A sermon of `Umar ibn `Abdul`Aziz (may Allah bestow mercy on his soul)

Abu Al Hasan said: Al Mughirah ibn Mutarraf told us on the authority of Shu`ayb ibn Safwan from his father who said: `Umar ibn `Abdul-`Aziz delivered his last sermon in Khunasirah then he died.

He praised and thanked Allah then said: "O people: you have not been created in vain, you had not been left without a purpose, and surely you shall have a time in which Allah shall judge among you. So, he shall be wretched who got out from the mercy of Allah which encompasses everything, and he shall be deprived of a garden as wide as the heavens and earth.

Let it be known that security tomorrow is for those who fear today and sold few pleasures for a permanent one and a transit pleasure for an everlasting one. Do not you see that you are the offspring of the perished and you shall leave it to those who will come after you until you come to the Best of Heirs [Allah who shall inherit the earth and that on it].

Every day you follow the coffin of so and so who died after the end of his lifetime then you place him in the ground and leave him without a cover. He left the causes and his beloved one for reckoning, carrying his good deeds.

By Allah, I am telling you this while I know that none of you has sins more than I have, so I seek Allah's Forgiveness for you and for me. When one of you has a need which I can fulfill, I shall fulfill it. And no one of you needs a good living but I equate between his living and mine until they both be equal.

By Allah, if I had wished a better living standard, my tongue would have expressed it and I know how to get it by its means, but it was written in Allah's Record and according to His Just laws some means in which He indicated the ways of His Obedience and forbade His Disobedience.

Then he wept and wiped his eyes with his garment then stepped down. He never stepped up a pulpit thereafter until he passed away.