A caliph who returned unjustly taken property

This lesson asks you to explain how circumstances and personal qualities made certain people effective agents of change, and to analyse the issues religious leaders and movements have faced and what they contributed. The museum offers one person only, an Umayyad caliph, as one author reports him; your class will add other individuals and religious leaders and judge their contributions. ¹

Separate what the author reports from what you would need to know to explain the change: the office the person held, who agreed and who did not, and what happened afterwards. List what the account does not tell you.

Read what the account is built on. Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz is remembered for returning unjustly taken property: al-Sallabi writes that he began with himself and then with the Umayyads, and that he wrote to his governor of Egypt to lift the jizya from those who became Muslim ^{2 3}. The Encyclopaedia of Islam article says he is best known for his fiscal policies, though these remain unclear: his famous fiscal rescript is not a document in its own right but a text preserved in a later biography of the caliph by Ibn Abd al-Hakam, and its details remain open to different interpretations ⁴. The article finds it clear that, in the rescript and in other fiscal matters, he sought to raise the revenues due to the state while also granting new converts the same lenient fiscal status as other Muslims ⁵.

How should his work be ranked? Al-Sallabi reports that the scholars counted him among the Rightly Guided Caliphs ⁶. The Encyclopaedia of Islam article says that to later generations he was an example of piety, fairness and humility, and that some commentators counted him among the Rightly-Guided caliphs ⁵; it adds that his successors did not pursue his fiscal policies and that their long-term importance for the caliphate's fiscal system was small ⁵. The first judgement concerns how he was ranked, the second what lasted. The museum gives both and states no verdict.

He is sometimes portrayed as a pacifist caliph. The article judges it more likely that his stance on military affairs was dictated by concern over the dwindling caliphal treasury ⁴. In 99/717 he ordered the armies to withdraw from the costly and probably fruitless siege of Constantinople, yet in the same year he was willing to send troops against the Turks who had raided Azerbaijan, and the traditional summer raids continued without a break ⁴. In 100/718 he ordered armies against Kharijite rebels, although some sources relate that the rebels were calmed by diplomacy ⁴.

Sort the witnesses. The fiscal rescript survives inside a later biography ⁴. The reports the record takes from al-Tabari are given as "according to the report": he transmits them from named narrators, above all Abu Mikhnaf, and the record says they have not yet been compared with other sources. The Encyclopaedia of Islam adds that some sources allege the family of Abd al-Malik poisoned him ⁵, and that accounts of a youth fond of pomp and luxury may serve as a foil that heightens the image of the virtuous mature caliph ⁵. Ask which statements about him a student could check against a second source.

The record gives circumstances: Sulayman fell ill while on campaign and Raja' ibn Haywa persuaded him to name Umar as successor, which ran against Abd al-Malik's earlier wish that the succession stay among his own descendants, and drew some opposition from that line ⁴. It also gives the outcome the article reports for his fiscal policies: his successors did not pursue them ⁵. Take a position: should an agent of change be judged by what he did in office or by what lasted after him, and what is the strongest objection to your position?

• Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz: his life from Medina to Dayr Sim'an as the Encyclopaedia of Islam tells it, with al-Tabari's reports as a separate layer.
• Jizya: the tax Umar is reported to have lifted from those who became Muslim.
• Yazid ibn al-Muhallab: the governor whom, the article says, Umar removed and imprisoned over revenues.

Read Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz. Write three things the account tells you about his circumstances and three questions it leaves open.