WHEN appointed as caliph, just a day after Abu Bakr looked off to the market with his wares, Umar met him on the street and warned that in the hands of Abu Bakr present life lied a heavy burden of state. “Why do you still go to the market to manage the business? While the country have so many problems that must be solved … ” Umar said.
Hearing that, Abu Bakr was smiling. “To maintain a family life,” he said briefly. “So I have to go to work.”
The incident made Umar thought. So he along with another friends who consulting and calculating household spending everyday of caliph. Soon they set the annual salary of 2,500 dirhams to Abu Bakr, and then gradually, later increased to 500 dirhams a month. If converted to rupiah, the Caliph Abu Bakr salary is only Rp. 72 million a year, or about $ 6 million a month. For your information, the value of the dirham is never changed.
Although the salary of the caliph, Abu Bakr never take the whole salary. One day his wife said to Abu Bakr, “I wanted to buy some sweets.”
Abu Bakr said, “I did not have enough money to buy it.”
His wife said, “If you allow, I will try to save money we are spending everyday, so that I can buy the sweets.”
Abu Bakr approved it.
So from that moment, the wife of Abu Bakr saved little money, put aside their daily spending money. A few days later the money was collected to buy food that was desired by his wife. After the money was collected, she handed the money to her husband to buy these foods.
But Abu Bakr said, “It appears from this experience, it turns out the money benefits we derive from the Baitul Mal that exceed our needs.” Then Abu Bakr reinstated the money that had been collected by his wife to the Baitul Mal. And since that day, he reduced allowances of an amount of money that could be saved by his wife.
At the time of his death, Abu Bakr only had an old bed sheet and a camel, which is state property. It was a return to his successor, Umar bin Khattab. Umar said, “I always could never lepfrog Abu Bakr in righteous deeds.” []
