Mu’awiya had promised Ali’s son Hassan that he would set up a council to choose a ruler after his death, but he didn’t keep his word. His son Yazid, whose mother was a Syrian Arab princess, just took over in Damascus and called for loyalty oaths all around.
Some key men refused to swear loyalty to him. Abdallah ibn Zubayr was the grandson of Abu Bakr and son of a close Companion of Muhammad. He was in Medina at the time, with Abdallah ibn Umar (whose sister had been a wife of the Prophet) and Husayn, Ali’s second son. The Ansar, the early believers in Medina, were 100% against the way the Umayyads were now turning the Muslim community into a hereditary kingdom. They had been against the way the clan of Abu Sufyan flipped from enemies to rulers, suspecting that their faith was a front. Now Medina itself was ruled by a grandson of Abu Sufyan, instead of by a Medinan.
Yazid sent a command to Medina for these men to swear loyalty immediately. Abdallah ibn Zubayr went to Mecca. He and the others urged Husayn to make Mecca his base and begin an opposition movement. But Husayn’s cousin in Kufa urged him to come back to Ali’s most loyal city and begin an insurrection there. In his letters, he said he had 12,000 men who would follow them into battle.
Husayn decided to go to Kufa. The story is odd from the start, because he didn’t ride fast with only some fighting men, rather he took his entire household, women and children and babies and servants. They rode slowly north. Tribes who lived along the way came out in enthusiasm, joining ranks with the Prophet’s grandson. But as they went, they started receiving messengers telling them to turn back. Some were from his friends in Mecca, who had heard rumors that his mission would fail.
The last messenger was from Kufa, where the cousin’s last act before being executed by Yazid’s men was to send this messenger. Don’t come to Kufa! Go back to Mecca. The Arabs who had joined along the way deserted their caravan, but Husayn didn’t turn back. He said, “Man journeys in darkness to meet his destiny.”
What did this mean? Shi’ites believe that he knew he was going to die in Iraq; certainly the outcome was obvious by this point. The only reason to go forward was to make a point by dying. They also believe that more esoteric knowledge about Allah had been handed down to Ali, to his sons, and that Husayn knew more of the spiritual dimension and the future than ordinary men. He knew that the worldly takeover of Muhammad’s ideal spiritual society was so far gone that no worldly actions could stop it. So he was going to do an other-worldly action.
Husayn didn’t go right into the city of Kufa, but rather to a nearby camping site that is now the city of Karbala. His family set up their tents. It wasn’t long until Yazid’s new governor of Kufa came with a large army. By now, the family and friends camped at Karbala were down to their original number who followed Husayn from Mecca. There was no need for a large army to defeat them.
The first action of Yazid’s governor was to put guards all around the family’s tents to blockade them from going to get water from the river. Water deprivation was a tried and true method of war in Arabia. History refers to “The Battle of Karbala,” but really there was no battle. The family could be picked off one by one.
Husayn’s half-brother Abbas went bravely out at night to get water, but he was killed on the way back. One of Husayn’s nephews announced that he was going to be married that day, so he married Husayn’s daughter. His wedding gift was permission to go out alone to the surrounding army. Of course, he was cut down by arrows. Husayn’s oldest son went out to challenge the entire army to single combat, rather than die of thirst. Husayn himself carried his youngest son, a baby wailing from thirst, out to the besiegers to shame them, but someone shot an arrow into the baby.
The tenth day of Muharram, also the tenth day of the siege, was to be the last; the family prayed all night and were anointed as if already dead. Then, one by one, the men walked out to the besiegers and were shot down. Husayn was last. Enemies beheaded him and put his head on a lance. Then they found all seventy-two male corpses and beheaded them, too. They left the bodies unburied, but later the local people buried them.
One of Husayn’s younger sons survived because he was sick inside one of the tents, and his aunt, Husayn’s sister Zaynab, put her body between the swords and him. He was the only male to survive. They didn’t kill the women and girls but took them captive in chains to be displayed in Kufa and then brought to Damascus.
Husayn’s head was tossed onto the floor in the governor’s room in Kufa, and Yazid’s governor poked at the head with a stick. A very old man who had come to Kufa with the first conquerors, and who had known Muhammad, cried out in disgust and fury that he had seen the Prophet himself kiss that head. He went out to speak to the people of Kufa, saying they had chosen the degradation of killing Fatimah’s son and would now suffer.
When the party of captives reached Damascus, Yazid was shocked. Things had gone much farther than he had planned—as they so often do. He wanted a living Husayn to swear loyalty, not Husayn’s head on a lance and his women in chains. Yazid freed the survivors and the surviving son, Ali ibn Husayn, preached a sermon at the mosque. Husayn’s head received a shrine in Damascus, but there are other shrines that claim to be where his head came to rest. Shi’ites believe his family got it back and buried it at Karbala with his body.
Ali ibn Husayn became the fourth Imam. His mother was probably a Persian princess brought back after one of the major defeats of the last dynasty. Islam had no princes to marry such girls to, so they were given to sons of prominent Companions. He lived in Medina, teaching and passing on stories of his great-grandfather as the transmission of these hadiths began in earnest. He never sought political power.
- The Prophet’s Heir, by Hassan Abbas
- After the Prophet, by Lesley Hazelton.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson