‘Umar I

Muslim caliph (r. 634-644)

• Born: c. 586
• Birthplace: Mecca, Arabia (now in Saudi Arabia)
• Died: November 3, 0644
• Place of death: Mecca, Arabia (now in Saudi Arabia)

ՙUmar pursued territorial expansion of Islam through military conquest following indecisive moves by his predecessor Abū Bakr. He also helped to institutionalize early Islamic forms of government, and he developed systems of compensation and accountability for military members.

Early Life

The historical importance of ՙUmar I (EW-mahr), second of the four Rashidun (rightly guided) caliphs in Islam, began well before the death of Prophet Muḥammad in 632. During the formative years of Muḥammad’s prophetic message, individual decisions to convert to Islam played a more important role than kinship associations in forming the original ummah, or community of believers. One might have thought that most of Muḥammad’s supporters would have come from his own clan of Hashim, or from other important Qurayshi tribal families, including members of the second key Meccan clan, the Umayyads. In fact, the Qurayshis held quite divided opinions of Muḥammad’s claim to the cloak of true prophecy.

The kinship status of ՙUmar ibn KhatŃtŃāb’s mother, who was a member of the wealthy (and from Muḥammad’s point of view, arrogant) Makhzūmī clan, may have numbered him naturally among the opponents of a religious call that emphasized equality within a new “classless” religious community. Although the youthful Makhzūmī clan member ՙUmar was not a strident critic of Muḥammad, his decision to convert (by tradition in the fifth year of the Prophet’s mission) seems to have marked an important turning point: ՙUmar’s influence as a high ranking Meccan went with him into the fledgling ranks of a Muslim community that would, within a few years, need identifiable potential for various forms of leadership. His eventual role as Muḥammad’s second successor (caliph) would show how valuable such leadership would be.

Until 634, however, ՙUmar’s role would be to declare himself among the first ranks of Muḥammad’s companions, or ashab. The title ashab, limited to only a handful of early converts, ranks among the highest of the original founders of the Islamic community. It may have been the presence of ՙUmar and a few other highly respected individuals in the circle around Muḥammad that led to a growing number of converts. This did not suffice, however, to convince more Meccans to join the Muslim community. In fact, the possibility of open persecution was rising. To protect his religious community, in 620 (marking year one, or 1 a.h., of the Islamic Hijrah calendar) Muḥammad called on the ashab to emigrate to the neighboring town of Yathrib, which later became known as the city of the Prophet, or Medina. This flight seemed to be the only way to build a larger Islamic community free from the danger of Meccan opponents.

Until the successful return of the Muslims to Mecca in 630, traditional accounts emphasize the importance of political abilities of Muḥammad and his companions in establishing alliances with various supportive clans in Medina and using these alliances to make the Islamic community into a potential military force. Indeed the organization of military forays (marking traditional small scale victories and some failures) against the Meccans must have been one of ՙUmar’s chief responsibilities at this time. Little direct evidence of his role emerges, however, until Muḥammad’s death in 632. With this came the need to select a successor to the Prophet of God, or Khalīfah Rasūl Allāh, not as a divinely inspired leader but as a respected and responsible leader of the Muslim community. The first such selection, which seems to have been based on Muḥammad’s own preference, led to the appointment of Abū Bakr , an elder among the companions, and Muḥammad’s father-in-law. At first Abū Bakr had to meet the challenge of protecting the community from its enemies and potential backsliders among recently converted Arab tribes (the so-called Wars of Apostasy inside the Arabian Peninsula itself). Some raids by Muslims into the Byzantine and Sāsānian domains beyond traditional tribal borders did occur, even during Abū Bakr’s short caliphate.

Life’s Work

It fell to ՙUmar I, the second caliph, to transform these military efforts into real expansionary campaigns. The terms of his accession to the caliphate merit some discussion, since his was apparently the last succession to be accepted without dissension from emergent subgroups in the Islamic community.

Whereas Abū Bakr had essentially been chosen by the immediate circle of Prophet companions and was recognized for his close ties with Muḥammad, ՙUmar’s succession in 634 contained early seeds of disappointment that ՙAlī, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, did not garner enough support for the post. Potential divisions over the question of caliphal succession generally, and ՙAlī’s hereditary claim to leadership of the Islamic community in particular, would surface openly soon after ՙUmar’s assassination in 644.

In the meantime, the second caliph’s rapid escalation of the first territorial conquests made by Abū Bakr (first the Persian-held al-Hīrah in Iraq in 633, and then Byzantine Syria, or Palestine, in 634) created military momentum that would reinforce ՙUmar’s position politically. Muslims often cite the defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of the Yarmūk (a tributary of the Jordan River) in 636 as the first great victory that would leave most of Syria open to almost unopposed advance by Arab armies. By that date, ՙUmar’s generals had already scored a victory in 635 at al-Qādisīyah, near Najaf in Iraq, and prepared to cross the Euphrates River to expel the Persians from their capital at Ctesiphon. When the capital city was taken, the Persian shah retreated with his army into the mountains leading into Iran.

Soon it was apparent that Caliph ՙUmar would have to act to consolidate these new holdings in the name of the Islamic community. This meant introducing at least some semi-institutionalized government structures before calling on Arab tribesmen to continue their conquests.

The first indication of ՙUmar’s skill as a governing leader was the innovative construction of totally new garrison towns (misr), initially in Al-Kūfa, near the site of al-Qādisīyah, then in Basra near the head of the Persian Gulf. Each misr was designed to keep Arab military forces under close surveillance while their generals (appointed by ՙUmar) dispatched tribe members further into zones of fighting to receive new Arab elements to replace them. The amsar (plural for misr) physically isolated Arab Islamic warriors from already existing towns in Syria and Iraq.

The garrison camp-town principle was soon applied in another conquest, this time in Egypt, where the garrison of FustŃāt (possibly the earliest Islamic site on the edge of what is now Cairo) would apply the name misr to the entire country.

When Islamic armies reached Egypt (under a somewhat independently minded general ՙAmr ibn al-ՙAs) and prepared to advance westward across North Africa (a process that led a combined Arab and Berber army to the Straits of Gibraltar in a little more than sixty years), ՙUmar was incited to introduce another new key institution of governance. ՙUmar instituted the diwan, roughly translated as muster sheet, which was a tribal listing that named each Arab clan (and its individual members) serving in the ranks of the caliph’s armies. The diwan was developed apparently to keep track of lengths of service and involvement in specific campaigns and battles to determine appropriate compensation, including clan rights to seizure of booty. This “payroll” system provided a formal structure for what might otherwise have become uncontrollable plundering by individuals or rival tribal clans.

Probably the most significant military victories under ՙUmar’s banners involved pursuit of the Persians into Iran, where, at al-Qādisīyah in 636 and Nahāvand in 642, the last Sāsānian king, Yazdegerd III (r. 632-651), met defeat and fled from the important city of Hamadān toward Iran’s distant northeastern province of Khorāsān. This left open to Arab advance the mountain passes leading from Hamadān to the rich city of Eşfahān in Fārs province. Although Yazdegerd was able to find refuge, he was eventually betrayed and assassinated in 651. Ironically, the defeated Persian shah outlived ՙUmar by more than six years. The second caliph, who by the early 640’s had preferred to adopt the title Amir al-Mu՚minin (commander of the faithful), was assassinated during his return from his second pilgrimage to Mecca. His assassin was a disgruntled Persian slave named Feroz.

Significance

Aside from the unexpectedness of the violent end to his life, ՙUmar’s sudden passing created a succession dilemma that would affect the entire future of the caliphate specifically and Islam in general. Some have said he had already appointed a council of Islamic notables to elect the next caliph; others claim that the council emerged spontaneously when the community learned of ՙUmar’s sudden death. Two of its five members, Abū Ṭālib (d. 619) and ՙUthmān ibn ՙAffān (d. 656), were related to the Prophet through marriages to Muḥammad’s blood kin. In the case of his cousin ՙAlī, this marriage tie was very close, involving a union with Muḥammad’s daughter, Fāimah. Instead of selecting ՙAlī, the council settled on the aristocratic but otherwise not well qualified ՙUthmān, who would lead the Muslim community until he, too, was assassinated, in 656. This time the mortal blow was dealt by unruly military contingents unhappy with the application of the pay schedules and promotion system developed by ՙUmar. Whatever the cause of the rebellion, ՙUthmān’s death allowed ՙAlī to rise to the position of caliph something he definitely expected at the time of ՙUmar’s demise. Not too many years would pass, however, before ՙAlī would be murdered by opponents of what might be called “in-house” nominations to the office of caliph.

The significance of these events happening so soon after ՙUmar’s passing is key: The era of consensus around the charismatic figures of the first two caliphs clearly was coming to a close. The longer term significance of this loss of consensus would be institutionalized, as the partisans of ՙAlī (Shiat ՙAlī, or Shias) broke off from the main line of support for the orthodoxy (Sunnism) that Caliph ՙUmar had tried to engender as a bond uniting all Muslims.

After Muḥammad: The Orthodox Caliphs, 632-661

Reign

• Caliph

632-634

• Abū Bakr

634-644

• ՙUmar I

644-656

• ՙUthmān ibn ՙAffān

656-661

• Alī ibn Abī ṭālib

Bibliography

Chaudri, Rashīd Ahmad. ՙUmar Farooq. Islamabad, Pakistan: Islam International, 2001. Provides a recent example of Pakistani views of the traditional origins of Islam and ՙUmar’s key role in Arab conquests and government organization of a multinational community.

Majdalawi, Faruq. Islamic Administration Under Omar ibn al KhatŃtŃāb. Amman, Jordan: Majdalawi Press, 2002. A privately published translation of the author’s doctoral dissertation in Arabic. Like Chaudri’s text above, this work is mainly useful for showing recent trends in Islamic reconsideration of well-known topics drawn, in almost all cases, from traditional sources.

Sadi, Abdullah Jaman Said. Fiscal Policy in the Islamic State: Its Origins and Contemporary Relevance. Translated by Ahmad al-Anani. Newcastle, England: Lyme Books, 1986. Because of ՙUmar’s key contributions to Islamic fiscal conceptions and practices, this study of the institutions he founded is of both general and particular interest.

Shamsul-Ulama Allama Shibli Numani. Omar the Great: The Second Caliph of Islam. Translated by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan. 2 vols. Lahore, Pakistan: M. Ashraf, 1961-1962. This is a translation of a traditionally oriented biography of ՙUmar. The original work seems to have been published posthumously in 1943 and 1957.

Tritton, A. S. The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects: A Critical Study of the Covenant of ՙUmar. 1930. Reprint. London: F. Cass, 1970. This study documents ՙUmar’s endeavors to deal administratively with non-converted subjects of the Islamic state, both in terms of guarantees of religious practice and fiscal responsibilities. Bibliography.