy prophet says, the one who is toughest in Allah's religion is Omar.
And his symbol of office almost is this stick that he carries as he goes around Medina in order to correct people if he sees any injustice or people misbehaving. He's a kind of police force on his own, even though he introduces one of history's first police forces in his new empire. He kind of starts it himself.
To give you a famous example, It's narrated that the holy prophet went off on one of his expeditions. And when he came back, a young black servant girl came and said:
Ya Rasool Allah, O messenger of Allah, I made a vow to Allah that if he brings you back safe,
I will celebrate by banging my drum in front of you. And presumably reciting poetry as well.
Now this is something that's potentially inappropriate for a girl to be kind of performing in this way. But he says, And he says, If you've made a vow, then bang your drum. If not, then you don't need to.
And then she started banging her little drum. And some of the companions entered. One of them was Abu Bakr, and she kept on banging the drum.
And then Umar came in. And when she saw Umar, she tucked the drum underneath her and kind of sat on it. She didn't want him to see.
And the Holy Prophet tells Hazrati Umar what's happened and said, Umar, there is nobody who is not afraid of you. And there's many stories of this. This is, commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong.
And Umar is particularly shadid or strong in this. He's the first to be called Amirul Mu'mineen. The title begins with him.
Some of the Sahaba were saying, what shall we call our new ruler? He's not a king. He's not a tribal chief. Sayyidina Abu Bakr was Khalifat Rasulillah, the successor of Allah's messenger.
It's awkward to say Khalifatu Khalifati Rasulillah, the successor of Allah's messenger. That's not a very splendid title. So they hit on the title of Amirul Mu'mineen, the commander of the believers.
Omar's Relationship with the Quran
Another thing that comes up again and again during the Holy Prophet's lifetime is that if we look at the spirituality of Sayyidina Umar, it has something to do with the jalal of the Quranic text itself:
We shall send down upon you a heavy word.
Reference: Quran 73:5
Allah says, we shall send down upon you a heavy word. And the power of the Quran comes down on the Holy Prophet, (صلى الله عليه وسلم - sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), wa inna jabinahu la yatafasadu araqa And his forehead was pouring forth sweat on a very cold day.
And this strength is something that resonates with Umar. And so we have in the books of tafsir again and again, and for some of the ulama, there's 20 specific cases, episodes in Umar's life where he seems to anticipate the revelation of a Quranic verse. So Ibn Umar, his son, used to say, when people said one thing and Umar said another, the Quran would be revealed to confirm what Umar said.
So, famous hadith in Bukhari and Muslim, that Umar said:
Ya Rasulullah, if only we were to take the place of Ibrahim as a praying place.
And then Allah's word was revealed and take the place of Ibrahim as your praying place.
Reference: Sahih al-Bukhari Hadith 402
The maqam Ibrahim in the haram in Mecca.
And then, Ya Rasulullah, he says, good people come to your house to visit you. And bad people come to your house to visit you. So if you put a hijab, a curtain, that would be better for the modesty of your
wives.
And that is why the ayah, the verse of the hijab was revealed. And again and again, we find this extraordinary anticipation. A number of miracles attributed to him.
He had the particular ability to recognize lies. This is part of the strength of his personality. He was a master of men.
He could read people very easily. Al-Hassan said, if anybody could recognize a liar, it was Omar ibn al-Khattab. And one story which is very famous, which is authenticated by Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in his Kitab al-Isabah, is the famous story where Omar is in Medina giving his khutbah.
And suddenly, in the middle of the khutbah, he cries out, O Sariyat, the mountain. And people have no idea what this is about. Later, an army comes back from Syria and they said that in the neighborhood of Nihavand, they'd been almost defeated and then they heard this voice apparently coming from nowhere, telling their chief, who was called Sariyat, the army commandment, to go to the mountain, have their backs to the mountain and then Allah defeated their enemies.
Omar's Asceticism
So, we find this individual who is the ruler of this enormous, expanding empire. But at the same time, somebody who is a champion of another kind of empire, which is the empire of the soul or the spirit. He's a great zahid.
He's one of the great exemplars amongst the Sahaba of taqashuf, really not being interested at all in the treats of this world. Fine food, fine clothes, where you sleep, a big house, status, prestige, all of that stuff that people are distracted by. It doesn't mean anything to him.
So, and he imposes this on his subordinates. Whenever he appointed a governor to a province, he would apply certain rules. He's not allowed to ride a fine horse in public.
He's not allowed to eat luxurious food. He's not allowed to dress in splendid robes. He's never allowed to shut his door against the poor.
And if the new governor doesn't comply with these rules, the judge, the qadi of the town is instructed to punish him. So, being a governor for Omar was not kind of the opportunity to fleece the population as it very often was or still is in many parts of the world. It was kind of nerve-wracking.
He turns out to be a hero also in a year when there is drought. A dreadful drought. It's in the the fourth year of his khilafah.
And it's a drought throughout Arabia and there's no rain and animals are dying. Thousands of people are dying and refugees are coming into Medina.
There's just no rain.
People have nothing. Their lives are already, even in good years, marginal. And now they're starving to death.
In that whole year, Omar never ate butter or fat. His stomach used to groan and he used to slap his stomach. And it made a noise in public because he was hungry.
He would slap it. Saying, nothing more for us until the people have something to eat. He once came in upon his son Asim and he found his son Asim eating meat.
What's that? He says. And he replied, it's something that we desired. And Omar said, do you eat something just because you desire it? It's enough wastefulness for a man that he eats whatever he desires.
Another episode. Omar himself narrated, one day my heart craved a fresh fish. So Yarta, his helper, mounted his camel and rode off four miles to a market and brought back a basket full of fish.
There were kind of ponds in Medina where people would produce fresh fish. And then Yarta went into Omar and Omar said, let's get up. I want to look at the camel.
And he said, have you tormented an animal just for the sake of Omar's appetite? He had ridden the camel four miles in the sun just so I can have a fish. La wallahi, he says, no, by God. Omar will not taste anything from your basket.
Other things about Omar. On his Umrah, he didn't bring a tent. But instead, simply took his top garment, the rida, and flung it over a bush and went to sleep under that.
Walking around in Medina, if he ever saw something that might be useful to anybody, even a rag or a piece of wood, he would pick it up and throw it into somebody's house just in case it turned out to be useful. One of his relatives once came to him and said, you have the bayt al-mal. He institutes the treasury in the Muslim polity.
And his relative said, can I have something from the treasury? And Omar shouts at him. He berates him. Do you want me to meet Allah as one of the kings who abused their trust? And then he goes to his own property and gives him 10,000 silver coins from his own property.
Omar's Innovations
During his khilafah, he shows another dimension to his personality which is actually he's a kind of lateral thinker. He does a lot of new things. Already, Arabia has been made new.
Tribalism has been replaced by the sharia. Paganism has been replaced by tawheed. The tribes are now united under a single government.
This has never happened before in a million years of Arabian history. But Omar is somebody who is also thinking big and laying down some of the policies which become part of Muslim political theory after that. So, for instance, one of his innovations is that he's the first to use the hijri dating.
This comes from the 16th year of the hijrah. And he's the one who introduces it. In Rabi' al-awwal of the year 16, the Muslims start to use the calendar which we still use today.
He is the first person to have collected all of the Quran in a single book.
He is the first person to have created garrison towns.
Following the conquests, instead of the Muslims living in the ancient cities and having to find places to live and clashing with the local populations and interfering with their ways and being influenced by them, he creates new cities.
He's the founder of cities, including great cities like Basra and Kufa in southern Iraq. And there are cities further east in Iran and also Fustat in Egypt, which we'll talk about shortly. He's the founder of those cities.
Fustat then grows into Cairo, so you could say he founded the city of Cairo.
The historians say he's the first person to have created the system of pensions.
Now, as he said in his acceptance speech, I am with the weak amongst you.
And he's creating something that almost looks like a welfare state. Because from the revenues of the treasury, and now they're ruling this huge area, he is giving money to orphans and for the support of the old. One of the first cases in history where there is state funding in a systematic way, a pension for old people, and also for pensioners who have been returning from the wars.
In the year of the drought, he also creates some kind of famine relief. Thousands are dying, especially in the desert. Medina, the mosque, is packed with refugees.
And he introduces a rationing system. And he also has public dinners. And we're told that maybe 100,000 people in Medina would attend these dinners, and they were free.
But the food was limited, so he sent out letters to his new governors in Syria, Iran, and Egypt. And Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, who's in Syria, sends him a letter saying, of course, ya Amir al-Mu'mina, I shall send you a camel loaded with food so long that when the first camels of the caravan get to Medina, the end of
the caravan is still making its way out of Damascus. So the famine is relieved through Omar's speedy famine relief efforts.
And the other caravans that are coming and are diverted to other parts of Arabia, including Najd. And the people of Najd, who have rebelled against Abu Bakr, have a lot to thank Omar for, because firstly, all of the captives of those wars, Omar releases. One of the first things he does after taking power is he releases all of the war prisoners.
And also, they're receiving caravans from Syria, which save probably hundreds of thousands of them from starvation. And that does a lot to cement Caliphate authority there and to make them realize that being part of the world of Islam is a good thing. And the next year, Alhamdulillah, the rain returns and Omar sends back the refugees, the displaced people, to their own homeland and exempts them from the payment of zakat for two years, just to make things easier.
He leads the people in the Hajj every year. Every year of his Khilafah, he's on the Hajj. And in the final year of his rule, he also takes the Prophet's widows on the Hajj, all of them.
He makes a point of taking them with him on the Hajj. Because of the growing size of Islam, he takes the initiative to expand the Haramain. In Mecca, basically, there was the Kaaba and a kind of open space around it, and then streets just coming out into the open space.
He buys some of the neighboring houses, demolishes them, and puts a wall around. And some of the doors into the Kaaba that are there to this day, obviously they've been updated and are much fancier now, but the locations are reflecting the ways in which Hazrat Omar would place doors there. And Abu Bakr had not done this.
And in Medina as well. The wooden pillars were replaced with brick pillars. The Haram was extended in the direction of the Qibla.
Of course, the Khuzarat, the rooms of the wives of the Holy Prophet, were inviolable. He wouldn't demolish those. And he also creates a place, quite characteristic, a place called Al-Butaiha, which is just to the east of the mosque.
He's annoyed when people are kind of engaging in chit-chat in the mosque or arguing in the mosque. So he designates a particular place. If people want to gossip or chat or raise their voices or argue, they go to that place called Al-Butaiha and leave the mosque for prayer and for ibadah.
Omar's Personal Accountability
In terms of his commitment to this welfare state idea, his style as a ruler is quite remarkable. And there's many stories that are told of his sense of personal accountability for the poorest in the city of Medina. His habit was to go out at night and to see what was going on.
And one night he went past a house with a courtyard and he heard children crying and there was a woman who was cooking. So he calls out, Oh, female slave of Allah, why are those children crying? And she says, they're crying from hunger. And he says, but you're cooking.
And he says, it's just water that I'm boiling to lull them into thinking that food is coming so that they go to sleep. And Omar cries. And he goes to the treasury and he takes a sack and he fills the sack with grain and with dates and with clothes.
And he tells his servant and assistant Aslam, Aslam, help me to carry this. Put it on my back. Commander of the believers, I can carry it for you.
It's better for me to carry it. Omar's about 60 at this time. He says, oh Aslam, you wretch.
I'm going to carry it because I'm the one who will be asked about them in the next world. So he carried it on his shoulder until he brought it to the woman's house. And then he tipped some oil and other things into the pot and he cooked it himself.
And he cooked it and then when it was done, he put the food himself into the mouths of the children. And then, and Aslam recorded this afterwards, he amused the children by pretending to be a lion and kind of making them laugh. And Aslam said, why did you do that? And he said, on my way there, I promised myself that I wouldn't leave until I saw the children smiling.
And so I could make them smile just with the food and so I played around until they laughed. Important to remember that because sometimes we think of Omar as being somebody who's tough with women. And the story about the black girl who hides the drum because she's afraid of Omar can sometimes give us that sense, kind of stern, patriarchal figure.
But actually, his concern for women is reported in a number of famous accounts. So let's listen to this, and there's a lot of these. And some of them are quite extraordinary.
A Shaabi narrated, A man came to Omar ibn al-Khattab. I have a daughter who I buried alive in the Jahiliyyah. But then we pulled her out again before she died.
And then she lived into the time of Islam with us and she became Muslim. And then she committed one of the mortal sins, a criminal offense. Probably the senses here, fornication or adultery.
And after having committed the sin, she took a knife in order to kill herself. And we were able to stop her, even though she'd already cut some of her veins. And then we bandaged her up and healed her until she was well.
And then after that, she made her tawbah and she became a righteous person. And now she is being proposed to by somebody. Should I tell that somebody and his family about her story? Otherwise, is it my duty to tell them that she's troubled, she's had this difficult history?
أَتُبْدِي مَا سَتَرَهُ اللهُ ؟
Are you going to make public something which Allah has hidden?
And Omar said,
By Allah, if you tell anybody about her story, I shall inflict a punishment that will be feared even by the people of the garrison towns.
Give her the marriage of a chaste Muslim woman.
That's characteristic. And there's other tales that could be said about Omar and his defense of women and of their honor.
The Conquests Under Omar
Now, we haven't looked much at his specific policies and we focused on Omar in Medina and the people of Medina and his social welfare initiatives. But at the same time, the world is being changed outside the frontiers. The conquest of Syria is already underway.
Remember, the Byzantines have been massing at the frontier. There has already been a conflict at Mu'tah. Abu Bakr has sent the army that is present outside Medina at the death of the Holy Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and he sent them north to Syria.
And Abu Bakr seems to have been a great strategist because there's a four-pronged invasion of Syria. Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah is invading from the south. And Khalid ibn al-Walid, the great general who is now Muslim, has marched suddenly and in a very brilliant flanking movement across the desert from al- Hira in southern Iraq to catch the Byzantines unexpectedly from the east.
And he does this by finding a route across the trackless desert so that for two days the army doesn't drink anything but they come to the oasis that they're heading for in time. And this allows them to fight the battle of Ajnadayn in the time of Abu Bakr. It was one of the great battles of early Islam.
And then they move on to besiege Damascus and it's during the siege of Damascus that Hazrat Abu Bakr dies. After the siege, Khalid allows the Byzantine soldiers to withdraw and gives them three days to withdraw and guarantees peace to the population. That's the first Muslim conquest of Damascus.
One of the first things Omar does is to sack Khalid. We're not quite sure why. Khalid, one of the greatest generals of history, is defeating the Persians and the Byzantines simultaneously.
Omar sacks him, possibly because Khalid is new in Islam. He was the champion of the Quraysh in their attempts to attack Medina before he was a Muslim. And he seems to have feared, and he was a good judge of character, that maybe Khalid was starting to get political ideas of his own, but we don't really know.
But in any case, Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah sees Khalid no longer the field marshal, but he makes him commander of the cavalry, which turns out to be a decision of enormous repercussions. Once they've taken Damascus, they move west. And now Palestine is more or less cut off.
And slowly the cities of Palestine are reduced. Gaza, Tiberias, Nablus, Caesarea, which is on the coast, until only Jerusalem remains in Byzantine hands. The Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, shattered by this, offers them a truce.
And the truce is agreed to, but treacherously Heraclius launches an attack anyway. And this allows Khalid and Abu Ubaidah to start moving into northern Syria. And they capture Homs, the town of Hermesa.
Of course, Homs is the city which now is being besieged by the Alawite forces. But it was Khalid who's actually buried in Homs who first captured it for the Muslims. And he captures some Byzantine prisoners and frees them.
And one of them tells him that Heraclius is secretly raising a gigantic army of 200,000 men, which by the standards of the time, even by contemporary standards, is bigger than the entire British army now, for instance. It's a huge force, in order to take back Damascus and strike further south, Medina, Mecca. So the conquest of northern Syria is called off and Khalid moves back to Damascus.
And at the same time, the Byzantine emperor has entered into an alliance with the Persian emperor, Yazdegerd III, so that they will coordinate their attacks simultaneously to completely destroy Muslim forces. But Yazdegerd doesn't actually do this for various reasons. And this allows the Muslims to hold on to Syria.
Omar is writing letters to Yazdegerd, inviting him to Islam, but he refuses. So this huge army of Heraclius moves south, and the intention is to mop up the Muslim armies in different places to divide their forces.
And Khalid and Abu Ubaidah retreat to the plain of Yarmouk and withdraw from northern Syria.
And incidentally, you get a great sense of Omar's and his governor's akhlaq in this, in that before they leave these towns that they've occupied, they repay all of the taxes that they have charged. They say, we're not going to be ruling you, so we don't have the right to this kharaj and the jizya. So they go around household to household paying them back the taxes that they have charged, which is one of the few cases in history of taxes being systematically repaid, I guess.
The Battle of Yarmouk
But anyway, they withdraw from northern Syria. And the Battle of Yarmouk takes place, one of the three or four great monumental apocalyptic battles in human history. Byzantine legions, about 125,000 crack troops, including the kind of heavy armor of the day, the cataphracts, the heavy Byzantine cavalry, more or less unstoppable.
And it's good terrain for cavalry. It's the flat plain near the river Yarmouk, which flows east into the Jordan. 125,000 Byzantines, about 30,000 Muslims.
And the Byzantines have these huge tank-like heavy cavalries, feudal cavalries from Anatolia. And they chain together their infantry in order to emphasize that they're not going to run away and to make it harder for the Muslim-like cavalry to cross their lines. And the battle lasts for six days.
And it's a great thing in the Arab chronicles. And each day has a particular name. The first day is a day of kind of single combat.
Each army sends out a hero, and they watch him challenge a hero from the other side. And the Byzantines start to become disoriented because already some of the Byzantines are kind of weakening and converting to Islam. And one of the Byzantine commanders, a certain George, comes out as though he's to challenge one of the Muslims, but instead says his shahada and goes over to the Muslim side.
So this conflict goes on day after day. And Khalid isn't really moving very much. For five days, it's basically a defensive struggle.
But then on the sixth day, suddenly he seizes his opportunity. He's already blocked off the possible points of exit where the Byzantines might run away to if they were broken and defeated. So there's no way for them to escape.
And he sends in his light cavalry. And the light cavalry is really the kind of pièce de résistance of the Muslim army. These are people who've been brought up in the desert with horses all of their lives.
And they're so well coordinated that they manage to strike the Byzantines unexpectedly at various weak points and to divide the heavy cavalry. The heavy cavalry flees, and the infantry is left vulnerable, and the Byzantines are shattered. So Khalid pursues the retreating Byzantines, and then he is able to recapture Damascus, where it seems that he's welcomed by the population.
Part of the population is Arab anyway. Many of them are monophysites and not happy with Byzantine Christianity which has been persecuting them. The Jews systematically are in favor of the Muslim conquest because the Byzantines have been persecuting them, and the Muslims are promising to allow them to live in Jerusalem again.
So they're welcomed when they return to Damascus in the second conquest. Heraclius, who's in Antioch, flies into a rage, goes back to Constantinople and bids Syria a final farewell. And the region has been