The Prophet ﷺ said: If there were to be a prophet after me, it would have been Umar. And he ﷺ said: Follow the two after me, Abu Bakr and Umar.
Tirmidhi and Ahmad — the rank; Tabari’s Umar is that rank walked through eighteen thousand days
18
Umar ibn al-Khattab
عمر بن الخطاب
13–23 AH
The years of opening: Yarmuk, Qadisiyyah, Madain, Egypt, Jerusalem. Tabari’s dating by year becomes a calendar of the ummah. Umar’s diwan, his night-walks, his letter to the Nile, his murder in the prayer — the Tarikh and the sahih both keep them.
A slave, Abu Luluah, stabbed him in the salah of fajr. He named six for shura. He said: do not let my death be a cause of fitnah.
Bukhari and the Tarikh, 23 AH
How to weigh this
Conquest-numbers (killed, captured, kharaj) vary. The openings of Sham, Iraq, and Misr do not. Tabari’s year-entries are the backbone of every later tarikh.