UMAR By Shibli Numani, Oxford, Rs 225

This book is on Umar Bin Khattab, the second of the four pious Caliphs after the death of Prophet Mohammad. Apart from information on the man himself, the book gives an idea of Islam as well as how it spread to the rest of the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere.

Umar was a giant of a man, in physique as well as in deed. Hot-tempered as he was, the burden of the caliphate mellowed him over time. He combined in him religiosity with pragmatism and thought as much about the Muslim subjects as the non-Muslim population in his regime.

Umar is the translation of the Urdu work, Al Farooq, by a classic writer of Urdu prose, Shibli Numani (1857-1914). However, it is not a full translation of the original, it has been abridged to about one-sixth of the original. The Urdu book was published in India in two volumes in 1998 and proved to be so popular that it was translated into Turkish, Persian as well as English. According to Jamil Qureshi, the editor, this abridged form is based on the English translation by Zafar Ali Khan published in 1939. Qureshi reasons “for the non-specialist, a short readable essay”, but could not proffer why the venture was undertaken after a century.

The book has been divided into two parts, the conquests and the reforms of Hazrat Umar. Even while dealing with the conquest and spread of Islam to Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Alexandria and the Persian Empire, the first part tells briefly about the history of the Arabs before Islam and after. However, it becomes more of a historical treatise than a biography proper. The historical part is also marred with facts of different battles without any attempts at analyses. Shibli is a powerful writer with a fine Urdu prose style, but this is not manifest in this particular book. He can however be credited with the collection of data at a time when acquiring them was extremely hard work. His detailed sketches about the advancing armies of Islam against the Roman and Persian empires are worth reading even in the abridged form.

The second part of the book deals with the reforms initiated by Umar and the government administration of the fast expanding Islamic world. This section is divided into many parts, which include civil and military administration, Islamic laws and the non-Muslim subjects. A small chapter also assesses the man and his achievements. It is surprising to read about the sudden spread of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and how Umar managed such a vast empire.

Umar may be an abridged book but scholars will enjoy reading it and students will benefit from it because of its readable language and chronology of events.