226 – Ishaq ibn Ismaʿil narrated to us; he said: Yahya ibn Abi Bukayr narrated to me; he said: ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Fadl al-Tamimi narrated to us:

“The last sermon that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ever delivered was when he mounted the pulpit, praised Allah and extolled Him, and then said:

‘To proceed: What you now hold in your hands is nothing but the spoils of those who have perished, and those who remain will leave it just as those before them left it. Do you not see that every single day and night you accompany, morning or evening, someone on his way to Allah? You lay him in a cleft of the earth, then deeper still in a recess neither smoothed nor cushioned. He has shed his trappings, parted from his loved ones, been placed ⦗112⦘ beneath the soil, and now faces the reckoning—needy of whatever he sent on ahead, independent of all he left behind. By Allah, I say this to you, and I know of no one who graspes it more surely than I do of myself.’

He then drew the edge of his garment over his eyes and wept, after which he descended. He did not leave the place until he was carried out to his grave.