Umar II
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Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (c. 682 - 720) was an Umayyad caliph who ruled from 717 to 720. Unlike previous Umayyad caliphs, he was not a hereditary successor to the former caliph, but was appointed. But he was also a cousin of the former caliph, being the son of Abd al-Malik's younger brother Abd al-Aziz.
Umar was born around 682. Some traditions state that he was born in Medina while others claim that he was born in Egypt. His father was Abd al-Aziz, the governor of Egypt and younger brother of caliph Abd al-Malik. Umar was a great-grandson of the second Rightly Guided Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab. According to a Muslim tradition, Umar ibn al-Khattab became impressed with a common woman whom he had overheard refusing to obey her mother's orders to sell adultered milk. As a reward, Umar brought this woman to his court and offered to marry her to his son Asim. The woman accepted, and from this union was born a girl that would in due course become the mother of Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz. Umar would grow up in Medina and live there until the death of his father, after which he was summoned to Damascus by Abd al-Malik and married to his daughter Fatima. His father-in-law would die soon after, and he would serve as governor of Medina under his cousin Al-Walid I. Unlike most rulers of that era though, Umar formed a council with which he administered the province. His time in Medina was so notable that official grievances sent to Damascus all but ceased. In addition, many people emigrated to Medina from Iraq seeking refuge from their harsh governor, Al-Hajjaj bin Yousef. This angered the Iraqi governor, and he pressed al-Walid to remove Umar. Much to the dismay of the people of Medina, al-Walid bowed to Hajjaj's pressure and dismissed Umar from his post. By this time, Umar had developed an impeccable reputation across the Islamic empire.
Umar continued to live in Medina through the remainder of al-Walid's reign and that of Walid's brother Suleiman. Suleiman, who was Umar's cousin and had always admired him, ignored his own brothers and son when it came time to appoint his successor and instead nominated Umar. Umar reluctantly accepted the position after trying unsuccessfully to dissuade Suleiman, and he approached it unlike any other Ummayad caliph before him. Umar was extremely pious and disdainful of worldly luxuries. He preferred simplicity to the extravagance that had become a hallmark of the Umayyad lifestyle, depositing all assets and finery meant for the caliph into the public treasury and abandoning the caliphal palace to the family of Suleiman. Umar instead preferred to live in modest dwellings and wore rough linens instead of royal robes. According to a Muslim tradition, a female visitor once came to Umar's house seeking charity and saw a raggedly-dressed man patching holes in the building's walls. Assuming that the man was a servant of the caliph, she asked Umar's wife, "Don't you fear God? Why don't you veil in the presence of this man?" The woman was shocked to learn that the "servant" was in fact the caliph himself.
Though he had the people's overwhelming support, he publicly encouraged them to elect someone else if they were not satisfied with him (an offer no one ever took him up on). Umar confiscated the estates seized by Ummayad officials and redistributed them to the people, while making it a personal goal to attend to the needs of every person in his empire. Fearful of being tempted into bribery, he rarely accepted gifts, and when he did he promptly deposited them in the public treasury. He even pressured his own wife--who had been daughter, sister and wife to three caliphs in their turn--to donate her jewelry to the public treasury. At one point he almost ordered the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to be stripped of its precious stones and expensive fixtures in favor of the treasury but he desisted on learning that the Mosque was a source of envy to his Byzantine rivals in Constantinople. These moves made him unpopular with the Umayyad court, but endeared him to the masses, so much so that the court could not move against him in the open.
In an effort to bring the empire into greater conformity with the standards set by the Prophet, Umar made a number of important religious reforms. He abolished a custom established shortly after the Umayyads came to power whereby Ali ibn Abi Talib, an Umayyad rival revered by Sunnis as the fourth and final Rightly Guided Caliph and by Shias as the first Imam, would be cursed during Friday sermons, replacing the tradition with the recitation of the following Surah from the Quran:
- Surely God enjoins justice, doing of good and giving to kinsfolk
In addition, Umar was keen to enforce the Sharia, pushing to end drinking and bathhouses where men and women would mix freely. He continued the welfare programs of the last few Umayyad emperors, expanding them and including special programs for orphans and the destitute. He would also abolish the Jizya tax applied on dhimmis, non-Muslims who lived inside the Muslim state.
Though Umar did not place as much an emphasis on expanding the Empire's borders as his predecessors had, he was not passive. His armies successfuly repelled an attack from the Turks in Azerbaijan, and he put down a number of Kharijite uprisings.
While Umar's reign was very short, he is very highly regarded in the Sunni Muslim memory. He is considered one of the finest rulers in Islamic History, second only to the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs. In fact, in some circles, he is affectionately referred to as the Fifth and last Rightly Guided Caliph. His reforms in favor of the people greatly angered the nobility of the Umayyads, and they would eventually bribe a servant into poisoning his food. Umar learned of this on his death bed and pardoned the culprit, collecting the punitive payments he was entitled to under Islamic Law but depositing them in the public treasury. He would die in 720 in Aleppo.
He was succeeded by his cousin Yazid II
| Preceded by: Suleiman | Caliph 717–720 | Succeeded by: Yazid II External link
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