It is also reported that he once addressed the people, saying in his sermon: “O people, I have a yearning soul; whenever it is given something, it longs for what is higher. When the caliphate was placed in my hands, my soul aspired to something higher still—Paradise. So help me toward it, may Allah have mercy on you.” His full biography will appear under the year of his death, Allah willing.
Among the earliest initiatives ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz undertook this year was to write to Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik and the Muslims with him who were in Byzantine lands besieging Constantinople. Their circumstances had become severe, their resources tight, and their army was vast. He ordered them to return to their homes and sent them plentiful provisions and many fine, swift steeds—said to be five hundred horses—delighting the troops.
That same year the Turks raided Azerbaijan, killing a great number of Muslims. ʿUmar dispatched Ḥātim ibn al-Nuʿmān al-Bāhilī against them; he slew those Turks, only a few escaping, and forwarded some of their captives to ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz while the caliph was at Khunāṣira (1).
The mu’adhdhins would remind him after the adhan that the prayer time was close and limited, lest he delay it as some before him had done because of pressing affairs. They did so on his own instruction—Allah knows best.
Ibn ʿAsākir (2) relates in the biography of Jarir ibn ʿUthman al-Rahabi of Hims: “I saw the mu’adhdhins of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz greeting him during the prayer: al-salamu ʿalayka ya amir al-mu’minin wa-rahmatullahi wa-barakatuh (peace be upon you, Commander of the Believers, and the mercy and blessings of Allah); hayya ʿala al-salah, hayya ʿala al-falah (come to prayer, come to success); the prayer is about to begin.”
That year ʿUmar dismissed Yazid ibn al-Muhallab from the governorship of Iraq and appointed ʿAdi ibn Arta’ah al-Fazari over Basra. He named al-Hasan al-Basri as judge there; when al-Hasan requested to be relieved, the caliph excused him and appointed instead the renowned and quick-witted Iyas ibn Muʿawiya.
Over Kufa and its districts he placed ʿAbd al-Hamid ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Zayd ibn al-Khattab, assigning Abu al-Zinad as his secretary and appointing ʿAmir al-Shaʿbi as judge. Al-Waqidi (3) says: “He remained its judge for the entire caliphate of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.”
He entrusted Khurasan to al-Jarraḥ ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Hakamī, and the deputy governor of Mecca was ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Khalid ibn Asid.