48 – ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Marwān al-Umawī * (ʿ),
son of al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ ibn Umayyah ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy ibn Kilāb. A towering imām, ḥadith master, erudite scholar, independent jurist, ascetic, devoted worshiper, and noble leader—the truly rightful Commander of the Believers. He was Abū Ḥafṣ al-Qurashī al-Umawī, a Medinan by upbringing, then an Egyptian resident; the renunciant, the rightly guided caliph, the “scar-faced” man of the Umayyads.

He narrated from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib, al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd, and Sahl ibn Saʿd. He asked Sahl for the wooden cup from which the Prophet ﷺ had drunk, and Sahl gifted it to him. On one occasion he led Anas ibn Mālik in prayer, whereupon Anas said, “I have never seen anyone whose prayer more closely resembled the prayer of Allah’s Messenger ﷺ than that of this young man.”

He also transmitted from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, ʿUrwah, Abū Salamah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Qāriẓ, ʿĀmir ibn Saʿd, Yūsuf ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām, and others.

He produced mursal reports from ʿUqbah ibn ʿĀmir, Khawlah bint Ḥakīm, and additional authorities.

He was counted among the foremost mujtahid imams and is rightly numbered among the rightly guided caliphs—may Allah’s mercy be upon him.

Among those who narrated from him were Abū Salamah—one of his own teachers—, Abū Bakr ibn Ḥazm, Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah, Ibn al-Munkadir, al-Zuhrī, ʿAnbasah ibn Saʿīd, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUblah, Tawbah al-ʿAnbarī, Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl, and Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad ibn Zāʾidah al-Laythī.