Episode 8: Quraysh’s finest

Omar’s bold and sweeping policies defined the caliphate and gave it the tools it needed to evolve past its origins as a tribal confederation. While his predecessor had shied away from such decision making, the old Abu Bakr at least had the foresight to pick his successor. The second caliph neglected thinking about who might replace him until it was almost too late. At his tragic and abrupt end he did what he did best: he enacted a new policy to implement a traditional solution. Six chiefs of Quraysh were tasked with selecting one of them to be the next caliph.

Glossary

• Omar ibn il Khattab: Islam’s second caliph was no slouch, the last two episodes have been filled with his policy decisions, and many other changes remain untold. We’ll discuss them again retrospectively when they become relevant to the political scene once more: changes like the ones he made to slavery had deep and lasting impacts, but delving into them now would be difficult and distracting. I did want to mention one more policy he enacted, and give a final corrective to my depiction of this important figure in early Islam.  The last policy I wanted to mention was an office he created, responsible for making sure governors and tax collectors didn’t abuse their privileged positions. Anyone chosen for public service would have to submit a list of all their property to this office. When their service was complete they had to declare all their property once more, and half the difference was always returned to the treasury. If any actual impropriety was detected everything would be seized by the caliphate, and the transgressor published and shunned. Just another one of Omar’s many popular policies, which concerned itself with justice and moral leadership. The final corrective I want to make about Omar concerns whether he was a warlike or peaceable caliph. The many stories I tell about him decrying war, and wanting to slow the growth of his caliphate are meant to temper his clearly martial image. I do not dispute that Omar was foremost a military leader, as is evidenced by his preference for the title ‘commander of the faithful’. I just wanted to provide listeners with more of a sense of what they’ll get if they ever delve into the sources themselves. I feel the Omar I put together in this podcast, with his obsessive asceticism and constant fretting about his own responsibilities towards meting out justice to the Arabs and their wayward governors, is quite faithful to the one from the classical Arab sources. 
• Ammar bin Yassir: one of the earliest muslims, and fated to play an influential part in our story over the next few episodes. Ammar adopted Islam alongside his parents when all three were Meccan slaves owned by prominent Qurayshi clans. His parents were tortured to death in a vain effort to extract renunciations of faith from them, and his mother is considered the religion’s first martyr. It is no wonder that he hated all tribal aristocracy, and showed fierce loyalty to Mohammad’s egalitarian religion. After the prophet’s death he became a partisan of Ali bin abi Talib, who followed closely to his cousin’s example and shunned tribal politics. Ammar’s relationship with Omar was not acrimonious however. The second caliph even tried to appoint him as governor of Basra once, but its armies rejected him, a rare example of challenging the caliph’s authority. Omar always knew what battles to pick and did not insist on his choice, and Ammar never became governor. 
• Fairuz: there is some information on the man who killed Islam’s second caliph, but it is difficult to tell how much of it is true. Fairuz (whose name is sometimes contested) is said to have been a craftsman from Khuzestan who had been bought by some influential Arab. He was allowed to reside in Medina despite Omar’s decree restricting all non-Muslims from the desert because of his skill at crafting cloth windmills of all things. I have yet to find a source that specifies what exactly these were used for or why they were valuable, but there you have it. I didn’t feel the need to speculate on his motivations because the context makes them seem pretty obvious.
• Ubaydallah ibn Omar: this may sound made up, but Omar had two sons, Abdallah and Ubaydallah. If you’re curious about the linguistic difference, the latter is a diminutive of the first (though by no means a straight comparison, think of it like you would Bill and Billy). Their names were very similar, but the two sons were polar opposites, each representing an extreme of Omar’s own personality. Abdallah was the pious one, so much so that to many Arabs he was a living reminder of the prophet himself in his kindness and demeanor. Ubaydallah was more like his father back in the day before he was a Muslim, when he was a Meccan tough guy. He seems to have enjoyed challenging people to fights and boasting. Here’s one of his dumbest boasts, which his father made him walk back. He named his first son Issa, and asked to be referred to as Abu Issa from then on. Issa is Arabic for Jesus, and so essentially Ubaydallah wanted everyone to call him Jesus’s father, or God. Omar was furious, and his son’s joke did not last very long in the face of his wrath. Anyway the sources make it clear that Ubaydallah was a bad seed and that his father knew it. 
• Abdulrahman ibn Awf: despite being the decisive vote in the electoral council (for Othman, to whom he was directly related), he was the least influential of the six on the course of events following the vote. There isn’t much to say about him, he became very wealthy under Othman, and is sometimes celebrated for having been a patron to the prophet’s widows, or “the mothers of the faithful” as they were known since no man was allowed to marry them. I should note that Abu Bakr’s wives for example were remarried after his death, so this was a unique restriction that did not become a custom.
• Sa’ad bin abi Waqqas: the founder of Kufa and Basra and the victor of Qadissiya, Sa’ad’s presence in this electoral council was among the last important things he will take part in.
• Talha bin Ubaydallah: an early muslim from Abu Bakr’s clan who lost his right arm protecting the prophet in battle. He had two sons, Mohammad and Musa, and all three will have a part to play in our narrative going forward. Mohammad and Musa were somewhat like Ubaydallah and Abdallah, the sons of Omar, respectively. Musa was very pious, while Mohammad was a brave warrior with a loutish streak. During Omar’s reign, Talha and his sons fought in Basra’s armies.
• Al Zubayr ibn Awwam: an early muslim with a reputation for being skilled at war, and both renowned and feared for an intense temperament. He and his son Abdallah will have important roles to play in our narrative going forward. Under Omar, they both fought with Kufa’s armies.
• Othman ibn Affan: we’ll have a lot to say about Islam’s third caliph in our next few episodes, but under both his predecessors Othman served as a scribe, a position he briefly held for the prophet. He was a gentle and generous man who was close to both the prophet and the Meccan aristocracy from which he descended. 
• Ali bin abi Talib: I hope I’ve done a good enough job that you can appreciate the difficult position the prophet’s cousin and leader of the Hashemite clan was put in by being asked to take part in this electoral council. After being shunned throughout Abu Bakr’s reign, Ali and the Hashemites were somewhat compensated by Omar’s system of rewarding early merit in Islam. Ali spent much of his time during Omar’s reign resolving disputes on Islamic jurisprudence, so as a kind of judge in the sense that he was interpreting revelation and precedent for legal purposes of inheritance, or punishment, or a myriad of other practical matters. During Abu Bakr’s reign, Ali was a magnet for Arabs dissatisfied with the caliph, most notably the Ansar of Medina who felt sidelined after Quraysh grabbed the leadership roles all for themself. It is notable how reduced this support was under Omar, whose vigilance for justice and its dispensation gave discontent an internal, more effective route to reform. Ali’s decision to take part in this council is commendable for its high-mindedness, as its uniting against him was an entirely predictable outcome considering his rejection of the tribal elite which formed it. Personally speaking, he was closest to Othman and al Zubayr, though some sources claim he and Talha were friends as well. 
• Abdallah ibn il Abbas: another cousin to the prophet and Ali, Abdallah and his progeny are fated to play a massive role in our narrative, and indeed the history of the world. He was a Hashemite with little precedence in Islam, having only converted with the rest of Quraysh when the prophet took Mecca. Some speculate that this is the reason Omar felt safe elevating this particular Hashemite to the role of an advisor, but of course there’s no way to know for sure, Abdallah seems to have been quite clever and competent from what I’ve read so far. He is a major transmitter of narrations about his generation, and is the source for much of the information we have covered over the last two episodes.