

OMAIl I. 



OMAH, IBN AL-AFTTAS At-M UTAWATEL. 



all Gibbon's ingenuity to dUcredit the account) wo aro 

 iclieTe, that the mantMcripU were delivered up to the four 

 (others say fire) thousand public baths in the city, to which they 

 mrtf\ a* precious fuel for six months. 



The conquest of Kgypt wan followed by that of part of Africa. 

 Amni pushed his victorious arms as far aa the deserts of Tripoli and 

 Bare*. Armenia ws in the meanwhile subdued by Mugheyrah (641), 

 and Khorassan (642) by Ahnaf-Ibn Kays, another of Omar's lieutenants. 

 In the same ytar was fought the famous battle of NehaTend, which 

 decided the fate of Persia. Firuz, who now commanded the armies 

 of Yesdejerd, was killed ; and the monarch himself obliged to seek 

 an asylum at Fsrgliauah among the Turks, where he died soon after 

 in poverty. 



The success which attended the arms of Omar, his unflinching 

 KTerity towards the vanquished who would not embrace the religion 

 of the prophet, and, more than all, the inexorable justice which he 

 dealt among bis own people, excited against him numerous enemies at 

 borne and abroad, and several attempts were made upon hU life, 

 labalah Ibn Ahjain, chief of the Arabian tribe of Ghosdn, became 

 one of his most implacable enemies. Although a tributary to the 

 Greek emperor, in whose states he lived with his tribe, and though 

 professing the Christian religion, labalah went to see Omar at Medina, 

 swore obedience to him. and embraced Islam with all his followers. 

 Omar then took him with him on a pilgrimage to Mecca. While the 

 urophvte was making as usual (even times the circuit of the Kaabah, 

 an Arab of low extiaction happened to run against him, and was the 

 cause of the prince's cloak falling off his shoulders. labalah resented 

 the incivility by immediately striking the man a blow on the face. 

 The man made his complaint to Omar, who, having summoned labalah 

 to his presence, sentenced him to receive a similar blow from the 

 complainant. Against this sentence, just as it was, labalah moat 

 warmly remonstrated, Baying that he was a king among his own people, 

 and that the offender deserved to be punished with death. " My 

 friend," said Omar to him, " the religion that thou and I follow makes 

 no distinction between the king and the subject." Rather than submit 

 to the sentence, labalah secretly left Mecca with all his suite, abjured 

 Iskim, and sought tho protection of the Greek emperor. He had 

 moreover sworn to revenge the outrage. Having communicated his 

 plans to a resolute young slave of his, Wiithek Ibn Miwafer by name, 

 be promised him his liberty if he should succeed in killing Omar. 

 Having arrived at Medina (63S), where the kalif was then residing, 

 Wiithek was informed that Omar was in the habit of sitting down 

 every day under a tree on his way to the mosque. Wiithek, having 

 climbed up the tree, awaited tiie arrival of Omar, who took his seat 

 beneath it and fell asleep. Wdthek, according to the account of the 

 Mohammedan historians, was upon the point of coming down for the 

 purpose of ttabbing Omar with his dagger, when, lifting up his eyes, 

 he i-aw a lion walking round him and Ticking his fe. t. Nor did the 

 lion erase to guard the kalif until he awoke, when the liou instantly 

 went away. Wathek was so much utruck by this circumstance that 

 he came down, kissed the kalifs hand, confessed big intended crime, 

 and embraced the Mohammedan religion. 



The life of Omar however wan at length ended by assassination. A 

 Persian slave of the Magiau sect, whose name was Abu Lulu Firuz, 

 bad been obliged by his master Alrnughevrah Ibn As-shaabah to pay 

 him two dirhetna doily, in conformity with the Mohammedan custom, 

 for the fru- exercise of his religion. Firuz, resenting this treatment, 

 brought a complaint before the kalif, and requested that some port al 

 1 cast of the tribute exacted of him might bo remitted ; but thin favour 

 being refused by Omar, the Persian swore his destruction, and some 

 days afterwards, while Omar was performing his morning devotions in 

 the mosque at Medina, he slabbed him thrice in the belly with a sharp 

 dagger. The people fell upon the assassin, but he made so desperate 

 a defence that, although he was armed with no other weapon than 

 bis dagger, he wounded thirteen of the assailants, and seven of thorn 

 mortally At last one of the kalif attendants drew his cloak over 

 his brad, and seized him ; upon which he stabbed himself, and soon 

 after expired. 



Omar languished five days. He died on a Friday, in the month o 

 Dhu-1 najjab, A.H. 23, answering to the mouth of November, A.D 644 

 He was buriod on the following Saturday, close to tho prophet am 

 Abu Bekr, in a mosque which he bad founded at Medina, where his 

 tomb is itill viaiud with great respect by the Mussulman*. Having 

 beta asked, some time before his death, to name his successor, h< 

 refused , and upon the suggestion of one of his courtiers that h< 

 should Irav* the kalifate to his son Abdullah, he remarked, ' It i 

 enough that on* out of mj fmmly ha* been forced to bear this burden 

 and account afterwards to his God for the command and gorerumcn 

 of On faithful- 

 Omar was sixty-three yews old when he died. Authors are a 

 variance as to the duration of his kalifate : the best-informed historian 

 bow.rrr say that he tvigned between ten and eleven years. Abu-1-fed 

 (An. Mosl.,' torn. i. p. iifil) says ten years, six months, and eight days. 

 Mohammedanism cannot boast of a more virtuous sovereign or a more 

 swalvus apostle. It bag been said of him that he contributed more 

 efficaciously to the advancement of tho Mohammedan religion than 

 the prophet himself. Khon.lcu.ir, the celebrated Persian historian 

 thus recapitulates the praiseworthy acU of this kalif;" He too 



rom the infidels 36,000 cities or castles, destroyed 4000 temples or 



lurches, and founded or endowed 1400 mosques." The prophet had 



'ie greatest esteem for Omar, whose daughter Hafsoah ho married. 



n a certain occasion he was heard to say, "If God bad wished to send 



second messenger to this world, his choice would undoubtedly have 



alien on Omar." The devotion, humility, and abstinence of this kalif 



ad become proverbial among the Mussulmans. He never tasted any 



ther food than barley-bread and datei ; water was his only drink ; 



and he was often found asleep under the porch of a mosque or beneath 



tree. He complied mot strictly with all the precepts of the Koran. 



'utychius tells us that during his kalifate he performed nine times 



he pilgrimage to Mecca. In order better to conform to the regula- 



ions of the Kordn, he lived by the work of his hands, supporting 



imself entirely by tho sale of leather belts which he manufactured. 



Jut the quality for which Omar was. most conspicuous was justice, 



which he is said to have administered with an even band to infidels 



well as believers. The historian Wdkedi Bays that the staff of 

 )mor was more dreaded than the sword of bin successors. In the 

 ifetime of Mohammed, a Moslem, condemned for his iniquitous treat- 

 ment of a Jew, happening to appeal to Omar from the sentence of the 

 >rophet, ho immediately cut him down with bin scymitar for not 

 tcquiescing in the sentence of so upright a judge. From this circum- 

 tance Mohammed gave Omir the surname of Al-faruk, which ho 

 retained ever afterwards, a word meaning the divider, or the discri- 

 minator, thus doubly alluding to his action and the discernment 

 which prompted it Several of the best Mohammedan institutions 

 late from the reign of Omar. It was in his time that the era of the 

 rlejira, or flight of Mohammed, by which all Mohammedan nations 

 compute their years, was established, and its beginning fixed on the 

 6th day of July, A.D. 6'22. He was the first who kept armies under 

 >ay, and assigned pension* to officers out of the public revenue : lie 

 nstituted a sort of police force to watch at night for the security of 

 .he citizens; and be promulgated some excellent regulations respecting 

 the duties of masters towards their slaves. He was also the first who 

 assumed the title of Amir-al-mumeniu (commander of the faithful) 

 nstead of that of Khalifah-rasuli-llahi (vicar of the messenger of God), 

 which his predecessor Abu Bekr had used. Omar's memory is an 

 object of the greatest veneration among Mussulmans of the Sunni, or 

 orthodox sect; not so among the Shiites, or partisans of Ali, who look 

 upon the three first kolifs, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othmdn, as usurpers 

 of the kalifate, to the prejudice of AH, to Whom, they pretend, it 

 Belonged as the nearest relative of the prophet. 



(Abu-1-fedd, Anna/a Moslemici, translated by Reiske, Hafnisc, 1790, 

 am. L fol. 250, et seq.; Al-iimkiu, Hutoria Saracenica, apud Erpenium, 

 Ludg. Batav., 1625, p. 20, et seq. ; Ibn Shibnah ( manuscript), Kaudlmtu- 

 '-manddhir ; Simon Ockley, The. History of the Saracem, p. 300 ; Ibn-al- 

 Kbattib, Uittoria Calipharum, apud Casiri; lltb. At: limp. Etc., vol. ii. 

 p. 177, et seq. ; D'Herbelot, Bib. Or., in voc. Omar Ben al-Khattali, 

 A'haled, Damaihk, Iikandriah, et alibi ; Gibbon, Decline and Pall, 

 vol. ix. p. 222 ; &a) 



OMAK II. (ABU Hares), the eighth kalif of the family of Umeyyah 

 who reigned in the Kast, was the sou of Abd-al-aziz, and the nephew 

 of Abd-al-malek. He succeeded his cousin Suleyiudn, in the month 

 of Safar, A.II. 99 (Sept, A.D. 717). This kalif, who on his mother's 

 (Umm-Adssem) side was the great grandson of the first Omar, imitated 

 in every respect the conduct and the virtues of bis illustrious ancestor. 

 He was simple, modest, and frugal; he loved justice so much as to 

 sacrifice to it bis own interests and those of bis family. He was 

 religious and devout, and his mind was always occupied with the idea 

 of a future world. One of the first acts of bis administration was to 

 suppress the maledictions which, since the time and by the order of 

 Muawiyah, the first kalif of his family, had been read in all the mosques 

 against the partisans and descendants of Ali : he also restored to the 

 latter the lands which the prophet had given to Ali, and decreed that 

 the produce should be equally divided among their posterity. These 

 and other acts of justice towards the proscribed race raised alarm 

 among the members and partisans of the family of Umeyyah, and 

 especially Yezid, bis cousin and successor. They feared lest Omar, 

 carried away by his love of justice and his respect for the family of 

 the prophet, should appoint a grand-on of Ali to succeed him in the 

 empire, and they decided to get rid of him. This they accomplished 

 by administering to him a slow poison, from the effect of which he died 

 at Hiaserah, in Syria, in the month of Hcjeb, A.II. 101 (Jan., A.D. 720), 

 after a reign of two years and five months, in the forty-first year of 

 his age. Omar had been extremely economical in his person and 

 household, but his excessive liberality exhausted all his revenues; and 

 at his death there was not in the royal coffers a sum sufficient to cover 

 the expenses of his funeral 



OMAR, IBN AL-AFTTAS AL-MUTAWATEL ALA-ILLAH ('he 

 who trusts in God '), was the fourth and last sovereign of the dynaaty 

 of Beni Al-afttas, who reigned in the west of the Peninsula from 

 A.II. 408 to 487 (A.D. 1017-1094). After the death of his brother 

 Yahya Al-mansur (A.D. 1082), Omar succeeded him in a kingdom 

 which extended over the greatest part of Extremadura and Portugal, 

 and the capital of which was the city of Badajoz. At that time the 

 once powerful empire of the Beni Umeyyah had vanished, and 

 Mohammedan Spain was divided into sundry petty kingdoms, whose 

 rulers were continually waging war against one another. \0ue of tho 



