Umar ibn Abd al Azziz – Lessons from his life

Well, hello, have you heard the Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Well Shall we move on to her? Well, Kulu Maha desert in beta Pokolbin attend Allah, Allah wa Kulu Dada if enough.

It's very important that we become familiar with the lives of the righteous predecessors. There are many righteous people in our history that we don't study enough or talk about enough. But for many of us, when it comes to history, we learn about the lives of the prophets, or mo salah and the Sahaba radula onehope. But we don't go beyond that. And when we don't go beyond that, we are missing out on 1400 years of legacies, 1400 years of stories that we can derive a lot of lessons from.

So today, Inshallah, we're going to take a look at one of those historical figures who are very important, and who is someone who played a crucial role in the history of Islam. Yet he is someone who many of our youngsters have never, never even heard about, in fact, many of our elders haven't even heard about, despite being one of the most important people in the first and second century of Islam. And that is the great Caliph of Islam. Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz Rahim Allah.

So who was Omar bin Abdulaziz Omar even Abdul Aziz was the eighth of the Umayyad caliphs. So the maids were the first dynasty to rule over the Muslim world. They were a a series of kings that ruled for about 90 years, starting with the great Sahabi ma Rajala. One who going on for about 90 years, this family ruled over the Muslim world after they were the split between the Abbas's and the omegas. And after that they had to move to Spain, and they ruled over Spain for another 290 years. So the Omega three the first major dynasty in the history of Islam, and in this line of kings, the eighth one to rule over the Muslim world, was named Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz. So he came from the royal

family of that time, the Romanians, right, his father, Abdul Aziz was the son of the great homemade King.

Marwan even haka, right with Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz even Marwan Ibaka and his mother this is in this way he's leading she gets interesting. Omar even Abdulaziz mother Leila was the granddaughter of omitted Nahata Graciela one who saw on his mother's side, He is the great grandson of Omar radula. One who and on his father's side he's and Omar yet and he that's why he's also known as Omar the second because he's the second Omar and the second Omar from that family to serve as a caliph over the Muslim world. So Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz, he was born at the time, which was

very rocky for the OMA in some ways, and then it good for the online Adobe's. So on one hand, the Ummah was dealing with a lot of expansion. They were kicking over many lands, they were growing very wealthy, it was becoming a world superpower. Right. So at this point in time, the Muslims are growing into a world superpower. They are just conquered Spain, parts of India, they now ruled many countries across Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia, they had become a superpower of the time. So the Ummah was growing and you're entering a new phase, a phase that was unknown to the Sahaba, the early Muslims, they never imagined that within 100 years, the Muslims would be ruling such a

large portion of that. Now, with these new conquests, and these new luxuries, and all this new goodness, they entered the Ummah, they also came a lot of new tests, because people weren't used to this level of success and this level of wealth and this level of power. And many of the early intermediates, they fell into the sin of abusing this power, right of charging too much taxes or living very lavish lifestyles, of enjoying too much of this world. And this began to cause some tension between the average person in the public and the rulers, because this is like one generation after the qualifier, Russia then you have Abu Bakr, Omar Osman Ali, and now 50 years later, you have

these kings living a lavish lifestyle. So it's during this era, the Omen even Abdul Aziz is born. And he is born into both worlds. on his father's side, he's the grandson of the king. And on his mother's side, He is the great grandson of Omar Rajala, who and he grows up experiencing both worlds. He grows up experiencing the luxury of being of the royal family, but he also grows up experiencing the piety and the knowledge of being from the family of Omar, Graciela one who so for example, when his father was appointed as the governor of Egypt, Omar bin Abdulaziz stayed behind in Medina to learn from the Obama of material so why his father was in Egypt, the ruling that part of

the land a young woman with

Abdel Aziz is growing up in Medina, under the care of Abdullah bin Omar, his grandfather's brother, studying with the Sahaba studying with the great Allama of Medina. So he's getting both worlds. He's getting this world of politics and royalty and he's getting this world of piety and knowledge at the same time. And so what this does is he makes him a very unique individual in our history. He's one of the few rulers in our history that came from both backgrounds, the background of piety and the background of material wealth. And what's important is when when Allah finally gave him power and Allah chosen to be the person in power, he chose piety. He chose piety over royalty. So Omar

Abdulaziz grows up in Medina, his cousin Walid becomes the king. He mammies Walid sister, Fatima, who's a very important person in the story. So he manages the Princess The literally the king's daughter, and he is now both the first cousin and the brother in law of the king. Right because his cousin Khalid is now the king and Walid appointed as the governor of Medina. And the people of Medina love Omar bin Abdulaziz. He is a pious man. He's a descendant of Omar Abdullah one who he is someone who's ruling in similar style to the Colaba Rashi Deen. So everybody loves him in Medina. So when he gives him power over that entire region, including Makkah and Medina, at the same time,

rulers of other region, regions begin to get jealous of him, they begin to become jealous that people love him more than them. And people are migrating from their cities to his cities. So they start, you know, saying some bad things about him to the Caliph. They start putting pressure on the Calico removing for power. Eventually, Waleed finds it not worth fighting for he moves over from the position of governor and makes him move to Damascus. Now we've all been Abdullah these moves to Damascus, his cousin Walid passes away. And what leads brother Sulaiman becomes the king and sulamani. And Omar has a very good relationship, right? They were cousins, they were brother in

law's and they were very, very close. So Suleiman makes over bin Abdulaziz, his minister, he's one of his chief advisors. And he has a very close relationship with him during his reign. But Solomon suffered from health problems, and he only ruled for three years and passed away at a young age, before passing away. Solomon, King Solomon has a dilemma. He doesn't have any children who are old enough to be king because he passed away at a young age. His children are like two or three years old, so he can't pass it on to his children. His brothers weren't ready to be king yet either. They were very young, very immature, very spoiled. He also felt very bad about some of the mistakes he

had made as a ruler, and he wanted to make up for it. So after consulting his advisers, they all told him to choose his cousin Omar as an ex King, because Omar is technically still an Omean. He is the first cousin of Solomon and the brother in law of Solomon, and he's the grandson of Marwan even have come so he's still technically no mayor. So it will still be in the family, but you will be with the righteous man. And so Solomon before passing away, he chooses Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz to be the next Caliph. This is in the year 99, ah, 99 years after the Hijra to talking about almost a century after the story of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam. The world's a very different place in the

in the 100 years. And Omar bin Abdulaziz comes into power, he doesn't want to be king. He doesn't want to be the Caliph, but Allah chose him for this position. And so he went into it with full sincerity and full effort, and he ended up making a lot of reforms that impacted the Ummah right until today. So Omar Abdullah, this becomes the Caliph. And what's interesting is that his reign coincides with the turn of the first century, right? He starts doing a 99 H. So in 100, H, he is the Caliph. And many of the historians they linked us to the Hadith, where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, at the end of every century, Allah sends people to revive this religion. And there's

almost an EMR or consensus amongst the historians and scholars of Hadith, that that first revival, at the end of the first century, was Omar bin Abdulaziz, that the Ummah was starting to stray people were becoming materialistic, people are starting to get addicted to alcohol, people we're starting to get focused only on money and power. And incomes is righteous man and changes everything. And so he's seen as the first McGeady the first revival and reform of the Muslim world. So what is Omar bin Abdulaziz do as Caliph. He does a lot of things. We don't have enough time to summarize all of it in a single hook. But just to give you an idea of how many important and radical changes he made as

Caliph Number one, he removed the unfair tax or Jizya on converts. Now in Islam, non Muslims living in the Islamic State pay tax call the jizya right, but when they convert to Islam, they don't pay it anymore because the Muslims now they made some of the earlier may exhibit greedy for extra money. So even after people converted to Islam, they were still charging

Get the juicy, right because it just wanted an extra tax. And this had multiple negative impacts on the ummah. Number one, it of course, it fueled the greed of the Americans. Number two, it, it became a barrier for people converting to Islam. Because one of the financial incentives of converting to Islam was they didn't have to pay Jizya anymore, but now they're going to convert and still pay the Jizya. Number three, it was causing injustice, right? And anytime there's injustice in the Muslim world, it affects every level of society. So one of the first things Omar Abdulaziz does is he gets rid of this policy. He says Jizya is only to be charged on the non Muslim residents of the Muslim

world. Anyone who converts to Islam doesn't have to pay Jizya. Yeah, that includes all those who have already converted. And this has multiple positive impacts on the Ummah, the most important one is that 1000s of people converted to Islam during the reign of Omar Abdulaziz, because that unjust tax was gone. And the door was open for people to convert. And the beautiful exchange that takes place, one of his governors writes to him and says, you know, if you stop charging this tax, you're gonna be losing a lot of money. And Omar Abdulaziz writes back and says, Allah did not send the prophets loathsome as a tax collector. He sent him as Rama tulameen. This was his message to his

governance, do you see the level of righteousness of this king. So Omar bin Abdulaziz, he makes this change, he makes other changes as well. One of the major changes he made was that he increased the salary of Allah ma, and he paid a lot of attention to the development of the Islamic sciences. So in the early years of Islam,

although we had to be self sustaining, right, they had to have a business on the side and take care of themselves. And they had to provide for themselves while studying. And the Romanians came up with the idea that why don't we pay them a salary so they can focus on their studies? Right? It was King, world leader who came up with his idea, let's pay them a salary so they can focus on their studies and their teaching. They don't have to worry about making money. Omar Abdulaziz comes into power, he increases that salary. Why should now there's more incentive for people to study Islam, there's more incentive for people to become Alama because they don't have to worry about money. And think about

this today. How relevant is this policy today? Nowadays, one of the main reasons why people are not becoming Alama is they're worried about money, right? They're worried how they're gonna take care of their families in the time have only been Abdulaziz, they did not have to worry about us because he paid the Olimar so well, that he was actually financially beneficial to become a scholar in his time. As to this led to many people taking up the study of Islam during his lifetime, who would in the next generation become great scholars of Islam. Not only did he pay attention to the salaries of the Allama, but he also played a pay attention to other aspects of Islamic knowledge as well. So for

example, he revived the concept of having a shura committee of having Allah Ma, who the deacon consult on every decision. So he has some of the greatest scholars of his time in the palace to consult him on major matters. So the Allah ma are now involved in running the country. Number three, he sent all Amar to all the outlying regions that the Muslims had conquered, so they could do Dawa to the people, and they could teach the new converts So Islam could spread. And number four, this is one of his most overlooked but perhaps one of his most important contributions. Omar bin Abdul Aziz hired the leading Hadith scholars of his time to start compiling and writing hotties into book

forms. Right so for the first 100 years of our history had these were primarily passed down orally from teacher to student in the year 100. Age, Omar Abdullah ji said we need to start compiling these into books so that they are not lost. And so the process and the project of compiling ideas into book form begins in the reign of Omar bin Abdulaziz Rahim Allah, this project only bears its greatest fruit 200 years later, with the production of sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Right but those books are the end result of 200 years of effort of 300 years of hard work. It starts here with Omar bin Abdulaziz passes this policy that we need to start working on this, even if it takes

decades, even if it takes centuries, we have to start working on this. And so they started that project in his lifetime. And 200 years later, it bears his greatest heroes. So Omar bin Abdulaziz did all of this. But what's most amazing, what's most amazing about the life of this great Caliph of Islam, this great king, this great,

rightly guided Taliban pious man is that he was only the ruler for two years. He was only the Caliph for two and a half years, from 99 to one on one edge.

Everything I just mentioned and everything I couldn't make time to mention happened in a two year period.

The amount of Baraka that Allah put in this man's life in this man's time in this mind in this man's efforts is mind blowing. When you look back and you study, he's like you cannot understand how did so much get done in such a short period of time. This to me is historically one of the greatest examples of Baraka in the history of Islam, where a man comes into power for just two and a half years and complete

cleat reforms the Muslim world, there are many of those changes he made, they will impact the Ummah for the rest of time, whether it was increasing the score or the salaries of the scholars, where it was sending people to do Dawa in the outlying regions, the development of Spain which would eventually end up becoming, you know, the leader of Europe during the Muslim rains, it started the time of Omar Abdulaziz with a start developing Spain, with AIDS, the compilation of Hadith all of these things were done in a two year period. Unfortunately, after two years, some of Omar bin Abdulaziz cousins became jealous of him. They bribed one of his servants to poison him and he died

at a young age of 37.

Think about it, this man passed away at the age of 37. And over 1300 years later, we still study his life. We still marveled at his life, we still take benefit from his life, we still are amazed by how much he accomplished in such a short period of time. He lived in this world for only 37 years, he ruled the Muslim world for only two and a half years. But what he accomplished in that time is truly a grommet. It is a miracle it is some it is a proof of baraka and one of the one of the greatest examples we have in our history of what happens when a pious man is in charge of this Omar, we ask Allah to bless us once again with righteous rulers, we ask Allah to allow us to follow in the

footsteps of these righteous people to take lessons from their lives to be able to draw lessons from their lives and to apply them to our lives and to be like them. So behind Robin Robin is at the mercy foon was salam ala mousseline with hamdulillahi rabbil Alameen.

hamdu Lillahi wa Salatu was Salam ala Mala Nabi about the ummah. But

just to draw a few lessons from the life of Omar bin Abdulaziz, it's very important that as Muslims, we need to change the way we study history. One of the biggest problems we have today is that when we study history, we only focus on memorizing names and dates. And that's not what's important. What's important is that you derive lessons from history, that you learn from both the success and failures of those who came before us. That's the only way we're ever going to move forward, that you study any story in history and ask yourself, What can I learn from this? If they were successful? How can I imitate that success, even on a small level? If they fail? How can I avoid that failure

even on a small level, and all of these there are so many lessons we can take from his life. He'll read my book about him, I actually have listened 15 lessons from his life. The other books that listen to 25 lessons from his life, there's so many we can take, but here are just a few that each of us can apply, you know, even though most of us will never be in a position of political power. Right? But we can still apply these lessons to our life. Number one, the importance of marrying a righteous spouse. We see this at every level of the story. Right at the very beginning when you see the story of how Omar bin Abdulaziz grandparents met. Right from that story, we see the importance

of marrying a righteous bow. So what the story goes that Omar Abdullah Cadabra, Ilan, when he was the Khalifa, he would go out at night to check on the people. And once he overheard a conversation at night between a woman who wanted her daughter to mix milk and water right to to give her the way of deception to deceive people about how much multi wrestling and the doctor refused to do so out of fear of Allah. So he sent someone the next day to find out who this righteous young lady is because he wants a lady to marry his son. And when he realized that there's a pious woman living here, who is not married, he wanted the pious woman to marry his son. And so that woman, married his son asked

him and later on O'Meara general had a dream that from the descendants, they came a righteous ruler. They had a daughter named Leila. And of course, she was raised righteously in Medina by the SIR by the Sahaba and the tabby and, and she marries the prince Abdulaziz ibn Marwan, and they raised their son over righteously. And Omar grows up in Medina, being raised by the likes of Abdullah ibn Omar. And he man is a righteous woman, Fatima be the Abdul Malik. And what you see in every level of the story for success to reach that level, everybody has to be careful who you choose and a spouse at every level someone is making sure the valley the best possible person embedding a personal piety

because that affects the next generation as well. That's going to be the parents of the next generation. We look at Justin in the case of Omar Abdulaziz, he would not have been able to do what he did if his wife wasn't a righteous woman. In reality, he had three wives. But this is the only one who's spoken about because she was the person who could have blocked him. Why? Because Fatima being the Abdulmalik was the daughter, the granddaughter and the sister of the kings. She was raised in royalty. She was the most powerful woman in the world at that time. When he chose to live a simple life she could have said no. When he chose to live a simple life she could have rebelled

against him. She could have taken her brother's side. But no she chose to live a simple life. Now imagine you grew up

Father was a king Your father was a king, your brothers were a king. Imagine the level of luxuries she is accustomed to, and she still chooses a righteous lifestyle. This is the importance of a righteous boss that this woman Faulkner being the Abdulmalik was so pious that in the history books, she is referred to as Amira to Zahida, the aesthetic queen, the queen who had suffered. That was her legacy for this Omar.

Second lesson we can take from the life of Omar Abdulaziz, the importance of righteous parenting. Someone like Omar bin Abdulaziz doesn't come about in a vacuum. He is the result of three generations of righteous parenting, you have Omar radula, anhu, raising his son, and then getting his son value to a righteous woman. You have them raising their daughter Leila, and getting her Maddie to a good man. And then you have them raising their son Omar Abdullah over Rahima, hula, and him growing up to become this great Caliph. And this Colisee his son was even more pious than him, because his son is now the result of five generations of righteous parenting. But unfortunately, his

son passed away during his lifetime, and never got to experience

any worldly success because he passed away at a young age in an accident, but he was even more pious than him. So we see that righteous parenting has a ripple effect generation after generation after generation, and the more generation of righteous parenting they are, the more greater people that will come in those later generations. A third lesson that we can take from the life of Omar bin Abdulaziz is that he doesn't matter how long you live in this world. Allah has given each of us a set time in this world and is different for everybody. Some people are only in this world for 25 years, and some people are in this world for 90 years. Some people are anywhere in between that some

people aren't even here for less than that, right? We don't know how much time you have. What matters is that you use the time that Allah has given you in a way that is pleasing to Him. If you do that Allah will put Baraka in your life and you will Baraka in your efforts. And we see that will Omar even Abdulaziz Rahim Allah he only lived for 37 years. He only ruled for two years. But Allah put Baraka in everything he did, and the Ummah continues to benefit from it right until today. And the final lesson that we can take today from the life of Omar bin Abdulaziz, that our time is short. I mean, we don't have time to go into more lessons. As I said, there are dozens of lessons we can

take from his life. But one last one that we can all apply today is to focus on sources of continuous reward. Focus on sources of the Wabi Jharia. Because if we pass away, we don't want our good deeds to end. If we pass away young we want our good deeds to continue for decades, if not centuries. So for example, Omar bin Abdulaziz developing Spain that benefited the Ummah for centuries, Omar bin Abdulaziz starting the project of compiling Hadith that benefits the Ummah right until today.

All these things he did, you know, help being the cause of 1000s of people converting to Islam, all of the 1000s of people and their descendants and their descendants and their descendants for the next 1300 years until today, inshallah he gets to share that reward. This is what it means to dedicate your life to sources of continuous reward, that even if you pass away at a young age, your good deeds never stop. It can be hundreds of years later, 1000s of years later, and your good deeds continue to pile up. So let us spend our lives focus on building up sources of continuous reward for ourselves. So even when we leave this world, our good deeds don't come to an end. And just like

these righteous predecessors, you know, we can leave behind the legacy the benefits this ummah, for hundreds, if not 1000s of years. We ask Allah to allow us to follow in the footsteps in the righteous. We ask Allah Subhana Allah to allow us to continue deriving lessons from their life and to apply into our lives. Robin Artina dunya Hasina will fade out or the husband are working harder but now robbing the hub like I mean as wodgina was reacting or Kurata you know, it's unbelievable Jackeline Rama Subhana rahbek are robbing isa Tmic foon was salam ala Bucha Celine with hamdulillahi rabbil Alameen Aki Musa