Umar’s sudden death came directly from the breadth of the conquests during his reign. Medina was no longer an isolated town of date farmers who all knew each other; it was an imperial capital with embassies. It had probably outgrown its original city buildings and had shanty-towns starting to spread to the lava beds. It was filled with not only “foreign” Arabs (Yemenis, Iraqis, Syrians) but with Persians, Aramaic Syrians, and Egyptians.
In spite of all this, Caliph Umar rigidly adhered to the rule of living as simply as Muhammad had done. He would have no aristocracy growing up on his watch; he fired governors for creating walls and locks to keep people out. He himself walked to the mosque to lead prayers, doing it alone and as simply as when they had first come as Emigrants to Medina. No bodyguards.
A Christian man had been captured into slavery from Persia. He had lived in Medina long enough to learn Arabic, and his master did not provide work for him but expected him to hustle up work and pay a daily fee of two dirhams out of his earnings. It probably would have been an easier life to just be given work and meals, so he had the worst of freedom and the worst of slavery. This man Firuz, also called Abu Lulu in Arabic, decided to bring his bitter complaint to Umar himself.
Caliph Umar took time to speak to him in the mosque or the street just outside it. But he didn’t think that Abu Lulu’s plight was so serious. The Persian was a carpenter, so surely there was enough building work in Medina to keep him in lucrative work. He saw no reason to interfere, either freeing the slave or decreeing a reduced fee.
But Abu Lulu’s griefs went deeper than just his economic hardship. As a slave, he had also been impressed into the Muslim army to attack his homeland. He saw the Persian defeat at Nahawand and witnessed masses of captives being led away. And then it turns out, it went even deeper than that. His childhood had been spent as a Byzantine-captive slave, too! He had only gotten home again, perhaps after the return of the True Cross relic, in time to be captured by Arabs. He had a lot of grief and trauma.
So the next day he jumped on the Caliph as he knelt to pray at the mosque. He stabbed him many times and then stabbed himself.
Umar didn’t die on the scene; he was carried home and made comfortable, although the outcome was certain. He had time to think about the succession.
There were essentially three Arab models for passing on power. Simple family inheritance of land and power was ruled out; Umar was definitely not going to treat the holy office of Successor to the Prophet as worthy of one of his sons. The dying ruler could appoint a successor, as Abu Bakr had appointed him. Or the dying ruler could leave the choice to a conclave, a shura, as Muhammad had apparently done.
Or had Muhammad left the decision to the Muslim community? That’s the Sunni belief; Muhammad said that if they were in agreement, they could not go wrong. Of course, the alternative is that Muhammad had appointed a successor as Abu Bakr did, and if so, it was Ali. And Ali was right there at Umar’s right hand, having served and advised him loyally while also carrying out the major role of discipling the hundreds of new students flocking to Medina. Ali and Umar had a family tie, since Umar had married Ali’s very young daughter. Ali could step in and take over seamlessly.
The fact that Umar didn’t simply appoint Ali raises suspicions that the division between the blood-tie and marriage-tie relatives of Muhammad had not dimmed. As Umar lay dying, whatever went through his mind, and whoever was talking to him, we know the outcome. He appointed a six-man shura to make the choice after he was gone. This group would choose one from among themselves, so he was essentially choosing six candidates, any of whom would be acceptable. He chose only the earliest believers, no recent converts, so all with Meccan roots. One of them was Ali…
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson