Pact of Umar

Not to be confused with Umar's Assurance of safety to the people of Aelia, known as al-ʿUhda al-ʿUmariyya.

Pact of Umar (also known as: Covenant of Umar, Treaty of Umar or The laws of Umar; In Arabic Arabic: شروط عمر‎‎ or عهد عمر or عقد عمر), is an apocryphal treaty between the Muslims and the Christians of either Syria, Mesopotamia or Jerusalem that later gained a canonical status in Islamic jurisprudence. There are several versions of the pact, differing both in structure and stipulations. While the pact is traditionally attributed to the second Rashidun Caliph Umar ibn Khattab, other jurists and orientalists have doubted this attribution with the treaty being attributed to 9th century Mujtahids (Islamic scholars) or the Umayyad Caliph Umar II. This treaty should not be confused with Umar's Assurance of safety to the people of Aelia (known as al-ʿUhda al-ʿUmariyya, Arabic: العهدة العمرية‎‎).

In general, the pact contains a list of rights and restrictions on non-Muslims (dhimmis). By abiding to them, non-Muslims are granted security of their persons, their families, and their possessions. Other rights and stipulations may also apply. According to Ibn Taymiyya, one of the jurists who accepted the authenticity of the pact, the dhimmis have the right "to free themselves from the Covenant of 'Umar and claim equal status with the Muslims if they enlisted in the army of the state and fought alongside the Muslims in battle."

Origin and authenticity

According to Abu-Munshar, the historical origin of the document may lie in an agreement made between the Muslim conquerors and the Christians of Jazira or Damascus which was later extended to Dhimmis elsewhere. Some Western historians suggest that the document was based on Umar's Assurance, a treaty concluded between Umar ibn Khattab and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius following the capture of Jerusalem by the Rashidun Caliphate (637), while others believe the document was either the work of 9th century Mujtahids or was forged during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Umar II (717-720), with other clauses added later. Other scholars concluded that the document may have originated in immediate post-conquest milieu and was stylized by later historians.

Western scholars' opinions varied about the Pact's authenticity. According to Anver M. Emon, "There is intense discussion in the secondary literature" about the Pact's authenticity, With scholars disagreeing on whether it might have originated during the reign of Umar b. al-Khattab or was "a later invention retroactively associated with Umar -- the caliph who famously led the initial imperial expansion -- to endow the contract of dhimma with greater normative weight?" A.S. Tritton is one scholar who has s "suggested that the Pact is a fabrication" because later Muslim conquerors did not apply its terms to their agreements with their non-Muslim subjects, which they would have if the pact had existed earlier. on the other hand Another scholar Daniel C. Dennet believes that the Pact was "no different from any other treaty negotiated in that period and that it is well within reason that the Pact we have today , as preserved in al-Tabari's chronicle is an authentic version of that early treaty."

According to Thomas Walker Arnold, the pact "is in harmony" with Umar's "kindly consideration for his subjects of another faith,

"A later generation attributed to ‘Umar a number of restrictive regulations which hampered the Christians in the free exercise of their religion, but De Goeje and Caetani have proved without doubt that they are the invention of a later age; as, however, Muslim theologians of less tolerant periods accepted these ordinaces as genuine ....

The book Classical Islam: a Sourcebook of Religious Literature, quotes a version of the Pact from Kitab al-Umm of al-Shafi'i (d.204/820) that it says may be "a forerunner to the later document which gained something of a canonical status, making it applicable in many locations ..."

Content

Several different versions of the pact exist.

The below is neither guaranteed to be comprehensive nor accurate, but should give some sense of the contents generally attributed to the pact.

The Points:

• The ruler would provide security for the Christian believers who follow the rules of the pact.
• Prohibition against building new churches, places of worship, monasteries, monks or a new cell. Hence it was also forbidden to build new synagogues, although it is known that new synagogues were built after the occupation of the Islam, for example in Jerusalem and Ramle. The law that prohibits to build new synagogues was not new for the Jews, it was applied also during the Byzantines. It was new for the Christians.
• Prohibition against rebuilding destroyed churches, by day or night, in their own neighborhoods or those situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
• Prohibition against hanging a cross on the Churches.
• Muslims should be allowed to enter Churches (for shelter) in any time, both in day and night.
• Prohibition against calling the prayer by a bell or a some kind of a Gong (Nakos).
• Prohibition of Christians and Jews against raising their voices at prayer times.
• Prohibition against teaching non-Muslim children the Qur'an.
• Christians were forbidden to show their religion in public, or to be seen with Christian books or symbols in public, on the roads or in the markets of the Muslims.
• Palm Sunday and Easter parades were banned.
• Funerals should be conducted quietly.
• Prohibition against burying non-Muslim dead near Muslims.
• Prohibition against raising a pig next to a Muslims neighbor.
• Christian were forbidden to sell Muslims alcoholic beverage.
• Christians were forbidden to provide cover or shelter for spies.
• Prohibition against telling a lie about Muslims.
• Obligation to show deference toward Muslims. If a Muslim wishes to sit, non-Muslim should be rise from his seats and let the Muslim sit.
• Prohibition against preaching Muslim to conversion out of Islam.
• Prohibition against the conversion to Islam of some one who wants to convert.
• The appearance of the non-Muslims has to be different from those of the Muslims: Prohibition against wearing Qalansuwa (kind of dome that was used to wear by Bedouin), Bedouin turban (Amamh), Muslims shoes, and Sash to their waists. As to their heads, it was forbidden to comb the hair sidewise as the Muslim custom, and they were forced to cut the hair in the front of the head. Also non-Muslim shall not imitate the Arab-Muslim way of speech nor shall adopt the kunyas (Arabic byname, such as "abu Khattib").
• Obligation to identify non-Muslims as such by clipping the heads' forelocks and by always dressing in the same manner, wherever they go, with binding the zunar (a kind of belt) around the waists. Christians to wear blue belts or turbans, Jews to wear yellow belts or turbans, Zoroastrians to wear black belts or turbans, and Samaritans to wear red belts or turbans.
• Prohibition against riding animals in the Muslim custom, and prohibition against riding with a saddle.
• Prohibition against adopting a Muslim title of honor.
• Prohibition against engraving Arabic inscriptions on signet seals.
• Prohibition against any possession of weapons.
• Prohibition against teaching children the Koran.
• Non-Muslims must host a Muslim passerby for at least 3 days and feed him.
• Non-Muslims prohibited from buying a Muslim prisoner.
• Prohibition against taking slaves who have been allotted to Muslims.
• Prohibition against non-Muslims to lead, govern or employ Muslims.
• If a non-Muslim beats a Muslim, his Dhimmi is removed.
• The worship places of non-Muslims must be lower in elevation than the lowest mosque in town.
• The houses of non-Muslims must not be taller in elevation than the houses of Muslims.
• Houses of the non-Muslims must be short so that each time that they would enter or exit their houses they would have to bend, in a way that it would remind them of their low status in the world.

References

• Mark R. Cohen, and Norman A Stillman, “The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History,”

External links

• Text of one version of the Pact, in arabic and translated into French, commentary and translation by Ahmed Oulddali (2012).