The Sword and the Sūrah
ʿUmar was among the most formidable of the young men of Quraysh and among the harshest toward the Muslims. The Prophet ﷺ had prayed, “O God, strengthen Islam with the dearer of the two men to You: with Abū Jahl ibn Hishām or with ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb” — and, as Ibn ʿUmar reported, ʿUmar was the dearer.1
The account of his conversion is one of the best-known in the sīrah. He set out with his sword to kill the Prophet ﷺ, was told on the way that his own sister and her husband had converted, and turned to their house instead. Hearing recitation inside, he struck his brother-in-law and then his sister when she shielded him; seeing her bleeding, he stopped. She refused to give him the page until he washed. He read the opening of Sūrat Ṭāhā, and said, “How fine and noble is this speech.” He went from there to the house of al-Arqam, knocked with the sword still on him, and accepted Islam.2
It changed the position of the Muslims in Makkah overnight. Ibn Masʿūd said, “We were not able to pray at the Kaʿbah until ʿUmar became Muslim,” and, “We have not ceased to be honoured since ʿUmar accepted Islam.” He would not emigrate quietly either: the sīrah records him announcing his departure publicly and daring anyone to follow him.3
The Agreements
ʿUmar is the only Companion of whom the tradition preserves a list of occasions on which he proposed something and revelation came down agreeing with him — the muwāfaqāt. He himself listed three: that the Station of Ibrāhīm be taken as a place of prayer; that the Prophet's ﷺ wives observe ḥijāb; and his words to the wives during a domestic dispute, which the Qur'an then echoed almost exactly.4
But his judgement was not infallible and the sources do not pretend otherwise. At Ḥudaybiyyah, appalled by terms that looked like surrender, he went to the Prophet ﷺ and then to Abū Bakr with a series of angry questions — “Are we not upon the truth and they upon falsehood?” — and was answered each time that the Messenger of God ﷺ knew his Lord. ʿUmar said later, “I kept giving charity and fasting and praying and freeing slaves because of what I said that day, fearing my own words.”5
After Badr he advised executing the prisoners; the Prophet ﷺ took Abū Bakr's counsel to accept ransom instead, and revelation came supporting the stricter view. The next morning ʿUmar found the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr weeping over it.6
The Caliph
As caliph for ten years he presided over the conquest of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Persia — and is remembered in the sources less for the conquests than for what he did with authority. He established the ḥijrī calendar, the dīwān registers, and the office of the judge; he forbade his governors from riding fine mounts, eating fine food, or keeping doors that shut out petitioners.7
Entering Jerusalem to accept its surrender, he arrived leading his camel while his servant rode — they had agreed to take turns, and the servant's turn fell at the gate. He refused to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when its patriarch invited him, explaining that Muslims would afterwards claim the site as a mosque, and prayed outside it instead.8
He was stabbed while leading the dawn prayer in 644 by a Persian captive. Dying, he sent his son to ʿĀʾishah to ask permission to be buried beside the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr, telling him: “Say ʿUmar asks permission — do not say the Commander of the Faithful, for today I am not commander of the faithful.” She granted it, and he said, “Nothing was more important to me than that.”9