The Death of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him)

He is ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (1) ibn Nufayl ibn ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ibn Riyāḥ ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Qurṭ ibn Razāḥ ibn ʿAdiyy ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy (ibn Ghālib) ibn Fihr ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah ibn Khuzaymah ibn Mudrikah ibn Ilyās ibn Muḍar ibn Nizār ibn Maʿadd ibn ʿAdnān, the Qurashi, Abū Ḥafṣ al-ʿAdawī, surnamed al-Fārūq—it is said that the People of the Book were the first to call him by this title. His mother was Ḥantamah bint Hishām, the sister of Abū Jahl ibn Hishām (2).

ʿUmar embraced Islam at the age of twenty-seven. He was present at Badr, Uḥud, and every other engagement alongside the Prophet ﷺ. He joined several expeditions and commanded some of them. He was the first to be addressed as “Commander of the Believers,” the first to introduce the dating of documents, the one who gathered the people for the tarāwīḥ prayers, and the first to patrol Medina by night. He carried the whip and used it for discipline, prescribed eighty lashes for drinking wine, opened up vast territories, founded garrison towns, and mustered armies. He instituted the kharāj land tax, set up administrative registers (dawāwīn), fixed stipends, appointed judges, and organized the provinces—such as al-Sawād, al-Ahwāz, the mountain districts, Fars, and others. He conquered the whole of Syria, the Jazīrah, Mosul, Mayyāfāriqīn, Āmid, Armenia, Egypt, and Alexandria, and he died while his armies were campaigning in the region of Rayy.

Among his Syrian conquests were al-Yarmūk, Buṣrā, Damascus, the Jordan, Baysān, Ṭabariyyah, al-Jābiyah, Palestine, Ramla, ʿAsqalān, Gaza, the coastal towns, and Jerusalem. He likewise took Egypt, Alexandria, Tripoli in the west, and Barqah. Of the Syrian cities he subdued Baʿlabakk, Ḥimṣ, Qinnasrīn, Ḥalab, and Antioch, and he opened the Jazīrah, Ḥarrān, al-Ruhā, al-Raqqah, Naṣībīn, Raʾs ʿAyn, and Sumaysāṭ.