Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz

Governorship of the Hejaz

Shortly after his accession, Abd al-Malik's son and successor, al-Walid I (r. 705–715), appointed Umar governor of Medina.(r. 706–712) According to Julius Wellhausen, al-Walid's intention was to use Umar to reconcile the townspeople of Medina to Umayyad rule and "obliterate [sic] the evil memory" of the preceding Umayyad governors, namely Hisham ibn Isma'il al-Makhzumi, whose rule over Medina had been harsh for its inhabitants. Umar took up the post in February/March 706 and his jurisdiction later extended to Mecca and Taif.

Information about his governorship is scant, but most traditional accounts note that he was a "just governor", according to historian Paul Cobb. He often led the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca and showed favor toward the Islamic legal scholars of Medina, notably Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab. Umar tolerated many of these scholars' open criticism of the Umayyad government's conduct. Other accounts held him to be materialistic during his early career. On al-Walid's orders, Umar undertook the reconstruction and expansion of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina beginning in 707. Under Umar's generally lenient rule, the Hejaz became a refuge for Iraqi political and religious exiles fleeing the persecutions of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, al-Walid's powerful viceroy over the eastern half of the Caliphate. According to Cobb, this served as Umar's "undoing" as al-Hajjaj pressured the caliph to dismiss Umar in May/June 712. Prompted by al-Hajjaj, al-Walid recalled Umar and split the Hejaz into separate provinces, appointing Uthman ibn Hayyan al-Murri to govern Medina and Khalid ibn Abdallah ibn Khalid ibn Asid to govern Mecca.

Courtier of al-Walid and Sulayman

Despite his dismissal, Umar remained in al-Walid's favor, being the brother of the caliph's first wife, Umm al-Banin bint Abd al-Aziz. He remained in al-Walid's court in Damascus until the caliph's death in 715, and according to the 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi, he performed the funeral prayers for al-Walid. The latter's brother and successor, Sulayman (r. 715–717), held Umar in high regard. Alongside Raja ibn Haywa, an influential religious figure in the Umayyads' court, Umar served as a principal adviser of Sulayman. He accompanied the latter when he led the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 716 and on his return to Jerusalem. Likewise, he was at the caliph's side at the Muslims' marshaling camp at Dabiq in northern Syria, where Sulayman directed the massive war effort to conquer the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 717.

Caliphate

Accession

According to the traditional Muslim sources, when Sulayman was on his deathbed in Dabiq, he was persuaded by Raja to designate Umar as his successor. Sulayman's son Ayyub had been his initial nominee, but predeceased him, while his other sons were either too young or away fighting on the Byzantine front. The nomination of Umar voided the wishes of Abd al-Malik, who sought to restrict the office to his direct descendants. The elevation of Umar, a member of a cadet branch of the dynasty, in preference to the numerous descendants of Abd al-Malik surprised these princes. According to Wellhausen, "nobody dreamed of this, himself [Umar] least of all". Raja managed the affair, calling the Umayyad princes into Dabiq's mosque and demanding that they recognize Sulayman's will, which Raja had kept secret. Only after the Umayyads accepted did Raja reveal that Umar was the caliph's nominee. Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik voiced his opposition, but relented after being threatened with violence. A potential intra-dynastic conflict was averted with the designation of a son of Abd al-Malik, Yazid II, as Umar's successor.

According to the historian Reinhard Eisener, Raja's role in the affair was likely "exaggerated"; "more reasonable" was that Umar's succession was the result of "traditional patterns, like seniority and well-founded claims" stemming from Caliph Marwan I's original designation of Umar's father, Abd al-Aziz, as Abd al-Malik's successor, which had not materialized due to Abd al-Aziz predeceasing Abd al-Malik. Umar acceded without significant opposition on 22 September 717.

Provincial administrations

Shortly after his accession, Umar overhauled the administrations of the provinces. He appointed competent men that he could control, indicating his intention "to keep a close eye on provincial administration". Wellhausen noted that the caliph did not leave the governors to their own devices in return for their forwarding of the provincial revenues; rather, he actively oversaw his governors' administrations and his main interest was "not so much the increase of power as the establishment of right".

He subdivided the vast governorship established over Iraq and the eastern Caliphate under Abd al-Malik's viceroy al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. Sulayman's appointee to this super-province, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, was dismissed and imprisoned by Umar for failing to forward the spoils from his earlier conquest of Tabaristan along the southern Caspian coast to the caliphal treasury. In place of Ibn al-Muhallab, he appointed Abd al-Hamid ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Zayd ibn al-Khattab, a member of Caliph Umar I's family, to Kufa, Adi ibn Artah al-Fazari to Basra, al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami to Khurasan and Amr ibn Muslim al-Bahili, a brother of the conqueror Qutayba ibn Muslim, to Sind. He appointed Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari to the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia). Although many of these appointees were pupils of al-Hajjaj or affiliated with the Qays faction, Umar chose them based on their reliability and integrity, rather than opposition to Sulayman's government.

Umar appointed al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani to al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula) and Ismail ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Abi al-Muhajir to Ifriqiya. He chose these governors because of their perceived neutrality in the tribal factionalism between the Qays and Yaman and justice toward the oppressed.

Economic reforms

The most significant reform of Umar was effecting the equality of Arabs and mawali (non-Arab Muslims). This was mainly relevant to the non-Arab troops in the Muslim army, who had not been entitled to the same shares in spoils, lands and salaries given to Arab soldiers. The policy also applied to Muslim society at large. Under previous Umayyad rulers, Arab Muslims had financial privileges over non-Arab Muslims. Non-Arab converts to Islam were still expected to pay the jizya (poll tax) that they paid before becoming Muslims. Umar put into practice a new system that exempted all Muslims, regardless of their heritage, from the jizya tax. He also added some safeguards to the system to make sure that mass conversion to Islam would not cause the collapse of the finances of the Umayyad government. Under the new tax policy, converted mawali would not pay the jizya (or any other dhimmi tax), but upon conversion, their land would become the property of their villages and would thus remain liable to the full rate of the kharaj (land tax). This compensated for the loss of income due to the diminished jizya tax base. He issued an edict on taxation stating:

Whosoever accepts Islam, whether Christian, Jew or Zoroastrian, of those now subject to taxes and who joins himself to the body of the Muslims in their abode, forsaking the abode in which he was before, he shall have the same rights and duties as they have, and they are obliged to associate with him and to treat him as one of themselves.

Furthermore, early Islamic governance suffered from systematic elite appropriation of public wealth, as exemplified by Caliph Mu'awiya I confiscating conquered public property and crown lands across Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, such as former Sasanian royal estates, to turn them into private estates and land grants for his family and entourage. While early rulers treated public property as personal family inheritance, Umar II was exceptional in seeking to restrain this widespread dynastic greed and blocking elites from privatizing public crown lands, issuing a rescript to protect state lands (sawāfī) from alienation as private estates.

Domestic policies

Umar adjusted legal policies regarding wrongful death compensation (diyya, or blood money). Under the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), half of the diyya owed to non-Muslim (dhimmi) families was diverted to the state treasury (bayt al-mal). Umar terminated this practice to curb state overreach, but rather than returning the surplus to the victims' families, he left the amount halved, reflecting a regime constrained by financial insecurity and a refusal to grant full legal parity to non-Muslims. His omission established the precedent that later jurists used to permanently limit a non-Muslim's compensation to half that of a Muslim's.

Possibly to stave off potential blowback from opponents of the equalization measures, Umar expanded the Islamization drive that had been steadily strengthening under his Marwanid predecessors. The drive included measures to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims and the inauguration of an Islamic iconoclasm. According to Khalid Yahya Blankinship, he put a stop to the ritual cursing of Caliph Ali (r. 656–661), the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, in Friday prayer sermons.

Umar played a significant role in the promotion of the Sunnah of Muhammad and that of his successors. He is credited with having ordered the first official collection of hadith (sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fearing that some of it might be lost. This promotion of the sunnah and his commitment to traditional religious authority generated strong opposition from the Qadariyyah, with whom Umar held serious theological disagreements.

Military policy

Prompted by the immense costs of the ongoing campaigns, Umar shifted his military priorities upon taking power. He ordered the withdrawal of the Muslim army led by his cousin Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik from their abortive siege against Constantinople to the regions of Antioch and Malatya, closer to the Syrian frontier. He commissioned an expedition in the summer of 718 to facilitate their withdrawal. Umar kept up the annual summer raids against the Byzantine frontier, out of the obligation to jihad. He remained in northern Syria, often residing at his estate in Khunasira, where he built a fortified headquarters.

In 717, Umar dispatched a force under Ibn Hatim ibn al-Nu'man al-Bahili to Adharbayjan to disperse a group of Turks who had launched damaging raids against the province. In 718, he deployed Iraqi and Syrian troops to suppress the Kharijite rebellion of Shawdhab al-Yashkuri in Iraq, though some sources suggest that this conflict was ultimately resolved diplomatically. Such a resolution would mirror his instruction to the governor of Iraq to call the dissidents to follow "the Book of God and the sunnah of His Prophet," rather than relying on standard state coercion.

Umar is often deemed a pacifist by the sources and Cobb attributes the caliph's war-weariness to concerns over the diminishing funds of the caliphal treasury. Wellhausen asserts that Umar was "disinclined to wars of conquest, well-knowing that they were waged, not for God, but for the sake of spoil". Blankinship considers this reasoning to be "insufficient". He proposed it was the massive losses faced by the Arabs in their abortive siege against Constantinople, including the destruction of their navy, that caused Umar to view his positions in al-Andalus, separated by the rest of the Caliphate by sea, and Cilicia as acutely vulnerable to Byzantine attack. Thus he favored withdrawing Muslim forces from these two regions. This same calculus led to him to consider withdrawing Muslim forces from Transoxiana so as to shore up the defenses of Syria. Shaban views Umar's efforts to curb offensives as linked to the resentment of the Yamani elements of the army, who Shaban views to have been politically dominant under Umar, at excessive deployments in the field.

Although he halted further eastward expansion, the establishment of Islam in a number of cities in Transoxiana precluded Umar's withdrawal of Arab troops from there. During his reign, the Muslim forces in al-Andalus conquered and fortified the Mediterranean coastal city of Narbonne in modern-day France.

Death

On his way back from Damascus to Aleppo or possibly to his Khunasira estate, Umar fell ill. He died between 5 February and 10 February 720, at the age of 39, in the village of Dayr Sim'an (also called Dayr al-Naqira) near Maarat al-Numan. Umar had purchased a plot there with his own funds and was buried in the village, where the ruins of his tomb, built at an unknown date, are still visible. Umar was succeeded by Yazid II (r. 720–724).

During the Syrian Civil War, his grave and shrine were targeted twice by militias, with one attack leaving the shrine nearly completely destroyed. It was restored in 2025 by the Kalem Foundation, operating under an official agreement with the Syrian Ministry of Awqaf.

Assessment and legacy

According to English historian Hugh Kennedy, the unanimous view in the Muslim traditional sources is that Umar was pious and ruled like a true Muslim in singular opposition to the other Umayyad caliphs, who were generally considered "godless usurpers, tyrants and playboys". Similarly, Gerald Hawting states that the tradition recognized Umar as an authentic caliph, while the other Umayyads were viewed as kings. In the view of Hawting, this is partly based on the historical facts and Umar's character and actions. He holds that Umar "truly as all evidence indicates was a man of honour, dignity and a ruler worthy of every respect". Umar's status as a pious figure made him the Muslim representative in the celebrated, though likely apocryphal, Correspondence between Leo III and Umar II. This status was shared even by the dynasty's fiercest critics; notably, the Kharijite rebel Abu Hamza al-Mukhtar refrained from condemning him, and the Abbasids, despite their systematic exhumation and desecration of the bodies of previous Umayyad caliphs, pointedly exempted Umar II from such treatment, sparing his descendants as well.

As a result of this and his short term in office, it is difficult to assess the achievements of his caliphate and his motives. Indeed, Kennedy calls Umar "the most puzzling character among the Marwanid rulers". As Kennedy states "He was a pious individual who attempted to solve the problems of his day in a way which would reconcile the needs of his dynasty and state with the demands of Islam". In the assessment of H. A. R. Gibb, Umar acted to prevent the collapse of the caliphate by "maintaining the unity of the Arabs; removing the grievances of the mawālī; and reconciling political life with the claims of religion."

Recognition as the Mahdi

Before and during his rise to power, Umar was widely regarded in conservative religious circles, particularly in Medina, as the Mahdi or rightly-guided restorer of justice. This perception was closely tied to his maternal descent from Caliph Umar, whose lineage was believed by Medinan scholars to have been foretold to produce a just leader. Traditionalists such as Said ibn al-Musayyib reportedly identified Umar with this concept long before his ascension to the caliphate.

This reputation also served a political-theological function in countering rival Kufan claims that the expected leader would exclusively emerge from the Alids. The Shia Imam Muhammad al-Baqir was cited as acknowledging that the anticipated figure belonged to the Banu Abd-Shams in the person of Umar II. Not all contemporaries shared this view; in Mecca, the traditionist Tawus ibn Kaysan maintained that while Umar was rightly guided, he did not fulfill the definitive definition of the Mahdi, arguing that the true era of the title would bring absolute reward and retribution.

Family and descendants

Following his recall to Damascus following his father's death, Abd al-Malik arranged Umar's marriage to his daughter, Fatima. Umar had two other wives: his maternal cousin Umm Shu'ayb or Umm Uthman, the daughter of Shu'ayb or Sa'id ibn Zabban of the Banu Kalb tribe, and Lamis bint Ali of the Banu al-Harith. According to modern analysis by Andrew Marsham, Umar fathered a total of fourteen children split evenly between his wives and concubines. Classical accounts diverge on the complete roster of his offspring; the list of sons is preserved primarily by al-Ya'qubi, whereas Ibn Sa'd provides a different accounting with alternative names. Additionally, al-Tabari records a son named Abd al-Malik who predeceased his father.

Several of his descendants attained political or military prominence in the decades following his reign. His son Abd al-Aziz served as the governor of Medina in 744 under Caliph Yazid III. Another son, Abd Allah (from Umar's Kalbi wife), briefly governed Iraq for the Umayyads before defecting to the Kharijites and aligning with the Kharijite leader al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Shaybani; Abd Allah served as Dahhak's governor for Wasit, eastern Iraq, and western Persia while Dahhak governed western Iraq from Kufa, and ultimately died in the prison of Caliph Marwan II in Harran. Umar's line also suffered during the Abbasid purges, as evidenced by his Egypt-based grandson Isa ibn al-Walid, who was executed by the Abbasids in 750 along with several of his relatives in Palestine. However, his son Abd al-Aziz managed to secure an amān (pardon).