the afternoon onward. He looked down, came out, brought me into the monastery, fed me, gave me water, presented me with gifts, and kept studying me intently.
He asked about my situation, and I replied, “I have lost my companions.”
He said, “You are looking with the eye of a frightened man,” and continued to scrutinize me. Then he added, “The people of the Christian religion know that I am the most learned of them in their Scripture, and I think you are the one who will drive us from this land. Will you write me a deed of safety for this monastery of mine (1)?”
I said, “Good man, you have gone down a strange path.” He persisted until I wrote him a document granting what he requested.
When it was time for me to depart, he gave me a she-donkey and said, “Ride her; when you reach your companions, send her back to me alone, for she will not pass by a monastery without their honoring her.” I did as he instructed.
When ʿUmar later came to conquer Jerusalem, that monk brought the document to him at al-Jābiyah, and ʿUmar confirmed it for him, on condition that he host any Muslim who passed by and guide them along the road.
It was narrated by Ibn ʿAsākir (2) and others. Ibn ʿAsākir (3) also transmitted it through another chain in the biography of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Usāmah al-Qurashī al-Balqāwī from Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father, where he mentioned a long and remarkable report—this is only part (4) of it. We have set out the ʿUmarī Conditions for the Christians of Syria at length in our book al-Aḥkām and have devoted a separate treatise to them; praise and gratitude belong to Allah.
We have likewise quoted his sermon at al-Jābiyah, with its exact wording and chains of transmission, in the volume we dedicated to the Musnad of ʿUmar, and we have recorded his humility on entering Syria in the biography we compiled for him.
Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā said:
Al-Rabīʿ ibn Thaʿlab related to me; Abū Ismāʿīl al-Muʾaddib narrated to us, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Hurmaz al-Makkī, from Abū ʿĀliyah (5) al-Shāmī, who said: ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb arrived at al-Jābiyah on the road to Iliyaʾ, riding a light-colored camel (6). His bald head gleamed under the sun; he wore neither cap nor turban. His legs dangled between the two sides of the saddle with no stirrups. His saddle-cloth (7) was a woolen Ambajāni (8) cloak: it was his cushion while he rode and his bedding when he dismounted. His baggage was a nimrah (9) or a striped cloak stuffed with palm fiber—his pack on the journey and his pillow when he alighted. He wore a shirt of coarse karābīs (10) cloth that—