Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan (February 720), commonly known as Umar II, was the eighth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 717 until his death in 720. His brief administration instituted major fiscal changes, notably tax reforms that exempted non-Arab Muslims (mawali) from the jizya to address financial inequality, alongside measures preventing the dynastic privatization of state lands. In addition to these economic policies, his government directed the early official compilation of hadith literature.
Burdened by the severe financial strain and heavy casualties of the Siege of Constantinople, Umar ordered the withdrawal of Muslim forces from exposed northern fronts, including Constantinople and Cilicia, to consolidate defenses around the Syrian heartland. Despite a general de-escalation of large-scale offensive campaigns, his administration oversaw the conquest and fortification of Narbonne in Septimania.
He is regarded by many Muslims as the fifth rightly guided caliph and was widely viewed by contemporaries as the Mahdi, due to his reputation for piety, generosity, asceticism, and a profound sense of justice. Standing apart from other Umayyad rulers in historical memory, both early critics and the Abbasids largely spared his memory from the systematic desecration and exhumation applied to the rest of the dynasty.
Early life Umar was likely born in Medina around 680. His father, Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan, belonged to the ruling family of the Umayyad dynasty based in the city, while his mother, Layla bint Asim, hailed from the Banu Adi clan of the Quraysh and was a granddaughter of the second Rashidun caliph Umar (). Like his great-grandfather, he bore the kunya (teknonym), Abū Ḥafṣ. His descent from the second caliph would later be heavily emphasized by historians to differentiate his character and rule from other Umayyad caliphs.
At the time of his birth, another branch of the Umayyads, the Sufyanids, ruled from their capital Damascus. After Caliph Yazid I () and his son and successor, Mu'awiya II (), died in quick succession in 683 and 684, Umayyad authority collapsed across the Caliphate. The Umayyads of the Hejaz, including Medina, were expelled by supporters of the rival caliph, the Mecca-based Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr (). The Umayyad exiles took refuge in Syria, where loyalist Arab tribes supported the dynasty. Umar's grandfather, Marwan I (), was recognized by these tribes as caliph and, with their support, reasserted Umayyad rule in Syria.
In 685, Marwan ousted Ibn al-Zubayr's governor from Egypt and appointed Umar's father to the province. Umar spent part of his childhood in Egypt, particularly in Hulwan, which had become the seat of his father's governorship between 686 and his death in 705. He received his education in Medina, which was retaken by the Umayyads under Umar's paternal uncle, Caliph Abd al-Malik (), in 692. Having spent much of his youth in Medina, Umar developed ties with the city's pious men and transmitters of hadiths. Following the death of Umar's father, Abd al-Malik recalled Umar to Damascus.
Governorship of the Hejaz Shortly after his accession, Abd al-Malik's son and successor, al-Walid I (), appointed Umar governor of Medina.() According to Julius Wellhausen, al-Walid's intention was to use Umar to reconcile the townspeople of Medina to Umayyad rule and " the evil memory" of the preceding Umayyad governors, namely Hisham ibn Isma'il al-Makhzumi, whose rule over Medina had been harsh for its inhabitants. Umar took up the post in February/March 706 and his jurisdiction later extended to Mecca and Taif.
Information about his governorship is scant, but most traditional accounts note that he was a "just governor", according to historian Paul Cobb. He often led the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca and showed favor toward the Islamic legal scholars of Medina, notably Sa'id ibn al-Musayyab. Umar tolerated many of these scholars' open criticism of the Umayyad government's conduct. Other accounts held him to be materialistic during his early career. On al-Walid's orders, Umar undertook the reconstruction and expansion of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina beginning in 707. Under Umar's generally lenient rule, the Hejaz became a refuge for Iraqi political and religious exiles fleeing the persecutions of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, al-Walid's powerful viceroy over the eastern half of the Caliphate. According to Cobb, this served as Umar's "undoing" as al-Hajjaj pressured the caliph to dismiss Umar in May/June 712. Prompted by al-Hajjaj, al-Walid recalled Umar and split the Hejaz into separate provinces, appointing Uthman ibn Hayyan al-Murri to govern Medina and Khalid ibn Abdallah ibn Khalid ibn Asid to govern Mecca.
Courtier of al-Walid and Sulayman Despite his dismissal, Umar remained in al-Walid's favor, being the brother of the caliph's first wife, Umm al-Banin bint Abd al-Aziz. He remained in al-Walid's court in Damascus until the caliph's death in 715, and according to the 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi, he performed the funeral prayers for al-Walid. The latter's brother and successor, Sulayman (), held Umar in high regard. Alongside Raja ibn Haywa, an influential religious figure in the Umayyads' court, Umar served as a principal adviser of Sulayman. He accompanied the latter when he led the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 716 and on his return to Jerusalem. Likewise, he was at the caliph's side at the Muslims' marshaling camp at Dabiq in northern Syria, where Sulayman directed the massive war effort to conquer the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 717.
Caliphate Accession 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. Sulayman's son Ayyub had been his initial nominee, but predeceased him, while his other sons were either too young or away fighting on the Byzantine front. The nomination of Umar voided the wishes of Abd al-Malik, who sought to restrict the office to his direct descendants. The elevation of Umar, a member of a cadet branch of the dynasty, in preference to the numerous descendants of Abd al-Malik surprised these princes. According to Wellhausen, "nobody dreamed of this, himself [Umar] least of all". Raja managed the affair, calling the Umayyad princes into Dabiq's mosque and demanding that they recognize Sulayman's will, which Raja had kept secret. Only after the Umayyads accepted did Raja reveal that Umar was the caliph's nominee. Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik voiced his opposition, but relented after being threatened with violence. A potential intra-dynastic conflict was averted with the designation of a son of Abd al-Malik, Yazid II, as Umar's successor.
According to the 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, which had not materialized due to Abd al-Aziz predeceasing Abd al-Malik. Umar acceded without significant opposition on 22 September 717.
Provincial administrations Shortly after his accession, Umar overhauled the administrations of the provinces. He appointed competent men that he could control, indicating his intention "to keep a close eye on provincial administration". Wellhausen noted 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".
He subdivided the vast governorship established over Iraq and the eastern Caliphate under Abd al-Malik's viceroy al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf. 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. In place of Ibn al-Muhallab, he appointed 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 conqueror Qutayba ibn Muslim, to Sind. He appointed Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari to the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia). Although many of these appointees 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.
Umar appointed al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani to al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula) and Ismail ibn Ubayd Allah ibn Abi al-Muhajir to Ifriqiya. He chose these governors because of their perceived neutrality in the tribal factionalism between the Qays and Yaman and justice toward the oppressed.
Economic reforms
The most significant reform of Umar was effecting the equality of Arabs and mawali (non-Arab Muslims). This was mainly relevant to the non-Arab troops in the Muslim army, who had not been entitled to the same shares in spoils, lands and salaries given to Arab soldiers. The policy also applied to Muslim society at large. Under previous Umayyad rulers, Arab Muslims had 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. Under the new tax policy, converted mawali 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. He issued an edict on taxation stating:
Furthermore, early Islamic governance suffered from systematic elite appropriation of public wealth, as exemplified by Caliph Mu'awiya I confiscating conquered public property and crown lands across Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, such as former Sasanian royal estates, to turn them into private estates and land grants for his family and entourage. While early rulers treated public property as personal family inheritance, Umar II was exceptional in seeking to restrain this widespread dynastic greed and blocking elites from privatizing public crown lands, issuing a rescript to protect state lands (sawāfī) from alienation as private estates.
Domestic policies Umar adjusted legal policies regarding wrongful death compensation (diyya, or blood money). Under the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya I (), half of the diyya owed to non-Muslim (dhimmi) families was diverted to the state treasury (bayt al-mal). Umar terminated this practice to curb state overreach, but rather than returning the surplus to the victims' families, he left the amount halved, reflecting a regime constrained by financial insecurity and a refusal to grant full legal parity to non-Muslims. His omission established the precedent that later jurists used to permanently limit a non-Muslim's compensation to half that of a Muslim's.
Possibly to stave off potential blowback from opponents of the equalization measures, Umar expanded the Islamization drive that had been steadily strengthening under his Marwanid predecessors. The drive included measures to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims and the inauguration of an Islamic iconoclasm. According to Khalid Yahya Blankinship, he put a stop to the ritual cursing of Caliph Ali (), the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, in Friday prayer sermons.