Umar II

According to the traditional Muslim sources, when Sulayman was on his deathbed in Dabiq, he was persuaded by Raja to designate Umar as his successor.[3][10][11][12] Sulayman's son Ayyub had been his initial nominee, but predeceased him,[13] while his other sons were either too young or away fighting on the Byzantine front.[11] The nomination of Umar voided the wishes of Abd al-Malik, who sought to restrict the office to his direct descendants.[3] The elevation of Umar, a member of a cadet branch of the dynasty, in preference to the numerous princes descended from Abd al-Malik surprised these princes.[12] According to Wellhausen, "nobody dreamed of this, himself [Umar] least of all".[12] Raja managed the affair, calling the Umayyad princes present at Dabiq into its mosque and demanding that they recognize Sulayman's will, which Raja had kept secret.[12] Only after the Umayyads accepted did Raja reveal that Umar was the caliph's nominee.[12] Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik voiced his opposition, but relented after being threatened with the use of force.[12] Potential intra-dynastic conflict was averted with the designation of a son of Abd al-Malik, Yazid II, as Umar's successor.[11]

According to historian Reinhard Eisener, Raja's role in the affair was likely "exaggerated"; "more reasonable" was that Umar's succession was the result of "traditional patterns, like seniority and well-founded claims" stemming from Caliph Marwan I's original designation of Umar's father, Abd al-Aziz, as Abd al-Malik's successor,[14] which had not materialized due to Abd al-Aziz predeceasing Abd al-Malik.[15] Umar acceded without significant opposition on 22 September 717.[3]

Shortly after his accession, Umar overhauled the administrations of the provinces.[3] He split up the vast governorship established over Iraq and the eastern Caliphate during the reign of Abd al-Malik and his viceroy al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.[10] Sulayman's appointee to this super-province, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, was dismissed and imprisoned by Umar for failing to forward the spoils from his earlier conquest of Tabaristan along the southern Caspian coast to the caliphal treasury.[10][16] In place of Ibn al-Muhallab, he assigned Abd al-Hamid ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Zayd ibn al-Khattab, a member of Caliph Umar I's family, to Kufa, Adi ibn Artah al-Fazari to Basra, al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami to Khurasan and Amr ibn Muslim al-Bahili, a brother of the accomplished general Qutayba ibn Muslim, to Sindh.[16] To the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), he appointed Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari, while al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani was appointed to al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula) and Isma'il ibn Abd Allah to Ifriqiya.[16]

Though many of the appointees in the eastern provinces were pupils of al-Hajjaj or affiliated with the Qays faction, Umar chose them based on their reliability and integrity, rather than opposition to Sulayman's government.[16] His choice of governors for al-Andalus and Ifriqiya stemmed from his perceptions of their neutrality amid the tribal factionalism of the Qays and Yaman and justice toward the oppressed.[17] According to Kennedy, Umar seemingly assigned competent men that he could control, indicating his intention "to keep a close eye on provincial administration".[10] Wellhausen notes that the caliph did not leave the governors to their own devices in return for their forwarding of the provincial revenues; rather, he actively oversaw his governors' administrations and his main interest was "not so much the increase of power as the establishment of right".[18]

The Second Arab Siege of Constantinople, as depicted in the 14th-century Bulgarian translation of the Manasses Chronicle.

Umar is often deemed a pacifist by the sources, despite ruling over the most extensive Muslim empire in history,[19]s and Cobb attributes the caliph's war-weariness to concerns over the diminishing funds of the Caliphate's treasury.[3] Wellhausen asserts that Umar was "disinclined to wars of conquest, well-knowing that they were waged, not for God, but for the sake of spoil".[8] Indeed, shortly after his accession in late 717, he ordered the withdrawal of the Muslim army led by his cousin Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik from their abortive siege against Constantinople to the region of Malatya, closer to the Syrian frontier.[3] Despite the withdrawal, Umar kept up the annual summer raids against the Byzantine frontier,[3] out of the obligation to jihad.[8] Umar remained in northern Syria, often residing at his estate in Khunasira, where he built a fortified headquarters.[3][20]

At some point in 717, he dispatched a force under Ibn Hatim ibn al-Nu'man al-Bahili to Adharbayjan to disperse a group of Turks who had launched damaging raids against the province.[3] In 718, he successively deployed Iraqi and Syrian troops to suppress the Kharijite rebellion of Shawdhab al-Yashkuri in Iraq, though some sources say the revolt was settled diplomatically.[3] Along the Caliphate's northeastern frontiers, in Transoxiana, Islam had already been established in a number of cities, precluding Umar's withdrawal of Arab troops from there.[21] However, he prevented further eastward expansion.[16] During his reign, Muslim forces based in al-Andalus conquered and fortified the Mediterranean coastal city of Narbonne in modern-day France.[22]

Silver dirham of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz

Umar was a scholar and surrounded himself with great scholars like Muhammad ibn Ka'b and Maymun ibn Mihran. He offered stipends to teachers and encouraged education. Through his personal example, he inculcated piety, steadfastness, business ethics and moral rectitude in the general population. His reforms included strict abolition of drinking, forbidding public nudity, elimination of mixed bathrooms for men and women and fair dispensation of Zakat. He undertook extensive public works in Persia, Khorasan and North Africa, including the construction of canals, roads, rest houses for travellers and medical dispensaries.[23]

He continued the welfare programs of the last few Umayyad caliphs, expanding them and including special programs for orphans and the destitute. He would also abolish the jizya tax for converts to Islam, who were former dhimmis, who used to be taxed even after they had converted under other Umayyad rulers.

Umar II is credited with having ordered the first official collection of hadith (sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad), fearing that some of it might be lost. Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Hazm and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri are among those who compiled hadiths at Umar II's behest.[24]

He made other reforms:[25]

• State officials were excluded from entering into any business.
• Unpaid labour was made illegal.
• Pasture lands and game reserves, which were reserved for the family of the dignitaries, were evenly distributed among the poor for the purpose of cultivation.
• He urged all of the officials to listen the complaints of the people; he would also announce at any public occasion that, if anyone witnessed a public official mistreating others, he should report him to the leader and would be given a reward ranging from 100 to 300 dirhams.

Under previous Umayyad rulers, beginning with Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf,[26] Arab Muslims had certain financial privileges over non-Arab Muslims. Non-Arab converts to Islam were still expected to pay the jizya (poll tax) that they paid before becoming Muslims. Umar put into practice a new system that exempted all Muslims, regardless of their heritage, from the jizya tax. He also added some safeguards to the system to make sure that mass conversion to Islam would not cause the collapse of the finances of the Umayyad government.[27] Under the new tax policy, converted mawali (non-Arab Muslim converts) would not pay the jizya (or any other dhimmi tax), but upon conversion, their land would become the property of their villages and would thus remain liable to the full rate of the kharaj (land tax). This compensated for the loss of income due to the diminished jizya tax base.[28] He issued an edict on taxation stating:

Whosoever accepts Islam, whether Christian, Jew or Zoroastrian, of those now subject to taxes and who joins himself to the body of the Muslims in their abode, forsaking the abode in which he was before, he shall have the same rights and duties as they have, and they are obliged to associate with him and to treat him as one of themselves.[29]

Following the example of the Prophet, Umar sent out emissaries to China and Tibet, inviting their rulers to accept Islam. According to Nazeer Ahmed, it was during the time of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz that Islam took roots and was accepted by a large segment of the population of Persia and Egypt. When the officials complained that because of conversions, the jizya revenues of the state had experienced a steep decline, Umar wrote back saying that he had accepted the Caliphate to invite people to Islam and not to become a tax collector. The infusion of non-Arabs in large number into the fold of Islam shifted the center of gravity of the empire from Medina and Damascus to Persia and Egypt.[23]