Ibn Jarīr (1) said: “This is the view held by all the chroniclers.”

ʿUmar b. ʿAlī al-Fallas and others maintain that he died on Saturday, midway through Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that very year, at the age of forty-six—though another report says forty-three, a third forty-nine, and yet another forty-four. His death occurred at Dayr Marrān; his body was carried on the shoulders of men until he was interred in the cemetery of Bāb al-Ṣaghīr. Some, however, say that he was buried in the cemetery of Bāb al-Farādis, as related by Ibn ʿAsākir (2).

The funeral prayer was led by ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, for his brother Sulaymān was then in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Some say his son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz led the prayer, others that it was his brother Sulaymān; the sound report is that it was ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and Allah knows best.

He was also the one who lowered the body into the grave, and as he did so he said: “We are laying him down with no pillow and no couch. He has left behind his spoils, parted from loved ones, settled into the dust, and come face-to-face with the Reckoning—needy of what he sent ahead, indifferent to what he left behind.” (3)

More than one chain reports that ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said: when he placed al-Walīd in the niche, the corpse moved within its shroud and his feet were drawn up to his neck. (4)

His caliphate lasted nine years and eight months, according to the most widely accepted view. Allah knows best.

Al-Madaʾinī said: He left nineteen sons, all male: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Muḥammad, al-ʿAbbās, Ibrāhīm, Tamām, Khālid, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Mubashshir, Masrūr, Abū ʿUbayda, Ṣadaqah, Manṣūr, Marwān, ʿAnbasa, ʿUmar, Rūḥ, Bishr, Yazīd, and Yaḥyā. The mother of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Muḥammad was Umm al-Banīn (5), daughter of his cousin ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Marwān; the mother of Abū ʿUbayda was a woman of the Fazārah tribe, while the remainder were born to various concubines. (6)

Al-Madaʾinī also related that Jarīr composed the following elegy for him:

O eye, pour forth tears stirred by remembrance;
after today, hoard not a single tear.
The Caliph—his noble qualities now hidden—
lies in a dusty grave whose planks deceive.
His sons stand stricken, their loss laid bare—
as when the moon falls, leaving the stars in despair.
Together they stood, yet none could ward off his fate—
not ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, nor Rūḥ, nor even ʿUmar. (7)