“Rulers usually appoint people to watch over their subjects. I appoint you a watcher over me and my behavior. If you find me at fault in word or action guide me and stop me from doing it.” - Omar bin Abd Aziz.
Most of the Islamic scholars said that Omar bin Abd Aziz only lived for 40 years (died on 101 Hijjri at the place that we visited at Maaratul Nor'man). He was only sitting at his helm for only 29 months, but yet had conquered and governed almost half of the world then. Amazing!
According to a Muslim tradition, a female visitor once came to Umar's house seeking charity and saw a raggedly-dressed man patching holes in the building's walls. Assuming that the man was a servant of the caliph, she asked Umar's wife, "Don't you fear God? Why don't you veil in the presence of this man?" The woman was shocked to learn that the "servant" was in fact the caliph himself.
At one point he almost ordered the Great Umayyad Masjid in Damascus to be stripped of its precious stones and expensive fixtures in favor of the treasury, but he desisted on learning that the Masjid was a source of envy to his Byzantine rivals in Constantinople. These moves made him unpopular with the Umayyad court, but endeared him to the masses, so much so that the court could not move against him in the open.
When 'Umar ibn Abd al Aziz died, the learned men came to his wife to express sympathy and say how great a calamity had struck the people of Islam by his death. And they said to her, 'Tell us about him - for the one who knows best about a man is his wife."
And even when 'Umar was with me in bed, where a man usually find some pleasure with his wife, if he remembered some affair of Allah's (people), he would be upset as a bird that had fallen into the water. Then his weeping would rise until I would throw off the blankets in kindness to him. 'By Allah swt' he would say, 'How I wish that there was between me and this office the distance of the East from the West!'
0 comments:
Post a Comment