The first khutbah of ʿUmar ﵁ and the title Amir al-Muʾminin

The minbar ascended once more

In the previous article we followed the Tuesday on which Abu Bakr ﵁ passed away and the Wednesday on which the community gave its bayʿah to ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁. The story closed with the last hands that had been laid upon his right hand in the mosque of the Prophet ﷺ, before he himself took the word. At this point the next part begins, for what ʿUmar ﵁ would say and do on that morning and in the first weeks of his office established the style of his whole caliphate.

The mosque had not emptied after the bayʿah. The community remained standing; it waited for the words of the man it had just confirmed. ʿUmar ﵁ rose from the third step of the minbar. He was tall of stature, so tall that in an assembly he stood out above the heads of most of the men, and his presence on the minbar was a lowering rather than a rising. He praised Allah ﷻ, he sent blessing upon the Prophet ﷺ, and then he spoke, in the words that al-Hasan al-Basri ﵀ has transmitted, the sentences that opened his office.

The programme in a single paragraph

This sentence, in al-Hasan’s transmission, is no speech in the rhetorical sense. It is a programme in four parts. I have been tested by you and you have been tested by me: the office is a mutual testing, not a one-sided domination. I have succeeded to the khilafah after my two companions: he places himself in a line, and that line is the Messenger ﷺ and Abu Bakr ﵁. He is the third, and he knows it. With those present we shall occupy ourselves personally: the caliph stands himself for the direct care of those he can reach daily. Over the absent we shall appoint strong and trustworthy men: in his first minute he acknowledges that the community is too large for one man, and that the right choice of governors is the second leg of his rule.

In this single sentence stands the whole apparatus of state that ʿUmar ﵁ would build over ten years. He would oversee Medina, Mecca and the Hijaz in his own person. He would appoint for Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and the other provinces governors whom he chose carefully himself, and whom he would just as carefully depose the moment they strayed from the path. He would establish a diwan, a register of stipends, in which all Muslims received an allowance according to their precedence in Islam. He would set up a postal service between the provinces. He would appoint judges who rendered account to him in writing. He would call together his governors from all the provinces each year during the Hajj, to render account openly before the believers they governed. All of this, this whole institution of governance that Islam would leave to world history as an organisational form, announces itself in this first, short sentence on the minbar.

An office entrusted to Allah ﷻ

Ibn Saʿd ﵀, who in his Tabaqat described the lives of the Sahaba ﵃ with a precision against which later historians would measure themselves, has preserved another part of the first khutbah of ʿUmar ﵁. It is no proclamation toward the community; it is a supplication that he utters audibly above the minbar, addressed to the Lord over Whom he will hereafter rule on behalf of this community.

A tricolon, in three balances. I am severe: he does not deny what all of Medina knew of him. His severity was notorious; he could set women, daughters, men, slaves, sons in motion by his presence alone. Make me gentle: he does not ask to lose that severity, for it is in his nature and required by the nature of the office; he asks for the gentleness that holds it in balance. I am weak: this man, who had crushed the skulls of Quraysh on the battlefield, called himself weak. He knew what he could not do; he knew that without the help of Allah ﷻ no human strength would carry the office. Make me generous: ʿUmar ﵁ had in his young years under Quraysh learned to reckon, to herd, to trade. A hand hardened by reckoning does not open of its own accord; he asks for the hand that opens.

This duʿaʾ is, in the whole pulpit history of Islam, the most far-reaching acknowledgement by a ruler of his own imperfection. It is uttered in the first minutes of his office, before the whole community, not in a private chamber where no one would hear it. Whoever opens himself to his community in this way asks it not to glorify him, but to help him. He asks it to correct him in his weaknesses where it may, and to submit to his justice where it must.

The legacy of Abu Bakr ﵁ continued

ʿUmar ﵁ did not let the first khutbah end open. He declared what would follow in practice. The direction that Abu Bakr ﵁ had set was continued without abatement. The armies that stood in Syria and in Iraq would not be recalled. The governors whom Abu Bakr ﵁ had appointed would remain in their office until ʿUmar ﵁ personally saw reason to replace them. The jizyah and kharaj arrangements that had come about in the first expansion would be honoured as they had been laid down in the treaties. What Abu Bakr ﵁ had built in two years was no experiment that ended with his death; it was the continuity to which ʿUmar ﵁ would add his own rule.

He also spoke of the ordinary Muslim who would come to Medina for justice. Whoever knocked at his door with a grievance would be heard. Whoever had a complaint against a governor could lodge that complaint in Medina, and ʿUmar ﵁ would himself call the governor to account. Whoever had a debt with the bait al-mal, whether because he had fallen behind in his payments or because his allowance had not been paid out, could ask on the minbar of the Prophet ﷺ for what was due to him, and he would receive an answer.

This was no rhetoric. For ten years ʿUmar ﵁ would observe these pledges to the letter. The pillars of the mosque would all but become a courtroom through the presence of complaining delegations from distant provinces. A woman from a bedouin tribe in Najd could stop ʿUmar ﵁ in the street and point out his error, and he would dismount, listen, apologise and revise his decision. This belonged to what the community had now received.

The duʿaʾ for the Muhajirun and the Ansar

In a second part of his khutbah, which Suyuti ﵀ draws from the same transmission, ʿUmar ﵁ spoke the duʿaʾ for the two groups that carried Islam.

He began his office with the two groups that formed the backbone of his community. Without Muhajirun and Ansar there was no Hijra, no Badr, no Medina, no Islam in its historical form. ʿUmar ﵁ knew that the rule he had just taken upon himself rested upon their shoulders. He did not praise them in his first khutbah with rhetorical praise; he praised them through his duʿaʾ. This was, moreover, a political act, insofar as one wishes to apply this term to the practice of a rightly guided caliph. The Saqifah lay only two years behind the community, and the tension between Muhajirun and Ansar over the leadership had at that time become visible. ʿUmar ﵁ reminded the community that both groups, in the same breath and with the same reverence, stood before Allah ﷻ.

The title Amir al-Muʾminin

The community had, from the day of the bayʿah to Abu Bakr ﵁, used a designation for the man who governed it. He was called Khalīfat Rasūl Allah ﷺ, the successor of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. It was a long title, and it fitted Abu Bakr ﵁, who as the direct successor could indeed be designated as the deputy of the Prophet ﷺ. But would one now call ʿUmar ﵁ Khalīfat Khalīfat Rasūl Allah ﷺ, the successor of the successor of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. And a successor of a successor of a successor, what then would he be called. The title grew too long to be practical.

It was a simple practical question, and it was discussed in the first weeks of the caliphate of ʿUmar ﵁ in Medina. Suyuti ﵀ sums up the outcome in a sentence that shows the communal sense of that discussion:

With these words the title found itself. Amir al-Muʾminin, the commander of the believers. He is the amir, for he carries out the command. They are the muʾminun, for they carry the faith. Between them lies no kingship, no relation of master and subject, no higher and lower classes. He has the command among them, and they have the faith under him. Both stand before Allah ﷻ.

Suyuti ﵀ states emphatically:

A list of firsts, in a single sentence. Each of these firsts would remain, in the centuries that followed, an institution, not only in Islamic history but in the history of world governance. The Hijri calendar, which receives its own story in a separate article of this cycle, is dated from this ʿUmar ﵁. The register of stipends, the diwan, which receives its own story in a separate article, arises under this ʿUmar ﵁. The title Amir al-Muʾminin is borne by every later caliph, from Banu Umayyah to Banu ʿAbbas to ʿAbd ar-Rahman ad-Dakhil in Cordoba, and even sultans and emirs in centuries in which the pure khilafah had vanished invoke this title or its derivatives.

The community answers

Suyuti ﵀ notes that after the first khutbah the community fell silent. Not out of unease, but out of recognition. ʿUmar ﵁ had not promised them what they wished to hear, and he had not promised them what an average ruler promises: ease, prosperity, an end to cares. He had offered them something else: an office that he would carry to the best of his ability, a justice that he would enforce upon himself and upon his governors, a service that he would render in the eyes of Allah ﷻ.

The Sahaba ﵃ who stood in the mosque this morning had in the past years heard many a khutbah of the Messenger ﷺ, and in the past two years the khutbahs of Abu Bakr ﵁. What they heard today was not as eloquent as the first, not as intimate as the second; it was practical, programmatic, short. ʿUmar ﵁ was no orator. He was an administrator, and his first khutbah was already an act of administration. He gave his community precisely what it needed from him on this morning: clarity about what it might expect of him and what he expected of it.

The turn in the style of the office

What became visible in this first week of the caliphate of ʿUmar ﵁ was not only a change of person. It was a change of style. Abu Bakr ﵁ had in his two years approached the style of the Prophet ﷺ as closely as possible: gentle where gentleness was due, hard where hardness was due, candid in private and candid in public, the same man at the milk pail as on the minbar. ʿUmar ﵁ would carry the same principles, but in a different register. He would be more emphatically visible in the streets of Medina than his predecessor had dared. He would make his conduct more emphatically public than Abu Bakr ﵁ had ever wished to do for himself. He would take the lash into his own hand when a punishment had to be carried out, not because he distrusted the oversight of another, but because he wished to show before the eyes of the community that the caliph did not shrink his hands from the practical consequences of his decisions.

The community would have to grow used to this style. Some Sahaba ﵃, who under Abu Bakr ﵁ had received a certain mild treatment, would be dealt with more severely under ʿUmar ﵁. Other Sahaba ﵃, who under Abu Bakr ﵁ had remained in the shadow, would be set under the full light of administration under ʿUmar ﵁. ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁, on whose counsel ʿUmar ﵁ would lean in many legal matters, would receive a central role in the council around the caliph. ʿAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʿAwf ﵁ would gradually become more involved in the decisions over administration and finance, until he would later receive the decisive voice in the Shura of six. But all of that lay in a future that on this first Wednesday was not yet visible.

Why this title took on this meaning

The title Amir al-Muʾminin is, in its linguistic construction, not exceptional. Arabic knows many compounds with amir: an amir al-jaysh is an army commander, an amir al-hajj is the leader of a pilgrimage caravan, an amir al-baḥr is a fleet commander. What makes the compound Amir al-Muʾminin exceptional is not its grammatical form but its reach. He commands no army, no caravan, no fleet; he commands the believers, that is to say the whole community that believes in Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ, wherever it may be on earth.

This had implications that in the first years of ʿUmar ﵁ were perhaps not yet fully visible, but that in later centuries would form the basis for the whole fiqh of the office of the khilafah. The Amir al-Muʾminin is the leader of the entire Ummah, not of a tribe, not of a city, not of a province. Whoever withdraws from his command as long as he acts within the Law withdraws from the Ummah. But whoever follows him when he acts outside the Law shares in his responsibility for that transgression. The title does not raise the bearer above the Law; it places him under the Law, with the duty to carry it out.

The later scholars, from Imam Mawardi ﵀ in his al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah to Imam al-Juwayni ﵀ in his Ghiyath al-Umam, have worked out this meaning of the title. An Amir al-Muʾminin is no lawgiver, for the Law has already been given by Allah ﷻ in the Qur’an and by the Prophet ﷺ in the Sunnah. He is no judge, for the judges render judgement according to the Law, and he appoints them but does not replace them. He is no priest, for Islam knows no priesthood. He is an executor. He carries out the Law, he appoints the judges, he organises the community, he defends its borders, he collects and distributes its taxes. All of this in the service of the Law, not in the service of himself.

ʿUmar ﵁, on this first Wednesday morning in the mosque of the Prophet ﷺ, was the first in history to whom this title was awarded. Whoever bore it after him bore it in the shadow of this ʿUmar ﵁, and had to measure it against the standard that he would establish in the ten years of his office.

The practical execution from day one

That very afternoon ʿUmar ﵁ continued his work. He received the first delegation of soldiers who returned from Iraq with news of the state of the struggle against the Sasanians. He heard them out, asked for the names of those who had fallen in the latest skirmishes, ordered his diwan to have the inheritances paid out to the families, and in the same breath gave the order that the troops on the Iraqi border would not be recalled but reinforced. The next morning he received the governor responsible for the Hijaz, and put questions to him about the price of bread in Mecca, about the condition of the bedouin tribes in Tihamah, about the division of the water in the oases between Medina and Mecca. He slept on a mat in the mosque rather than go home. On the evening of his second day in office he ate dry dates and water from an earthen jug. He wished, so Anas ibn Mālik ﵁ transmits, that in his days of office he might eat nothing that a poor bedouin could not also eat on the same day.

This style, already visible on the first two days, would never leave him. For ten years he would walk about in the same plainly kept cloak, carrying such austerity in his body that the patriarch of Jerusalem would not recognise him when he first appeared before the Holy City.

Why these two events belong together

The first khutbah and the title Amir al-Muʾminin are brought together here in a single article, because they do not stand apart from each other. The first khutbah makes known the content of the office: justice, modesty, accountability, service to Muhajirun and Ansar and to the whole community. The title makes possible the designation of the office: amir for the commander, muʾminun for the believers, no kingship, no hereditary succession, no lordly master. Together they form the constitution of the khilafah under ʿUmar ﵁: an office with a new name, a new character, a new relation to the community.

In the two years of Abu Bakr ﵁ Islam had been tested in its coherence. In the ten years of ʿUmar ﵁ it would be tested in its reach. The community that gathered on this Wednesday morning in the mosque of the Prophet ﷺ numbered some tens of thousands of believers, for the greater part living on the Arabian peninsula and in the newly conquered parts of Syria and Iraq. Ten years later it would number millions, spread from the Atlantic coast of Egypt to the Iranian highlands, from the Yemeni coastline to the Levantine hills. The office that ʿUmar ﵁ accepted on this morning would grow with that expansion, and it would grow without losing itself, because his first khutbah had pinned it to a justice and a modesty that admit of no scaling up.

In the next article we follow the first great military trial of his office: the battle of Yarmuk, in which the Byzantine empire definitively loses its grip on Syria. The three months between the bayʿah of ʿUmar ﵁ in Medina and the outbreak of the battle at the Yarmuk river in Jordan were a single breath in a time that went on without breath.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd edition 1995), pp. 141, 143, 150.