Umar Bin Abdul Aziz

He restored the possession of the garden of Fadak to the descendants of the Prophet (sws) which had been appropriated by Marwan during the Caliphate of Usman. He bade his wife Fatima to return the jewelry she had received from her father Caliph Abdul Malik. The faithful wife cheerfully complied with his bidding and deposited all of it in the Bait-ul-Maal. After her husband's death, her brother Yazid who succeeded him as Caliph offered to return it to her. "I returned these valuables during my husband's lifetime; why should I take them back after his death", she told him.

The restoration of Fadak provoked mixed reaction from the people. The fanatical Kharijis who had become hostile to the Caliphate soon softened towards Umar Bin Abdul Aziz, proclaiming that it was not possible for them to oppose a Caliph who was not a man but an angel.

The house of Umayyads accustomed to luxuries at the expense of the common man, revolted against this just but revolutionary step taken by the Caliph and bitterly protested against the disposal of their age-long properties.

One day, the Caliph invited some prominent members of the House of Umayyads to dinner, but advised his cook to delay the preparation of food. As the guests were groaning with hunger, the Caliph shouted to his cook to hurry up. At the same time he asked his men to bring some parched gram which he himself as well as his guests ate to their fill. A few minutes later the cook brought the food which the guests refused to take saying that they had satisfied their appetite. Thereupon the pious Caliph spoke out, "Brothers! when you can satisfy your appetite with so simple a diet, then why do you play with fire and usurp the properties and rights of other." These words deeply moved the notables of the House of Umayyads who burst into tears.

In general, he laid great stress on compensating the victims of illegal extortion in any form. His administration of impartial justice went against the interests of the Umayyads who were accustomed to all sorts of licences and could hardly tolerate any check on their unbounded freedom. They plotted against the life of this virtuous member of their clan. A slave of the Caliph was bribed to administer the deadly poison. The Caliph having felt the effect of the poison sent for the slave and asked him why he had poisoned him. The slave replied that he was given one thousand dinars for the purpose. The Caliph deposited the amount in the public Treasury and freeing the slave asked him to leave the place immediately, lest anyone might kill him. Thus died in 719 A.D. at the young age of 36 at the place called Dair Siman (The convent of Siman) near Hams, one of the noblest souls that ever lived in this world. His martyrdom plunged the Islamic world into gloom. It was a day of national mourning: the populace of the small town came out to pay their last homage to the departed leader. He was buried in Dair Siman on a piece of land he had purchased from a Christian.

Muhammad Bin Mobad who happened to be in the Durbar of the Roman Emperor at that time reports that he found the Emperor in drooping spirits. On enquiry he replied, "A virtuous person has passed away. This is Umar Bin Abdul Aziz. After Christ if anyone could put a dead person to life it was he; I am hardly surprised to see an ascetic who renounced the world and give himself to the prayers of Allah. But I am certainly surprised at a person who had all the pleasures of the world at his feet and yet he shut his eyes against them and passed a life of piety and renunciation."

He reportedly left behind only 17 dinars with a will that out of this amount the rent of the house in which he died and the price of the land in which he was buried would be paid.

"Unaffected piety", says Ameer Ali, "a keen sense of justice, unswerving righteousness, moderation, and an almost primitive simplicity of life, formed the brief features in his character. The responsibility of the office with which he was entrusted filled him with anxiety and caused many a heart searching. Once he was found by his wife weeping after his prayers; she asked if anything had happened to cause him grief; he replied: "O! Fatima ! I have been made the ruler over the Muslims and I was thinking of the poor that are starving, and the sick that are destitute, and the naked that are in distress, and the oppressed that are stricken, and the stranger that is in prison, and the venerable elder, and him that hath a large family and small means, and the like of them in countries of the earth and the distant provinces, and I felt that my Lord would ask an account of them at my hands on the Day of Resurrection, and I feared that no defence would avail me, and I wept."

His honesty and integrity have few parallels in the history of mankind. According to "Tabaqat Ibni Sa`ad", he never performed his private work in the light of a lamp which burned the State oil. On every Friday, Farat Bin Muslama brought state papers for his perusal and orders. One Friday, the Caliph brought a small pice of State paper in his private use. Muslama who was aware of the exceptional honesty of the Caliph thought that he had done it out of sheer forgetfulness. The next Friday when he brought back home the State papers, he found in them exactly the same size of paper which was used by the Caliph.

Out of the funds of Bait-ul-Maal, a guest house was founded for the poor. Once his servant burned the firewood of the guest house to heat water for his ablution. He forthwith got the same quantity of firewood deposited there. On another occasion, he refused to use the water heated from the State charcoal. A number of palatial buildings had been constructed in Khanasra out of the funds of the Bait-ul-Mawhich were occasionally used by other Caliphs when they visited that place, but Umar Bin Abdul Aziz never used them and always preferred to camp in the open.