The report of Umar's card to the Nile

Ibn Abd al-Hakam transmits this report from Uthman ibn Salih, from Ibn Lahi'a, from Qays ibn al-Hajjaj, "from someone who told him", so the first transmitter is not named in the chain. ¹

When Amr ibn al-As had conquered Egypt, its people came to him at the start of the Coptic month of Ba'una and said their Nile had a custom without which it would not flow: on the twelfth night of the month they took a virgin girl, satisfied her parents, dressed her in jewellery and fine clothes and threw her into the Nile. Amr told them this would not happen in Islam, for Islam does away with what came before. The Nile then did not rise at all through Ba'una, Abib and Misra, until they were ready to leave the land. ¹

Amr wrote to Umar, who answered that he had done right and sent a card to be thrown into the Nile. It was addressed from Umar to the Nile of the people of Egypt: if it flowed of its own accord, let it not flow; if it was God who made it flow, they asked God to make it flow. Amr threw it in the day before the Feast of the Cross, and in the morning the river had risen sixteen cubits in one night, and the custom came to an end. ²

Ibn Abd al-Hakam sets beside it a report from Yazid ibn Abi Habib that the Nile was held back from Pharaoh's people until they asked Moses to pray, and that it then rose sixteen cubits in a night. ² It is preceded in the book by sayings on the Nile's excellence attributed to Abd Allah ibn Amr and to Ka'b al-Ahbar. ^{3 1}

The Sheikh tells the report as an example of the believer not yielding to customs unrelated to religion: the Egyptians, he says, around mid-August chose a beautiful girl, adorned her and threw her into the Nile to please its gods so the flood would come; when Amr ibn al-As consulted Umar, he wrote a letter to the Nile: if you flow of your own accord, do not flow, and if you flow by God's command, then flow; Amr threw it in, the Nile flooded more than in other years and the custom ended; he mentions that Ahmad Shawqi referred to it in a poem (needs_source: the report as the Sheikh tells it; see the note on its chain above). ^{4 5 6 7 8}