Umar's Monthly Rations

نظام الأرزاق الشهرية لعمر

Umar had a jarib of food kneaded and baked and oiled — thirty men ate lunch from it, and the same at supper — 'two jaribs a month suffice a man', and so each man, woman and mamluk drew two jaribs monthly; a man would curse his fellow 'may God lift your two jaribs' — death cut them — 'and that is on tongues to this day'. Abu al-Darda' counted 'rightly-guided sunnas Umar granted the umma — among them the two mudds and the two qists'; on the minbar, mudd and qist in hand: 'we run your stipends and your rizq every month — for every Muslim soul each month a mudd, a qist of oil, a qist of vinegar' — 'and the slave?' — 'yes, and the slave'. For dependents he set the fighters' households and their descendants at tens; Uthman and his governors kept it and made it heritable to non-stipended heirs till Umar II, who heard Sulayman ibn Habib's account, disliked the inheritance — 'cut it and generalize the stipend' — 'I fear they will imitate your cutting and not your generalizing' — 'truly said', and he left them. The newborn drew ten; Mu'awiya deferred it to the weanling; Abd al-Malik cut it save whom he willed — and 'do not hasten weaning your children: we stipend every newborn in Islam'.