“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!
Umar was extremely pious and disdainful of worldly luxuries. He preferred simplicity to the extravagance that had become a hallmark of the Umayyad lifestyle, depositing all assets and finery meant for the caliph into the public treasury. He abandoned the caliphate palace to the family of Suleiman and instead preferred to live in modest dwellings. He wore rough linens instead of royal robes, and often went unrecognized.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.
Though he had the people's overwhelming support, he publicly encouraged them to elect someone else if they were not satisfied with him (an offer no one ever took him up on). Umar confiscated the estates seized by Ummayad officials and redistributed them to the people, while making it a personal goal to attend to the needs of every person in his empire. Fearful of being tempted into bribery, he rarely accepted gifts, and when he did; he promptly deposited them in the public treasury. He even encouraged his own wife—who had been daughter, sister and wife to three caliphs in their turn — to donate her jewelry to the public treasury. He is widely known for reinforcing the Zakat and according to Muslim tradition, at the end of his rule, there were scarcely any poor people to give the charity money to.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 she said: "Indeed he never used to pray or fast more than the rest of you, but I never saw a servant of Allah swt who feared Him more than 'Umar. He devoted his body and his soul to the people. All day he would sit tending to their affairs, and when night came he would sit up while business remained. One evening when he had finished everything, he called for his lamp - from which he used to buy the oil from his own money - and prayed two prostrations. Then he sat back on his folded legs, with his chin in his hands, and the tears ran down from his cheeks, and this didn't stop until dawn, when he rose for a day of fasting.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!'
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