The Year of the Ashes

In 18 AH a nine-month drought turned central Arabia into dust. Umar, caliph of an empire that ran from Egypt to Persia, went to bed hungry for the whole nine months. He swore he would not eat bread or fat while a single citizen of Medina was hungry.

The year 18 AH (639 CE) is remembered in the Islamic sources as Am ar-Ramadah, "the Year of the Ashes." A drought unbroken for nine months burned across central Arabia. Livestock died in the fields. Grazing land turned to dust. The desert winds carried up so much fine debris that the sky itself was grey. Refugees from the drought-struck hinterland streamed into Medina by the thousand.

Umar was by this time the caliph of a state that stretched from Egypt to Persia. The public treasury, the diwan, could have opened its doors for him personally. Umar refused. He looked at his companions and said: I will not eat what the poor of Medina cannot eat. I will not lift a bite of bread or a spoonful of fat until the last of them has eaten first.

His son Abdullah later described what his father looked like by the end of that year. Umar's skin turned dark from lack of food. His stomach growled so loudly it could be heard in the majlis when men came to consult him. He grew thin in a way that alarmed the companions. Abdullah said: my father, the caliph of the Muslims, spent that year eating only bread and olive oil. When he was told there was still butter in the market, he answered: my people are hungry. How can I eat butter when they are hungry?

He wrote to the governor of Egypt, Amr ibn al-As, for grain. He wrote to the governor of Syria, Abu Ubaydah. He wrote to the governor of Iraq. Grain came from every corner of the empire by the caravan-load. Umar met the caravans himself. He organised distribution personally. He walked at night through Medina to see who was still hungry. When he found a mother trying to distract her crying children by boiling stones in a pot to trick them into thinking food was coming, he took a sack of flour on his own back from the treasury and carried it to her house, refused to let his servant carry it for him, cooked the meal himself with his own hands, and sat with the children until they had eaten. When his servant tried to take the sack from him he said: on the Day of Judgment, my servant will not be asked about my sins.

By the end of the year, the drought broke. The rains came. The refugees returned to their tribes. Umar was thin and weathered but alive. The classical historians say that he gained his lost weight back within months, but he never forgot the year of the ashes. He said afterward, when advisers urged him to build a palace: I have already lived nine months in a house that was empty of butter, and Allah did not forget me. Why would I build a palace?

What the story teaches

Umar's Year of the Ashes is a founding narrative in Islamic political ethics. It is the story a caliph asked to justify wealth is expected to answer against. It is the standard the classical scholars invoked whenever a ruler pleaded that political necessity required him to eat while his people fasted. There is a phrase used in classical Arabic to describe a leader in crisis: ka-'Umar fi 'am ar-Ramadah, "like Umar in the year of the ashes." It is the highest political compliment in the Islamic tradition. It is not paid to men who conquered nations. It is paid to men who went hungry with their people.