Omar () or Omar Farouk () is a historical Arab television drama miniseries/serial produced and broadcast by MBC1, Hatem Ali serves as director, with Chadi Abo co-directing. Abo is best known for directing battle scenes and complicated visual effects projects. Co-produced by Qatar TV, the series is based on the life of Umar ( 583–644), the second Rashidun caliph, and depicts his life from 18 years old until the moments of his death.
The series faced several high-profile controversies due to its depiction of Umar, Abu Bakr, Uthman and Ali, the four Rashidun Caliphs, along with other characters, who some Muslims believe should not be depicted, much like Muhammad. The series consists of 31 episodes and was originally aired in the month of Ramadan since July 20, 2012. Produced at a cost of 200 million Saudi riyals (est. USD53 million), filming took place in Morocco, primarily in the cities of Marrakesh, Tangier, El Jadida, Casablanca and Mohammedia.
Following initial broadcast, the series was dubbed into several languages for international broadcast, and subtitled in English on YouTube; it received great support from many different Sunni scholarly bodies and people watching it. The series was criticized by some Shia scholars and commentators for its portrayal of Ali and for what they regarded as historical inaccuracies and distortions.
Synopsis The series starts with one of the pilgrimage of caliph Omar where he delivers speeches to the pilgrims. The next scene comes with an exploration on Mecca of the caliph where he emotionally flashbacks to his own 18 year's life when he was a young boy working for his rude father Khattab ibn Nufayl. The flashback perspective of Omar shows all the past story of his life from when he was a wrestler, a businessman and above all one of the leaders of the Quraish, and then to his life after his conversion into Islam being one of the closest companions of Muhammad and an immensely devoted believer, a brave inspiration for all the contemporary Muslims and a bold warrior in all the contemporary Islamic battles. The story goes through the Meccan victory, Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr's legacy as caliph and his death, and finally Omar's legacy. From viewer's eye perspective, his legacy as caliph shows the biographical stories of improvements and complexities of his own caliphate till his assassination by Abu Lulu.
Cast
The ten promised of paradise Samer Ismail as Umar ibn Al-Khattab (physical actor) Assad Khalifa as Umar ibn Al-Khattab (voice actor) Ghassan Massoud as Abu Bakr Ghanem Zrelli as Ali ibn Abi Talib Tamer Al-Arbeed as Uthman ibn Affan Ahmed Mansour as Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf Mahmoud Khalili as Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah Suhail Jbaei as Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas Rami Khalaf as Saeed bin Zaid Nihad Sheikh Ibrahim as Talha ibn Ubayd Allah
Others Mehyar Khaddour as Khalid ibn al-Walid Faisal Al-Omairi as Bilal ibn Rabah Alaa' Rashidi as Ammar ibn Yasir Rafi Wahba as Jafar ibn Abi Talib Abdullah Sheikh Khamees as Yasir ibn Amer Baha' Tharwat as Abu Hudhayfa ibn 'Utba Abdel-Aziz Makhioun as Abu Talib Mohammad Miftah as Hamza ibn Abdul-Muttalib. Qasim Melho as Amr ibn al-'As Hisham Bahloul as Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahlاستياء جماعي من برمجة رمضان... ومغاربة يتألقون في مسلسل الفاروق ، مجلة لها، 8 أغسطس 2012. Yazan Al-Sayed as Al-Qa'qa'a ibn Amr at-Tamimi Fethi Haddaoui as Abu Sufyan ibn Harb Jawad Al-Shakrji as Abu al-Hakam/Abu Jahl.تحية إلى أبي جهل ، خطابات، 2 أغسطس 2012. Fayez Abu Dan as Abu Lahab Hassan Al-Jundi as Utbah ibn Rabi'ah Rafiq Al-Subaiei as Waraqah ibn Nawfal Ghazi Hussein as Umayyah ibn Khalaf Jalal Al-Taweel as Salman the Persian Ziad Twati as Wahshi ibn Harb Basem Dakak as Walid ibn Utbah May Skaf as Hind bint Utbah Bernadette Hudeib as Rayhana (fictional character) Fadi Sbeeh as Safwan ibn Umayya Mohammad Haddaqi as Umayr ibn Wahb Nadera Imran as Sajah bint Al-Harith Khaled Al-Qaish as Ayyash ibn Abi Rabiah Jaber Joukhdar as Abdullah ibn Masud Ghazwan Al-Safadi as Al-Walid ibn al-Walid Mahmoud Nasr as Zayd ibn al-Khattab Alfat Omar as Atiqa bint Zaydألفت عمر: "عاتكة" نقطة التحول في حياتى' ، صحيفة الوفد، 10 أغسطس 2012. Siham Aseef as Layla bint al-Minhal Najah Safkouni as Suhayl ibn Amr Abdel-Karim Al-Qawasmi as Walid ibn al-Mughira Ghassan Azb as Huyayy ibn Akhtab Riyadh Wrdiyani as Salul Nasser Wrdiyani as Khattab ibn Nufayl Muna Wassef as Al-Shifa' bint Abdullah. Abdel-Hakim Quteifan as Malik ibn Nuwayrah Mohannad Quteish as Al-Muthanna ibn Haritha Faten Shahin as Umm Jamil bint Harb Andre Skaff as Suraqa bin Malik Fatimah Saad as Sumayyah bint Khayyat Qamar Murtadha as Salma Umm-ul-Khair Rakeen Saad as Asma bint Abu Bakr Nasr Shama as Uthman Abu Quhafa Murshad Dergham as Mughira ibn Shu'ba Randy Halabi as Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan Omar Azouzi as Al-'As ibn Wa'il Areej Khaddour as Fatimah bint al-Khattab Amn Al-Arned as Salim Mawla Abu Hudhayfa Yasser Abdel-Latif as Al-Najashi Amer Ali as Yazdegerd III Maram Ben Aziza as wife of Yazdegerd III (Maria) Jay Abdo as satrap Iyad Abu Al-Shamat as Hormuzan Jamal Abbasi as Musaylimah Mohammad Al Rashi as Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz Suzan Najm Aldeen as Borandukht Juliet Awad as Al-Khansa Mohammad Quri'ah as Heraclius Mustapha Tah-Tah as Mukhayriq Unknown Actor as Theodore Trithyrius Ahmad Harhash as Umar Bin Al Din
List of episodes
Production The project was started on 30 September 2010 through an agreement signed by Middle East Broadcasting Center and Qatar Media agency (Qatar TV) to make a drama series on the life of Caliph Omar, scheduled to be aired during the Ramadan of 2011. The chief of MBC group Waleed al Ibrahim stated that, the drama would not aim at profits:
Saudi producers, the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), said the series is the largest ever Arabic production, with 30,000 actors and a technical team from 10 countries who toiled 300 days to make the 31-part series. The director Ali said that building a replica of Mecca and the surrounding area was a challenge that faced him until he and the crew finally chose a location in Morocco. The series needed a huge crew amount to 500 actors, actresses, and extras in one single day. Ali also pointed out, several scenes in the series were difficult to shoot like which elephant treads on one of the actors.
The horses used in the series were brought from Eastern Europe and were trained together with the elephants to make them adapt to each other. The series featured many battle scenes on a large scale. Ali said it took them a total of 54 days with a rate of 12 hours a day and with the participation of 500 extras that were trained on this type of scenes.
Two actors of this series, Hassan Al-Jundi and Muna Wassef, both acted (as Abu Jahl and Hind respectively) in the 1970s Arabic language film Al Risalah (الرسالة), the version of Moustapha Akkad's religious biopic The Message (a.k.a. Mohammad, Messenger of God) made for the Arab World. Hassan Al-Jundi also acted as Kisra in the English language film while his counterpart in Al Risalah played the character of Abu Jahl in the same film.
Hatem Ali commented that other filmmakers would follow in his footsteps with this taboo broken by him by portraying sensitive early Islamic personalities like Rashidun Caliphs, by pointing to Majid Majidi, who was then developing the feature film Muhammad: The Messenger of God about the Islamic prophet Muhammad's childhood.
Committee members for managing historical context A board committee of scholars was created for maintaining the historicity of the script. The major members of the board were: Yusuf al-Qaradawi Akram Zia Omari Salman al-Awda Abdul Wahab Turairi Ali al-Sallabi Saad Al-Otaibi
Costume design Azar Mohammadi designed the costumes for most of the episodes and led the full costume design process, including conducting historical research, selecting fabrics, and supervising production.
Visual effects
Most of the episodes of the series contained many expensive computer-generated imagery (CGI) effects which were supervised by Chadi abo and executed by French CGI production BUF in association with Hecat, as well as title and ending theme also. Moreover, the sets of ancient Mecca and Medina and other sites in Arabia and elsewhere in the post classical era were also produced by the Soora Studio, a Syrian set producer production, which previously made the sets of many other popular Arabic dramas.
Music The original soundtrack was composed by Turkish musician Fahir Atakoglu. A nasheed or Arabic song praising Omar and describing a complete archive of the serial was featured after the scene of his assassination in the ending episode. The nasheed, entitled "Salamun Alayka Ya Omar Al Faarouq", was sung by the Kuwaiti Quran reciter Mishary Al-Afasy.
Receptions from Islamic religious scholars Saleh Al-Fawzan, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al Shaykh), Al-Azhar University, Abdul Azīz bin Fahd, Muhammad Al-Munajid, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Saleh al-Maghamsi and many other Islamic scholars viewed the series negatively.
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the head of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al Shaykh, criminalized the dramatic action, saying that those behind "Umar Al Farooq" series have committed a "grave mistake and a crime" by spending their money on the production of such a TV series. He also said that he is against the idea of producing a series that "displays the biography of the rightly guided caliphs in a manner that is doomed to lead to offense and criticism." He added: "These films and series do not bring about or intend any good, and the producers, who claim intellectual enlightenment, might say, they are wrong in the path that they have taken, and they should know that what they offer is dangerous, wrong and a crime." Senior Saudi Salafi scholar Saleh Al-Fawzan also forbade watching the series, recalling "the consensus of scholars and the Muslim World League to prohibit the representation of the Companions, may God be pleased with them."
Salman al-Awda, Yūsuf al-Qaraḍawī, Yasir Qadhi, Alī al-Sallabī and Khaled al-Musleh viewed the series positively.
Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik gave a mixed review of the series. In a video on his official YouTube channel, he recommended Muslims not to watch any TV series or movies, but said that if they can't resist the habit completely, they should watch TV series like Omar and films like The Message. In reaction to Naik's view about the series, Saudi Salafi cleric Assim Al-Hakim said: "This is like saying masturbation is better than fornication! Or saying that drinking wine, gambling and other different sins are better than shirk or kufr! What kind of logic is this?".
International broadcasting The series later has been broadcast in the television channels of different countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, Kosovo, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt etc. either dubbed or with native subtitle.
Country Network Series premiere EPTV July 20, 2012 MBC1, Qatar TV July 20, 2012 MNCTV July 20, 2012 Klan Kosova, TV BESA May, 2020 Nessma TV July 20, 2012 atv, Kanal 7 July 20, 2012; June 7, 2016 Future Television September 23, 2013 Nour TV (UAE) September, 2013 Medi1TV September, 2013 Milly TV 1 May 2018 Islam Channel 24 June 2020 Raajje TV 11 March 2021
Traditional historicity and depictional issues