BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 43It's easy to suppose such stories are purely apocryphal, or that, if true,
they merely show Omar the politician demonstrating a common touch for
show. Personally, I think he must have been strikingly pious, unpreten-
tious, devoted, and empathic, just as the stories suggest: the anecdotes are
too consistent to dismiss, and something must account for this man's over-
powering impact on his contemporaries. Whatever the reality, however,
the legend he planted in the Muslim imagination expresses an ideal of how
rulers should behave.
Omar adopted a title that became an enduring addendum to khalifa:
Amir al-Mu'mineen, or "commander of the faithful," a title that conflated his
spiritual and military roles. As a big-picture military strategist, Omar ranked
with Alexander and Julius Caesar, but how he acquired such savvy is hard to
fathom. Until Islam carne along, he was just another small-town merchant.
He took part in those iconic early battles of Muslim history, but in military
terms those were little more than skirmishes. Now, suddenly, he was studying
"world" (i.e., Middle World) maps, calculating the flow of Byzantine or Sas-
sanid resources, gauging what geography dictated for strategy, deciding where
to force a battle and where to retreat-he was operating on a global scale.
Fortuitously, at this historical moment, the Umma produced an extra-
ordinary array of brilliant field commanders such as Khaled bin al-Walid,
hero of the Apostate Wars, Amr ibn al-A' as, conqueror of Egypt, and Sa'd
ibn Abi Waqqas, who beat the Persians.
As soon as Omar took office, he finished a piece of military business
that Abu Bakr had started. Toward the end of the Apostate Wars, seeing
Arabia in turmoil, the Byzantines had moved troops to the border, intend-
ing to absorb this "troubled" territory. Abu Bakr had sent men to keep
them at bay, but even before his death the Muslims had pushed the Byzan-
tines back into their own territory. Shortly after Omar took the helm, they
set siege to the city of Damascus. From that time on, Muslims had the
Byzantines on the run, and in 636 CE, at a place called Yarmuk, they de-
stroyed the main Byzantine army.
Meanwhile, the Persians were doing their best to unravel the upstart
Muslim community with spies and provocateurs. Instead of swatting at in-
dividual Persian agents, Omar decided to throttle the threat at its source.
He called on Muslims to topple the Sassanid empire, a proposal of breath-
taking audacity: ants vowing to fell a mastiff.