Abu ʿUmar al-Darir said: “He passed away in Dayr Samʿan, in the district of Hims, on a Friday, ten days before the end of Rajab, at the age of thirty-nine years and a half.”

A group of scholars maintained that he died “in Rajab”—without citing the exact day—and that his caliphate lasted two years, five months, and a few days.

Sulayman ibn ʿUmayr al-Raqqi related: Abu Umayyah the eunuch, the servant of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, narrated to us, saying: “ʿUmar sent me with two dinars to the people of the monastery and said, ‘If you will sell me the place for my grave, so be it; otherwise I shall move away from you.’ ”

Hisham ibn al-Ghaz said: “We halted at a campsite on our way back from Dabiq. When we broke camp, Makḥul went off and we did not know where he was headed. We travelled a long distance before he rejoined us, so we asked, ‘Where did you go?’ He replied, ‘I went to the grave of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, which is five miles from the campsite, and I prayed for him. By Allah, were I to swear an oath without any exception, I would say that in his time there was no one who feared Allah more, nor anyone more detached from the world, than he.’ ”

Al-Hakam ibn ʿUmar al-Ruʿayni said: “I saw ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz praying in sandals and loose trousers; he did not trim his moustache down to the skin. I also saw him begin with the sermon before the two ʿId prayers, then step down and perform the prayer. I witnessed him write to the master weavers: ‘Make the warp of khazz cloth (1) only from cotton; put no silk into it.’ I prayed with him, and he would recite ‘Bismillah al-Raḥman al-Raḥim’ aloud at the start of every surah he recited (2). I once prayed the dawn prayer behind him, and he made the qunūt