Episode 7: Changing to stay the same

We mentioned many of the accomplishments of Omar ibn il Khattab in our last episode, and in this one we continue our discussion of the second caliph’s reign. There was no going back for the Arabs after their historic victories had altered their world irreversibly, and a strong leader was needed to manage this critical transformational period. We will focus on the bold decisions Omar made, and try to understand what may have motivated him to undertake such sweeping changes. 

Glossary

• Omar ibn il Khattab: we’ve already said a lot about the respected second caliph of Islam, but there is so much more that I left out. He’s the one who set the Muslim calendar which uses the year of the Umma’s emigration from Mecca to Medina (a little over a decade into prophecy) as its starting point. As a side note: the year of emigration was used instead of Mohammad’s birth or the beginning of prophecy (both alternatives which were apparently seriously considered) because those two events were not tribally public, the emigration however was something all the nomadic tribes remembered well. Apart from that, Omar forbade the selling of pregnant female slaves, decreeing that these women were religiously considered wives and thus free from bondage, a hugely progressive development that would go on to reshape the gendered relationship Arabs had with slavery. Another important example is the mailing system he started to send orders and receive reports from the distant provinces, which would go on to become vital to the emerging caliphate. Omar was widely beloved, and was sometimes called “al farooq” which means “the divider” for his unmatched ability for telling right from wrong. The sources heap hyperbolic praises on him, and even include a few over-the-top fictional miracles as well.
• Mu’awiya bin abi Sufian: this Umayyad governor of Syria has already been mentioned briefly once before, and we’ll get plenty of chances to talk about him more going forward. For now, I just wanted to remind listeners that his father was pretty much the chief of Quraysh while they were fighting against the Umma. Different people saw different things in this Umayyad’s growing influence over Syria. Some were irked by his history and took it as proof that the Qurayshi leadership which approved of him prioritized tribal allegiance over Islamic pedigree. Others saw in his rise the clemency of this merciful new religion, and considered him an example on how one could be saved by their own faith and dedication. Controversy will surround Mu’awiya, as it will almost every other Umayyad.
• Sa’ad bin abi Waqqas: we met Sa’ad last time when he bested the Sassanids and conquered Iraq as commander of the Arabs in the key battle of Qadisiya. He also founded the two Iraqi military canton cities of Kufa and Basra, on the northeastern edges of the Arabian desert. Like other early muslims, his reputation remains stellar thus far.
• Khalid ibn il Walid: the greatest and most storied Arab commander of his time (and ever since, really) was an indispensable asset in Abu Bakr’s armies, but the second caliph liked him a whole lot less. Some sources link this animosity to Khalid’s killing of an early muslim, and others to the fact that he was Omar’s direct cousin and the caliph was always uneasy about perceptions of nepotism. My personal opinion is that Omar treated all Meccans who had fought against the prophet with the same measure of contempt, and Khalid was the one who gave Mohammad his only Arab defeat when he led the armies of Quraysh in the battle at Mt. Uhud.
• Amr ibn il As: like Mu’awiya and Khalid, ‘Amr was another Meccan who was late to Islam, but became a key figure within the caliphate due to his standing in Quraysh. He had trading interests in Egypt, constantly agitated for its conquest, and governed it for the duration of Omar’s reign.
• Mohammad ibn Maslama: the only one on this list who isn’t of the Quraysh, he was of the Ansar of Medina, specifically its Khazraj tribe. Omar trusted Mohammad ibn Maslama greatly, ever since the two of them were paired up by the prophet one day. You won’t need to remember his name as he won’t really feature much after this, but I wanted to use this chance to remind you of the state of the Ansar within the caliphate. Abu Bakr had made little use of them in his armies, and Omar was only a little bit better. His move to rank the Muslims by sabiqa or Islamic precedence had restored some standing to these early champions of the prophet; but most sources depict the Ansar as solidly in Ali’s Shi’ite camp at this stage, finding in him a man of Quraysh who still valued their opinion and who remembered how dearly they were valued by the prophet.
• Abdallah ibn il Abbass: a Hashemite whom Omar chose as a close advisor, he goes on to become a major transmitter of narratives about his generation. Despite being of the prophet’s clan, his father (al Abbass, paternal uncle to the prophet) was from the part of the clan which did not conver to Islam, and so his son had no precedence in the religion, joining it only after Mecca fell to the Muslims later in the prophet’s life. He was a direct cousin to both the prophet and Ali bin abi Talib.