ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb
The second of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the first to be called “Commander of the Believers”. Ibn Masʿūd said: “We have been strong ever since ʿUmar accepted Islam.”
In brief
- His name
- ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ibn Nufayl, of Banū ʿAdī of Quraysh; his lineage meets the Prophet’s at Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy.
- His title
- Al-Fārūq — the one by whom God separated truth from falsehood.
- His Islam
- In the sixth year of the call, at about twenty-six, after the Prophet ﷺ prayed: “O God, strengthen Islam with the dearer of the two ʿUmars to You.”
- His caliphate
- From 13 AH to 23 AH — ten and a half years.
- In his time
- Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Persia, and Jerusalem were opened; the Hijri calendar was established, registers were created, and the treasury and an independent judiciary were founded.
- His death
- Stabbed while leading the dawn prayer in 23 AH. He was buried beside the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr, by ʿĀʾisha’s leave.
His story
Before Islam he was harsh against the Muslims. One day he set out to kill the Prophet ﷺ, passed his sister’s house where she and her husband were reading Sūrat Ṭāhā, struck them — then read the page, and his heart softened. He went to the Prophet ﷺ and accepted Islam, and that day the Muslims prayed openly at the Kaʿba for the first time.
The Qurʾān agreed with his view in several matters — the station of Abraham, the veil, the captives of Badr — so that he said: “I agreed with my Lord in three.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “Among the nations before you were people spoken to; if there is one in my nation, it is ʿUmar.”
Under him the state expanded as the Arabs had never known, while he patched his own robe and slept beneath a tree. Asked about it he said: “If a sheep were lost on the bank of the Euphrates, I would fear that God would ask me about it.”