During his caliphate he still served himself with his own hands and said, “I have left nothing of this world without Allah granting me something better in its place.” He would eat the roughest food, cared nothing for luxuries, and neither pursued them nor desired them.

Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī remarked, “ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was more austere than Uways al-Qaranī, for ʿUmar possessed the whole world and yet renounced it. We do not know how Uways would have behaved had he been given what ʿUmar was given—one who has been tested is not like one who has never been tried.”

We have already cited ⦗1⦘ the words of Mālik ibn Dīnār: “People say that Mālik is an ascetic, but the true ascetic is ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. The world came to him with its mouth wide open, and he sent it away.”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār said, “ʿUmar took no personal stipend at all from the public treasury. They recount that he once asked a maid to fan him until he fell asleep. She fanned him but then dozed off, so he took the fan from her hand, began fanning her, and said, ‘The heat has reached you just as it reached me.’ ”

A man said to him, “May Allah reward you with good on behalf of Islam.” He replied, “Rather, may Allah reward Islam with good on my account.”

It is also related that he wore beneath his garments a coarse hair-shirt, and that when he rose for the night prayer he would place an iron shackle around his neck. At dawn he would remove it, hide it away, and seal the place so that no one knew of it. People assumed it was money or jewels because of the care he showed for it, but when he died they opened the spot and found only the shackle and the hair-shirt.

He would weep until blood mingled with his tears. It is said that he once wept on a rooftop until his tears ran down the drain-spout. He ate lentils so that his heart might soften and his tears become plentiful; whenever death was mentioned his limbs would tremble.

A man once recited in his presence, “When they are flung into a narrow place therein, chained together, they will cry out there for annihilation” (al-Furqān 25:13). ʿUmar burst into intense tears, rose, entered his house, and the gathering dispersed.

He would often say, “Allāhumma sallim, sallim (O Allah, grant safety, grant safety).” He also prayed, “Allāhumma aṣliḥ man kāna fī ṣalāḥihi ṣalāḥu ummat Muḥammadin—peace and blessings be upon him—and destroy whoever’s destruction will benefit the community of Muḥammad—peace and blessings be upon him.”

He said, “The finest worship is to perform the obligatory duties and avoid the forbidden acts.”

He said, “If people waited to command what is right and forbid what is wrong until they had perfected themselves, they would leave goodness to others, and commanding right and forbidding wrong would vanish, leaving only a handful of preachers and sincere advisers.”

He said, “This world is the enemy of Allah’s friends and the enemy of Allah’s enemies: it distresses and saddens the friends of Allah, while it deceives, scatters, and drives His enemies far from Him.”