that two-thirds of them had already perished. ʿUmar’s great cauldrons were kept burning from the pre-dawn hours, with workers standing over them preparing karkūr (a coarse gruel) and various thick porridges (aṣāʾid).

Aslam said: “We used to remark that, had Allah not lifted the drought in the Year of Ashes, we would have thought ʿUmar himself would die.”

Sufyān al-Thawrī said: “Whoever claims that ʿAlī was more deserving of the caliphate than Abū Bakr and ʿUmar has charged Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and the Emigrants and Helpers with error.”

Shurayk said: “No one who has any good in him prefers ʿAlī over Abū Bakr and ʿUmar.”

Abū Usāmah said: “Do you know who Abū Bakr and ʿUmar are? To Islam they are like its father and its mother.”

Al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Ḥayy reported: “I heard Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq say, ‘I disown anyone who speaks of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in anything but good.’”

His wives and children:
• He married Zaynab bint Maẓʿūn, who bore him ʿAbd Allāh, Ḥafṣah, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.
• He married Malika al-Khuzaʿiyyah, who bore him ʿUbayd Allāh; some said that the mother of ʿUbayd Allāh—and of Zayd the Younger—was Umm Kulthūm bint Jarwal.
• He married Umm Ḥakīm bint al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām al-Makhzūmiyyah, who bore him Fāṭimah.
• He married Jamīlah bint ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit, who bore him ʿĀṣim.
• He married Umm Kulthūm bint Fāṭimah al-Zahrāʾ, to whom he settled a dowry of forty thousand; she bore him Zayd and Ruqayyah.