1245 — ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī informed us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Baghawī informed us; he said: Dāwūd ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Musayyab related to us; he said: Abū Saʿīd al-Muʾaddib related to us, from ʿUmar ibn Dharr, who said ⦗752⦘:
While ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was among a group that included Yazīd—or Ziyād—al-Faqīr, as Dāwūd named him, Mūsā ibn Kathīr Abū al-Ṣabbāḥ, and Yāsir, who was from the people of Kūfah, someone spoke—he believed it to have been ʿUmar ibn Dharr—and said: “Our slander of ʿUmar had reached its limit, and we thought that he would be unable to answer it.”
When he fell silent, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz spoke, leaving nothing that had been raised without answering it. Then he began to speak, and we were before him as no more than pupils. Among what he said was:
“Had Allah burdened His servants with deeds commensurate with His greatness, no heaven, earth, mountain, or anything at all could have borne it. Yet He has required of them what is easy. Had He willed—or loved—that He not be disobeyed, He would not have created Iblīs, the head of disobedience.”