Hammād ibn Abī Sulaymān said: When ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz assumed the caliphate, he wept. A man asked him, “How strong is your love for this world and for the dirham (silver coin)?” He replied, “I do not love it.” The man said, “Then do not be afraid, for Allah will aid you.

Yaʿqūb al-Fasawī reported: Ibrāhīm ibn Hishām ibn Yaḥyā narrated to us—my father told me, on the authority of my grandfather—who said: I and Ibn Abī Zakariyā were standing at the door of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz when we heard weeping. It was said, “The Commander of the Believers has offered his wife a choice: she may remain in her house as she is—after he informed her that the burden upon his neck has pre-occupied him from women—or she may return to her father’s home.” She wept, and her maidservants wept with her.

Jarīr narrated from Mughīrah: ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had evening companions whose counsel he sought. The sign between them, whenever he wished them to rise and leave, was that he would say, “Whenever you wish.”

And from him: ʿUmar once delivered a sermon and said, “By Allah, any servant whose every forefather back to Adam has died is already deeply immersed in death.” (1)

Jarīr also narrated from Mughīrah: When ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was invested with authority, he gathered the Banū Marwān and said, “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, owned Fadak (2). From it he met his own expenses, assisted the young of the Banū Hāshim, and married off their widows. Fāṭimah asked him to assign it to her, but he refused. During the caliphates of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar it remained as it had been, and they dealt with it as he had. Then Marwān appropriated it, and it eventually came to me. I now realize that a property which the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, withheld even from his own daughter is not lawful for me.”