Or we may fancy him perambulating, whip in hand, the streets and markets of al-Madīnah, ready to punish the offenders on the spot, may be his own son and his boon companions, who had indulged in the use of wine. For on this head ʿUmar did not brook pleasantry. When news of some arch-transgressors on this score was sent from Damascus, and indulgence from the strict enforcement of the law was claimed for them on the plea of their exalted position and military merits, he wrote back: “Gather an assembly and bring them forth. Then ask, Is wine lawful, or is it forbidden? If they say forbidden, lay eighty stripes upon each of them; if they say lawful, then behead them every one.” The punishment, if inflicted by ʿUmar’s own hand, was telling, for it became a proverb: ʿUmar’s whip is more terrible than another’s sword.
Or, again, with the groan of repentance of the well-chastised offender still ringing in our ears, we may watch the same ʿUmar, as journeying in Arabia in the year of famine, he comes upon a poor woman, seated with her hungry and weeping children round a fire, whereon is an empty pot. He hurries to the next village, procures bread and meat, fills the pot, and cooks an ample meal, leaving the little ones laughing and at play.
Such a man was ʿUmar, the great K͟halīfah, brave, wise, pious. No fitter epitaph could adorn his tombstone, than his dying words:—“It had gone hard with my soul, if I had not been a Muslim.” [[DAMASCUS], [JERUSALEM], [JIHAD], [MUHAMMAD].]
(The Editor is indebted to Dr. Steingass, the learned author of the English-Arabic Dictionary, A.D. 1882, and Arabic-English Dictionary, A.D. 1884 (W. H. Allen & Co., London), for this review of ʿUmar’s influence on the Muslim religion.)
UMM (ام), pl. ummāt, ummahāt. “Mother.” Heb. אֵם ēm. A word which frequently occurs in combination with other words, e.g. Ummu ʾl-Qurā, “the mother of villages,” the metropolis Makkah; Ummu ʾl-ʿUlūm, “the mother of sciences,” grammar.
UMMAH (امة). Heb. אֻמָּה ummāh. A people, a nation, a sect. The word occurs about forty times in the Qurʾān.
Ummatu Ibrāhīm, the people of Abraham.
Ummatu ʿĪsā, the people of Jesus.
Ummatu Muḥammad, the people of Muḥammad.
UMMĪ (امى). The title assumed by Muḥammad, and which occurs in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah viii. 156]: “Who shall follow the Apostle, the illiterate Prophet (an-Nabīyu ʾl-ummī)”; and in the 158th verse of the same Sūrah.