The Last Hajj of ʿUmar ﵁

A Caliph Who Had Led Every Hajj Himself

After writing the letter to Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ and after establishing the diwan in 20 AH, after the fall of Alexandria in 21 AH and the victory at Nahavand in that same year, after the enlargement of the Mosques in 17 AH, there came in the tenth and last autumn of his caliphate a Hajj season that ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ would not let pass. It was Dhul-Hijjah of the year 23 after the Hijra, the year 644 of the common era, and the Caliph had led every Hajj in person since his accession, for not once in ten years had he remained in Medina when the Hajj season arrived. Unlike Abu Bakr ﵁, who in 11 AH had sent ʿUmar ﵁ ahead because the Ridda could seize the heart of the caliphate, ʿUmar ﵁ had himself made the journey to Makkah every year.

He had left Medina in the year 14 with the first peace of Damascus behind him, in the year 15 with Yarmuk and Qadisiyyah just won, in the year 16 with Madāʾin Kisra fallen, in the year 17 with Bayt al-Maqdis in his keeping, in the year 18 with the Ramadah drought in the Hijaz and the plague of Amwas in Sham. In each of those years the Caliph had entered the pilgrim road with a heavier burden on his shoulders than the year before, and in each of those years he had stood at ʿArafat in the simple cloths of the pilgrim, surrounded by the same people with whom he prayed in Medina.

The year 23 AH was different. He was now sixty-three years old, and his body was no longer what it had been at his accession. He had carried the years of hunger, he had survived the years of plague, he had taken into himself the sleepless nights of governance, and he had given account for the deeds of his governors across two continents. Some of the reports that Suyuti ﵀ transmits mention that in these last months of his caliphate he showed signs that the end was drawing near, others mention dreams, and one dream in particular would be written into the reports as the announcement of his death.

The Dream of Macdan ibn Abi Talhah

When ʿUmar ﵁ in the weeks before the Hajj kept company with his companions over matters of the caliphate, he also spoke with some among them about what lived within him. One of those companions was Macdan ibn Abi Talhah ﵁, who stood close beside him in the last months, and Suyuti ﵀ preserves the words the Caliph is said to have spoken to him and to others, in a passage that is in fact a foreboding of the martyrdom.

He spoke the dream with the calm of a man who had already accepted its reality. He did not ask for consolation, he did not try to deny what he had seen, but he told the dream as it was, and from it he drew his conclusion. For him the cock that pecked him was an invitation to set his affairs in order before Allah ﷻ, not a prompting to anxiety.

It is in that light that his Hajj of 23 AH must be understood. He went not as a man who looks forward to many more years of rule, but as a man who knew he was perhaps going for the last time, and who wished to attune his farewell to that. It would be no Hajj of a Caliph who wished to display his power to the pilgrims from the provinces, but a Hajj of a servant who knew himself to be on the threshold of the Reckoning.

The Departure from Medina

In Dhu’l-Qaʿdah the caravans gathered once again around Medina, as they did every year: pilgrims from Sham, pilgrims from Iraq, pilgrims from Egypt, pilgrims from Yemen. Whoever wished to see the Caliph found him at the gate of Medina, where he in person welcomed a number of the leaders from the provinces, and whoever wished to travel with him could join his caravan. He made no distinction between the one who rode beside him and the one who followed behind him, for to the pilgrim a pilgrim was a pilgrim, and the Caliph among them was no more than the pilgrim who happened to bear the office.

He set out in simplicity, with no banner and no honour guard in military array. A handful of the Sahabah ﵃ were around him, Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ as a younger source for what he would later transmit, Aslam ﵁ as his faithful companion, ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAbbas ﵁ nearby, and his son ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ who would later be able to recount the whole Hajj in minute detail to whoever asked him. From this last man Suyuti ﵀ preserves a remarkable financial detail that characterizes the whole nature of the Hajj, for ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ has transmitted, and Suyuti ﵀ records it: “ʿUmar ﵁ performed the Hajj in the year twenty-three (AH) and spent sixteen dinars on his Hajj.”

Sixteen dinars. That was the Caliph’s expenditure on the Hajj, not sixteen thousand, not sixteen hundred, but sixteen dinars for the entire journey, from Medina to Makkah and back, for the equipment, for the provisions, for what he gave in gifts along the way or in Makkah. The man who had disposed of the treasures of Madāʾin Kisra and who adjudicated over the tribute monies of Sham and Iraq spent sixteen dinars on his own pilgrimage, and this figure alone says about his character what no long description could convey. The Caliph who did not own what he did not need did not spend what he did not have to spend, and what remained in the bait al-mal went to the benefit of the community.

He ate on the journey what the ordinary pilgrim ate, bread, dates, water from the wells along the road, and he slept where his caravan halted, on the ground or in the shade of an acacia tree. When he passed through a village, he received whoever addressed him, and when he was in the desert, he meditated upon the horizon. The journey itself was, in the last year of his caliphate, a long approach to the prayer he would utter at Mina.

The Arrival in Makkah

When the caravan drew near to Makkah, he recognized, as he did every year, the old paths along which the Prophet ﷺ had travelled in the Hajjat al-Wadaʿ of the year 10: Dhul-Hulayfah, ar-Rawhaʾ, al-Juhfah, ʿUsfan. He was now, in 23 AH, there for the tenth or eleventh time as a pilgrim since his conversion, and for the tenth time as the Caliph who led the Hajj, and at each of those places the memory of the Prophet ﷺ was still fresh in his mind. He had at Dhul-Hulayfah heard the talbiyah for the first time from the mouth of the Prophet ﷺ, given in the pure formula that restored the legacy of Ibrahim ﵇, he had rested at ʿUsfan in the shade beside his companion ﷺ, and he had at al-Juhfah once received the ihram garment from the hands of a Yemeni.

At the gates of Makkah he did what he did every year. He dismounted from the camel, kissed the threshold of his memory, and began the tawaf around the Kaʿbah which he himself had had enlarged in the years 17 and 18 by clearing the surrounding ground of the old houses. The Kaʿbah itself he had not touched, for the splendour of its walls, the covering of its black cloth, the Black Stone in its eastern corner, all was as the Prophet ﷺ had left it and as he himself wished to leave it.

He performed seven rounds, and he kissed the Black Stone in the manner the Prophet ﷺ had shown, and spoke as he did so the well-known words he had learned from his companion ﷺ: By Allah ﷻ, I know that you are a stone that brings neither benefit nor harm, and had I not seen the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kiss you, I would not kiss you. He kept his reverence for the sunnah ﷺ, even where by his own reasoning he had judged otherwise, for he was not the Caliph who held himself higher than his Prophet ﷺ, but the Caliph who in every act tried to follow the Prophet ﷺ.

After that he performed the saʿy between Safa and Marwa, seven times back and forth over the old paths where Hajar ﵍ had once run to seek water for Ismail ﵇. He drank from Zamzam, he slept that night in Makkah, or in al-Abtah just outside the city, and on the morning of the eighth of Dhul-Hijjah, the day of Tarwiyah, he went out with the pilgrims to Mina.

The Evening of Tarwiyah at Mina

At Mina the Caliph pitched his tent beside the tents of the Sahabah ﵃, and whoever sought him found him without trouble. He spoke with whoever addressed him, he ate in company, and he performed his five prayers together with the crowd, in the joined and shortened form as the Prophet ﷺ had shown in the same valley in 10 AH. Aslam ﵁ later transmitted that the Caliph was silent that evening, more silent than in earlier years of Hajj, for he spoke little, and he often looked up at the stars that slowly climbed over the mountains.

When the dawn of the ninth of Dhul-Hijjah broke, he rose for the Fajr prayer, and after that he led the crowd out of the mountains, past Muzdalifah and the Maschʿar al-Haram, on the way to the plain of ʿArafat. He did not ride at the head on a horse with ornaments, but on his own camel, in a simple woollen garment that he had not exchanged for the occasion, and whoever did not know him would take him for an ordinary Sahabi ﵁ among the Sahabah ﵃.

At ʿArafat

ʿArafat on the morning of the ninth. The sun over the black backs of the mountains, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at the foot of Jabal ar-Rahmah, the Mountain of Mercy. Pilgrims from Sham whose brothers had perished in the plague of Amwas, pilgrims from Egypt who came from Babylon and Alexandria, pilgrims from Iraq who lived in Kufa and Basra in new cities that ʿUmar ﵁ himself had had founded, pilgrims from Khaybar and Najran who might no longer dwell in their old land because he had banished the Jews and Christians from the Hijaz on the basis of the sunnah ﷺ. A community that in ten years of governance had grown into a world community, and that on that morning stood gathered in a single plain.

He addressed them. What he said exactly Suyuti ﵀ does not give word for word in this passage, but we know that he raised the talbiyah, that he led the joined prayers between noon and afternoon, that he led the crowd toward Muzdalifah around sunset, and that at Mina he cast the stones and slaughtered the sacrifice. He did what every pilgrim does, and he did not let himself be set apart from the pilgrim beside him.

But whoever saw him that day with his hands raised saw a man who did not pray for ordinary victory, and whoever saw him in the afternoon of ʿArafat standing in the shade of a rock, his brow toward Jabal ar-Rahmah, felt that this Caliph prayed at this ʿArafat differently than in earlier years.

The Return from Mina

Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ later, in the generation after the Sahabah, preserved the image that in all the reports has become the central image of this Hajj. He either saw it himself or transmitted it from one who had seen it, and Suyuti ﵀ preserves it in direct transmission. It happened after ʿUmar ﵁ had left Mina and was on the way back to Makkah for the farewell tawaf, in the days after the tenth of Dhul-Hijjah.

The Caliph rode his camel through a valley, alone with a few of his close companions nearby. When he came into a shallow watercourse between Mina and Makkah, he reined in his camel, he made her kneel, he dismounted, he cast himself upon the ground, and he raised his hands toward heaven, and spoke the words that in the whole Islamic tradition are preserved as the turning point of his Hajj:

It is the duʿaʾ of a Caliph taking his leave. He asked for death, but he asked for it in a way that would not stain his caliphate: he asked to be taken away before he should fall into idleness or excess, before through age or pain he should weaken his office, before his subjects should suffer under a weakened hand. He asked for a worthy return to Allah ﷻ.

Whoever saw him that afternoon in that watercourse understood what he had sensed. The Caliph who in his dream had seen the cock asked at Mina of his Lord that the dream be made true soon, not out of despondency and not out of a longing to be done with life, but out of the wish to die in full strength and not in weakness, out of the wish not to burden his subjects longer than he could serve them well.

And Allah ﷻ answered that duʿaʾ. Between the Hajj of Dhul-Hijjah 23 AH and the Wednesday four days before the end of that same month, there lay no more than a few weeks. He returned from Makkah to Medina, he entered his mosque, he ascended the minbar, he called to the Fajr prayer, he stood up in the first row to lead the prayer, and there in his own mosque, among the pilgrims who had only just returned from his Hajj, came the blow of Abu Luʾluʾah. The duʿaʾ of Mina was answered in the mosque of Medina, in the same month in which it had been uttered.

The Sixteen Dinars Again

It is after the account of Mina that the detail transmitted by ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar ﵁ at last takes on its full weight. Sixteen dinars, that was all the Caliph had spent on his last Hajj. He did not know, when he spent those sixteen dinars, that it would be his last Hajj, but he had always arranged his pilgrimage so that even in its simplicity it would be good if it were the last. He never saw the Hajj as an occasion to display his rank, and he always saw it as an occasion to practise his servanthood.

He had, in the ten Hajj years under his caliphate, never had any other pattern. He had, since the year 14 AH, gone every year in the same woollen garment, in the same modest equipment, with the same modest expenditure, and in none of those ten years had he led a Hajj of which the witness could later say that the Caliph had made things easy for himself. He went as a pilgrim, he ate as a pilgrim, he slept as a pilgrim, and he returned as a pilgrim, and between the years he ruled from that same spirit. The Hajj was, for him, an expression in compact form of what his whole caliphate was in extended form.

The Last Image at ʿArafat

When after the duʿaʾ in the watercourse he returned upon his camel, and saw the Holy City drawing nearer in the afternoon sun, he was inwardly at peace. He had no unfinished business left with Allah ﷻ, he had no accounts left with the people that he had been unable to settle, and he knew which governors he had appointed in which provinces, which measures for the pilgrims he had taken, which laws for the judges he had written. He had instituted the Hijri calendar, established the diwan, enlarged two mosques, changed a world empire in an age, and he knew at the same time that all of this was not the true measure of his life. The true measure was how he would appear before his Lord.

In Makkah he performed the farewell tawaf, seven rounds around the Kaʿbah, the last rounds around that House which had given him the orientation of prayer throughout his whole caliphate. He touched the Black Stone, he drank once more from Zamzam, he performed two rakaʿat behind the Maqam Ibrahim ﵇, and then he left Makkah for the last time as a pilgrim and as a Caliph.

The journey back to Medina was swifter than the journey out. He travelled in simplicity, slept along the way where the caravan halted, and arrived in Medina on a day in the last week of Dhul-Hijjah of the year 23 AH. He entered his city, he entered his mosque, and he waited for the next Fajr prayer that he was to lead for his congregation.

The End That He Had Asked For

What happened in that Fajr prayer is told in the next article. We wish here only, in closing this last Hajj, to hold fast to what it showed of him. ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ led the Hajj as a servant serves his Lord: he spent no more than sixteen dinars, he knelt in a watercourse and asked for his own passing, and he left Mina as a man who had completed his task.

In the next article we return with him to Medina, to accompany him to the Fajr prayer in which the duʿaʾ of Mina was answered, and to take our leave of him in the manner in which he himself took his leave. But before we go there, we wish to see him once more as Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ saw him: in a watercourse between Mina and Makkah, upon the ground, his hands raised, praying for a worthy return. A Caliph of a world empire, in simplicity, in humility, in trust, as he had been in ten years of governance, as he was on his farewell Hajj, as he wished to appear before his Lord.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), p. 136 (Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab on ʿUmar’s duʿaʾ in the watercourse at Mina), p. 137 (Macdan ibn Abi Talhah on the dream of the cock), p. 148 (Ibn ʿUmar on sixteen dinars on the Hajj of 23 AH).