What he left at home

The Prophet ﷺ called on the Muslims of Madinah to give towards an expedition, and people brought what they could spare. Some brought a great deal. The historians place this call at the preparation for Tabuk — a long march in a hard season — though the report of what follows does not itself name the expedition.

Umar ibn al-Khattab is reported to have thought about this carefully. He brought half of everything he owned, and he did it partly hoping that this time, at last, he might have out-given Abu Bakr.

Then Abu Bakr arrived with everything he had.

Asked what he had left for his family, he answered — in the well-known report, paraphrased here — that he had left them Allah and His Messenger. Umar's response, in the same report, was that he would never get ahead of him.

It is a small scene and it is remembered because of how ordinary it is. No battle, no speech. Just a man who had already given away most of his wealth in Makkah, doing it again in Madinah twenty years later.