They read it, and inside it was written:

In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. An acquittal from Allah for ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz from the Fire.

They placed the parchment inside his shroud and buried it with him (1).

A similar report has been transmitted through another line of narration (2).

Ibn ʿAsākir, in the biography of ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Ismāʿīl (3), relates with his chain from ʿUmayr ibn Ḥubāb al-Sulamī (4):

He said: I and eight others were taken captive in the time of the Umayyads. The Byzantine emperor ordered that our heads be struck off; my companions were executed, but one of the emperor’s patricians interceded for me, so I was released to him. He took me to his house, and he had a daughter shining like the sun. He offered her to me, promised to share his wealth with me, and invited me to adopt his religion. I refused. When his daughter was alone with me, she offered herself, but I held back.

She asked, “What keeps you from this?”

I replied, “My religion keeps me; I will not abandon my faith for a woman nor for anything else.”

She said, “Do you wish to return to your homeland?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Travel by night following that star and hide by day; it will lead you (5) to your land.”

So I journeyed as she advised. On the fourth day, while I was concealed, I saw a cavalry approaching and feared they were after me. But behold, they were my very companions who had been killed, along with others, mounted on dapple-grey steeds.

They called out, “ʿUmayr?”

I answered, “ʿUmayr.”

I then asked them, “Were you not killed?”

They said, “Indeed, but Allah—Exalted is He—has revived the martyrs and granted them permission to attend the funeral of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.”

One of them said to me, “Give me your hand, ʿUmayr.” He mounted me behind him; we travelled a short distance, then he flung me with a single cast, and I landed near my home in al-Jazīrah without suffering any harm.

Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah said: ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had instructed me to wash him, shroud him, and bury him, and, when I loosened the knot of the shroud, to look at his face. I did so, and his face was white like parchment. He had told me that he had buried three caliphs and, when he uncovered their faces, he found them blackened (6).

Ibn ʿAsākir also narrates in the biography of Yūsuf ibn Māhāk (7): While we were levelling the earth over the grave of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, a parchment fell upon us from the sky. It read: In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful: Security from Allah for ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.