Al-Wāqidī says:
He sought the hand of Umm Abān (1) bint ʿUtbah ibn Shaybah, but she rejected him, remarking, “He shuts his door and withholds his bounty; he enters frowning and leaves frowning.”
I add: The total number of his children—may Allah be well pleased with him—was thirteen. They were: Zayd the Elder, Zayd the Younger, ʿĀṣim, ʿAbd Allāh, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān the Elder, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān the Middle (al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār says he is Abū Shahmah), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān the Younger, ʿUbayd Allāh, ʿIyāḍ, Ḥafṣah, Ruqayyah, Zaynab, and Fāṭimah—may Allah be pleased with her.
The wives he married, whether before or after the advent of Islam, whom he later divorced or who remained until his death, numbered seven: Jamīlah bint ʿĀṣim ibn Thābit ibn [Abī] al-Aqlah; Zaynab bint Maẓʿūn; ʿĀtikah bint Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl; Quraybah (2) bint Abī Umayyah; Mulaykah bint Jarwal; Umm Ḥakīm bint al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām; and Umm Kulthūm bint ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib. There was another Umm Kulthūm as well, namely Mulaykah bint Jarwal.
He had two slave-women who bore him children: Fukayhah and Luhayyah. Concerning Luhayyah there is disagreement: some hold she was an umm walad, while others say she was a Yemeni woman whom the Commander of the Believers ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb married. Allah knows best.
Some of the elegies composed for him
Alī ibn Muḥammad al-Madāʾinī relates—through Ibn Daʾb and Saʿīd ibn Khālid, from Ṣāliḥ ibn Kaysān, from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah—that when ʿUmar died, the daughter of Abū Ḥathmah (3) wept over him, saying:
“O my ʿUmar! He set what was crooked aright and fulfilled the covenant; he put an end to strife and revived the sunnahs; he departed in garments unstained, free of any blemish.”
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib commented, “By Allah, she has spoken the truth: he carried off its good and escaped its evil. By Allah, these words were not her own; they were prompted for her.”
ʿĀtikah bint Zayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Nufayl also lamented her husband ʿUmar (4) in verse:
Fayrūz has bereaved me—may his udder never yield (5)—
of a fair-skinned man, a constant reciter of the Book, ever penitent;
Kind to those near, stern toward the enemy,
a brother (6) relied on in calamities, noble of birth.