There are many accounts of his love for them which refer to them together but at times confuse them with each other. Muhammad is reported to have said that whoever loves them has loved him and whoever hates them has hated him. A famous narration declares them the "Masters of the Youth of Paradise"; this has been particularly important for the Shia who have used it in support of the right of Muhammad's descendants to be the righteous ones to succeed him.
This was granted. At this point Husayn assembled his relatives and supporters and delivered a speech. This speech is unanimously reported in the events of the night of 'Ashura by the sources through different authorities, and it is useful in understanding Husayn's thinking. I think tomorrow our end will come … I ask you all to leave me alone and to go away to safety. I free you from your responsibilities for me, and I do not hold you back. Night will provide you a cover; use it as a steed … You may take my children with you to save their lives.
After some measures were taken for the safety of women and children and for Defence by bringing the tents closer together, tying them to one another, digging ditches in the rear and on the flanks and filling them with wood, the rest of the night was spent in prayer, recitation of the Qur'an, and worship and remembrance of God. Husayn drew up in front of the tents his small army of 72 men: 32 horsemen and 40 foot soldiers of varying ages ranging from the seventy-year-old Muslim b.
Hasan b. Zuhayr b. Muzahir al-Asadi of the left, and 'Abbas b. Husayn, preparing himself for the fateful encounter, dressed himself in the cloak of the Prophet, perfumed himself with musk, and rode on horseback with the Qur'an raised in his hand.
O God, I submit myself to You; my complaint is to You alone against my enemies, and to You alone is my desire and request. Who else other than you can relieve me from grief. You alone are the custodian of every blessing and the Master of every excellence and the last resort for every desire. Then search your hearts for what you are doing to me. Consider well if it be lawful for you to kill me and violate my sacrosanctity. Am I not the son of the daughter of your Prophet, the son of the Prophet's wasi and cousin…?
Did not the Prophet say of me and my brother that 'they are the lords of the youth of Paradise'? You cannot deny the truth of what I have said concerning the merits of the family of Muhammad. Are all these not sufficient to prevent you from shedding my blood? The only reply he received was that he must submit himself to Yazid or be killed.
To this demand Husayn's reply was that he could never humiliate himself like a slave. The day-long battle-sometimes in single combat, sometimes collectively-began in the morning and ended shortly before sunset.
The phases of the battle can be followed fairly clearly. After Husayn's first speech, the Umayyad army began firing arrows and duels took place. For most of the day there were series of single combats, with dialogues between the adversaries which are vividly recorded in the sources and which will be discussed in some detail later. It seems that two major assaults were made by the Umayyads before noon and were met with stiff resistance, but the Umayyad cavalry and archers maintained steady pressure on Husayn's small force.
As the latter could be approached only from the front, Ibn Sa'd sent some men from the right and left towards the Talibi's tents to destroy them, but the supporters of Husayn, slipping among the tents, defended them energetically. Shamir, with a strong force under his command, approached the tent of Husayn and his wives and would have set it on fire, but even his comrades reproached him for this and he went away ashamed.
It was in the afternoon that the battle became fiercer, and Husayn's supporters one after the other fell fighting in front of him. Until the last of them had perished not a single member of Husayn's family came to harm, 41 but finally it was the turn of his relatives. The first to killed was 'Ali al-Akbar, the son of Husayn, followed in quick succession by the son of Muslim b.
Husayn watched the fall of each of them and ran to the field to bring back their bodies and lay them in a row before his tent.
Now it was time for him to throw himself on to the swords of the bloodthirsty Umayyad army. With broken hearts, distressed and spattered with the blood of their dearest ones, both brothers went together and fell upon the enemy.
The enraged 'Abbas penetrated deep into the ranks of his foes, became separated from Husayn, and was killed some distance away. Trying to calm his thirsty and crying infant child, Husayn took him in his arms just as an arrow struck the baby.
Husayn lifted his hands with the dead child toward heaven and prayed to God for justice and rewards for his sufferings. The Umayyad forces wavered for a moment, hesitant to kill the grandson of the Prophet. Finally it was Shamir who advanced with a small group of soldiers, but even he did not dare to deliver the final blow on Husayn; there merely ensued an altercation between the two.
At last the son of 'Ali rose and threw himself on the Umayyads. Attacked from every side, he finally fell face-down on the ground just in front of his tent, while the women and children watched the dreadful -scene. A boy of tender age, 'Abd Allah, the youngest son of Hasan b. A sword fell upon him and cut off the hands of the young boy. Anas b. Sa'd, will Abu 'Abd Allah [Husayn's kunya] be killed while you are standing by and watching?
Sinan cut off the head of the grandson of the Prophet in front of the tent where the women and children were watching and crying. Khawali b. Yazid al Asbahi took the head into his custody to be taken to Kufa. They seized Husayn's clothes, his sword, and whatever was on his body.
They looted the tents and seized from the women their ornaments, their baggage, and even the mantles from their heads. The only surviving male of the line of Husayn, his son 'Ali, who because of serious illness did not take part in the fighting, was lying on a skin in one of the tents. The skin was pulled from under him and Shamir would have killed him, but he was saved when Zaynab covered him under her arms and Ibn Sa'd restrained Shamir from striking the boy. The atrocities were not yet over.
Husayn's body, already torn by numerous wounds, was trampled by the horses often mounted soldiers who volunteered to inflict this final indignity on the grandson of the Apostle of God. But the headless bodies of Husayn and of those killed with him were even left uncovered. On 12 Muharram, however, when the Umayyad forces left Karbala, the people of the tribe of Bani Asad from the nearby village of Ghadiriya came down and buried the bodies of Husayn and his companions on the spot where the massacre had taken place.
There is hardly any trace of the graves or of the memory of those who were the victors at Karbala, whereas the tombs of Husayn and his vanquished supporters with their lofty minarets have become landmarks and symbols of grace and hope for the destitute. The morning of 12 Muharram saw a peculiar procession leaving Karbala for Kufa. Seventy4wo heads were raised on the points of the lances, each of them held by one soldier, followed by the women of the Prophet's family on camels and the huge army of the Umayyads.
Their lamentations at the sight of the massacred bodies of their sons, brothers, and husbands which were lying uncovered in front of them, caused even their enemies to shed tears. Qurra' b. O Muhammad! The angels of Heaven send blessings upon you, but this is your Husayn, so humiliated and disgraced, covered with blood and cut into pieces; and, O, Muhammad, your daughters are made captives, and your butchered family is left for the East Wind to cover with dust?
Ibn Ziyad, having a cane in his hand, struck the lips of Husayn again and again. Zayd b. By God, on these lips have I seen the lips of the Prophet of God, kissing and sucking them. You have killed the son of Fatima and made your ruler Ibn Marjana [kunya of Ibn Ziyad], who will now keep on killing your best men and force you to do the most hateful things.
You must now be ready for the utmost disgrace. How long the captives were detained in Kufa in a dungeon is not quite clear, but it seems that before long the captives and the heads were dispatched to Damascus to be presented to the Caliph. When the head of Husayn and the captive women and children were presented before Yazid, in a court ceremony equally as lavish as that of Ibn Ziyad, Zahr b. Qays, who led the caravan as the representative of Ibn Ziyad, made a long speech of presentation describing how Husayn and his companions had been massacred and how their bodies had been trampled and left for the eagles to eat.
This seems to be contrary to all those reports which describe Yazid's orders to his governor in Medina, and then to Ibn Ziyad in which he clearly ordered them to either exact homage from Husayn and his followers or behead them without delay. The conversation which took place between Yazid and both Zaynab and 'Ali b. Moreover, as is pointed out by Ibn Kathir, a Syrian pupil of Ibn Tamiya usually hostile to the Shi'i cause, if Yazid had really felt that his governor had committed a serious mistake in dealing with Husayn he would have taken some action against him.
But, says Ibn Kathir, Yazid did not dismiss Ibn Ziyad from his post, did not punish him in any way, or even write a letter of censure for exceeding his orders. After some time, however, Yazid released the captives and sent them back to Medina.
Thus ended the most pathetic tragedy in the history of Islam. With this brief summary of the lengthy accounts of the tragic end of Husayn, it is intended firstly to analyse how it became so easy for the Umayyads to destroy him and crush the Shi'i movement behind him; and secondly, to determine the elements of purely religious sentiment among those who readily sacrificed their lives with Husayn and thus made another step forward towards the consolidation of Shi'!
It has already been pointed out that of those who invited Husayn to Ku fa, and then those 18, who paid homage to his envoy, Muslim b. They wrote to Husayn hundreds of letters, each signed by groups, and when Muslim b. But as soon as Ibn Ziyad, well known in Islamic history for his high-handed policy, took over the governorship of Kufa and after all those extreme and severe measures carried out by him to crush the movement, the Kufans saw their hopes gone, and their characteristic lack of resolution in times of trial overcame their political aspirations.
They thus submitted to the reality of circumstances rather than endanger themselves for the cause. There was, however, a small group of the Ku fans who had invited the grandson of the Prophet and led the movement motivated purely by their religious feelings.
Where were they when Husayn was so helplessly killed at Karbala? We have seen that after the execution of Muslim b. Anyone suspected of sympathy for Husayn was to be executed. Naturally all the sincere leaders of the movement adopted the stratagem of hiding to escape arrest and execution, not because they betrayed Husayn and wanted to save their lives, but, as we shall see presently, because they wanted to make themselves directly available to Husayn, then on his way to Kufa.
This may be seen by comparing the lists of names of those who gave their lives at Karbala with Husayn or later with the Tawwabun, with those who wrote the first letters of invitation to him and who had been leading the movement in Ku fa.
We have seen that four of these Shi'i leaders of Kufa managed to join Husayn at Dhu Husm in spite of Hurr's objection. As soon as they heard of Husayn's arrival at Karbala, those who could, in spite of all the obstacles, somehow manage to reach Karbala did so; they laid down their lives before Husayn or any one from among his family members were hurt.
When Husayn had left Mecca there were only 50 persons with him, 18 Talibi's or close relatives, and 32 others. After the battle, however, 72 heads were taken to be presented before Ibn Ziyad, 18 of them Talibi's and 54 Shi'is, though the real number of those who fell at Karbala with Husayn seems to have been more than Samawi and some other sources enumerate the non-Talibi's and give the total number of victims as Tabari and Dinawari list the names of the tribes and the numbers of heads carried by them to Kufa as follows: Kinda, thirteen; Hawazin, twenty; Tamim, seventeen; Asad, six; Madhhij, seven; Thaqif, twelve; Azd, five; and another seven of unknown tribal affiliation.
While Tabari mentions the Madhhij as carrying seven heads and does not record Thaqif's twelve, Dinawari omits Madhhij's seven and mentions the Thaqif as having carried twelve heads, in addition to mentioning five heads held by the Azd.
Scrutiny of other sources confirms both: seven heads carried by Madhhij and twelve by Thaqif. This gives a total of 87 victims of the massacre whose heads were presented at the court of Ibn Ziyad. Tabari and other sources also tell us in detail how Husayn's true followers managed to escape secretly from Kufa and reach Karbala. Besides Hurr, whose defection is reported in great detail, it is also commonly recorded that on the morning of 'Ashura, just before the battle began, thirty nobles of Kufa who were with the army of Ibn Sa'd defected from him over to Husayn's side and fought for him.
Nevertheless, a few persons from Basra did reach Karbala and shared the fate of Husayn. Circumstantial evidence allows us to suggest that those who gave their lives for the sake of the slain Husayn would have gone at least as far for the living Husayn. On the other hand, the aim of elaborating this fact is not to suggest that had there not been those unavoidable circumstances Husayn's fate would have been any different.
It would certainly have been the same in any case because of the well-organized and formidable military strength of the Umayyads and the characteristic fickleness of the majority of the Kufans, coupled with the as yet weak and disorganized movement of the religiously motivated Shi'is.
Our purpose is to suggest that under slightly better circumstances the defeat at Karbala would not have occurred so helplessly and without there being any conspicuous resistance, and thus we would have a clearer picture of the physical strength of the Shi'i movement at this stage.
To support this hypothesis we can cite the successes achieved not long after Karbala, but under better circumstances and with better opportunities, by Al-Mukhtar and Ibn az-Zubayr, both far less important than the grandson of the Prophet.
We will only point out here in passing that Al-Mukhtar b. An analysis of the sources describing the movement of and the support given to both Al-Mukhtar and Ibn az-Zubayr leaves us in hardly any doubt that some of the component parts of Husayn's movement, later on frustrated and perverted, gave vent to their indignation against the Umayyads under the banners of these two adventurers.
This comparison leads us to another important point. Al-Mukhtar and Ibn az-Zubayr achieved considerable political success in their enterprises, and both were able to rule certain parts of the Muslim world for quite a few years; but neither could leave any religious following behind him after he had fallen, though both were, in a sense, as much martyrs as Husayn himself.
There is no evidence at all that Ibn az-Zubayr left any sectarian following behind him; the name of Al-Mukhtar was kept alive for a very short time and was followed by a small group, but it soon afterwards lost its identity and was merged in a wider group. Neither Al-Mukhtar, nor Ibn az-Zubayr, nor their supporters had any specific ideal or any particular view which could keep their memory alive in the annals of religious thought in Islam.
Husayn and his cause, on the other hand, though militarily a complete failure, were so conspicuously upheld by a sizable part of the Muslim community that his name became an emblem of the identity or entity of the second largest group in Islam.
This was due to the fact that his movement was based on a particular view of the leadership of the community, which has been elaborated in the first two chapters above and which has also been pointed out in the letters written by I;1asan to Mu'awiya and by Husayn to the Shi'is of Kufa. The memory of Al-Mukhtar and Ibn az-Zubayr died with the lapse of time and could only find place in the annals of history.
The memory of Husayn remained alive in the hearts and minds of the Muslims and has become a recurrent theme for certain values. The section of the Muslim community which upheld the cause and memory of Husayn at the expense of and in disregard for political realities, but still remaining an integral part of the religious entity of Islam, was thrust into a sectarian role by that majority which, though unwillingly, compromised with the political realities at the religious level.
Some Muslim historians writing directly under the influence of the ruling authorities of the time, and those theologians who by necessity tried to find a compromise position between the ruling authorities on the one hand and the Islamic community on the other, described Husayn's action as an ambitious attempt to wrest political power and as a mistake of judgement. The impact of the German school has been so strong that this trend has persisted, and the subsequent schools of the French and British scholars, with very few exceptions, have followed the same trend.
It is thus rather regrettable that the tragedy of Karbala has been regarded by these scholars with the same mechanical historicism: none of them has ever tried to study Husayn's action in its meaning and purpose. It was therefore natural for these scholars to describe Husayn as an ill-fated adventurer attempting to seize political power, his movement as a rebellion against the established order, and his action as a fatal miscalculation of Kufan promises.
Furthermore, it is also very clear from the sources, as has been stated before, that Husayn did not try to organize or mobilize military support, which he easily could have done in the Hijaz, nor did he even try to exploit whatever physical strength was available to him.
Among many instances in this respect we will restrict ourselves to citing only one. At a place called 'Uzayb al- Hujaynat, after having already learned about the Kufan abandonment of his envoy Muslim b. Nevertheless, he totally refused an offer of safety, if not success, extended to him. Abu Mikhnaf and other sources relate that at this place four of the leading Shi'is of Kufa managed to reach Husayn with the help of Tirimmah. By God, if you go there, you and those who are travelling with you will be instantly butchered.
For God's sake, abandon your plan and come with me to the safety of our mountains here. By God, these mountains have been beyond the reach of the kings of Ghassan and Himyar, from Nu'man b. By God, if you decide to come with me no one can humiliate you or stop you from doing so [reference to Hurr]. Once you reach my villages on the mountains, we will send for men of [the tribes of] Ba'ja and Salma of the Tayy'.
Then, even ten days will not pass before the horsemen and the foot soldiers of Tayy' arrive to help you. You can stay with us as long as you wish, and if then you want to make an uprising from there, or if you are disturbed, I would lead a force -of twenty thousand men of the Tayy' with you, who would strike [at your enemies] with their swords in front of you.
By God, no one will ever be able to reach you, and the eyes of the people of Tayy' would remain guarding you. However, things are destined. Can anyone think that after knowing all of the latest developments in Kufa Husayn was still hoping to find any support or even the slightest chance of survival in Kufa? Moreover, we have detailed descriptions of the fact that when at Zubala I;1usayn learned of the brutal execution of his envoy Qays b.
Mushir, he gathered those accompanying him and asked them to leave him alone and go to safety. After Zubala, Husayn made this proclamation to his companions time and again, the last of these being on the night of 'Ashura.
Is it conceivable that anyone striving for power would ask his supporters to abandon him, no matter how insignificant their number might have been? No one can answer these questions in the affirmative. What then did Husayn have in mind? Why was he still heading for Kufa? It is rather disappointing to note that Western scholarship on Islam, given too much to historicism, has placed all its attention on the discrete external aspects of the event of Karbala and has never tried to analyse the inner history and agonizing conflict in Husayn's mind.
Anatomy of the human body can give knowledge of the various parts and their composition, but cannot give us an understanding of man himself. In the case of Husayn, a careful study and analysis of the events of Karbala as a whole reveals the fact that from the very beginning Husayn was planning for a complete revolution in the religious consciousness of the Muslims.
All of his actions show that he was aware of the fact that a victory achieved through military strength and might is always temporal, because another stronger power can in course of time bring it down in ruins.
But a victory achieved through suffering and sacrifice is everlasting and leaves permanent imprints on man S consciousness. Husayn was brought up in the lap of the Founder of Islam and had inherited the love and devotion to the Islamic way of life from his father.
As time went on, he noticed the great changes which were rapidly taking place in the community in regard to religious feelings and morality. The natural process of conflict and struggle between action and reaction was now at work. That is, Muhammad's progressive Islamic action had succeeded in suppressing Arab conservatism, embodied in heathen pre-Islamic practices and ways of thinking.
But in less than thirty years' time this Arab conservatism revitalized itself as a forceful reaction to challenge Muhammad's action once again. The forces of this reaction had already moved into motion with the rise of Mu'awiya, but the succession of Yazid was a clear sign that the reactionary forces had mobilized themselves and had now re-emerged with full vigour.
The strength of this reaction, embodied in Yazid's character, was powerful enough to suppress or at least deface Muhammad's action. Islam was now, in the thinking of Husayn, in dire need of reactivation of Muhammad's action against the old Arabian reaction and thus required a complete shake-up. Such a shake up would not have been so effective at the time of Hasan, for his rival Mu'awiya, though he had little regard for religion, atleast outwardly tried to veil his reactionary attitude of the old Arabism.
Yazid did not care even for this; he exposed these pretensions and his conduct amounted to open ridicule of Muhammad's Sunna and Qur'anic norms. Now, through Yazid, reaction of the old Arabism was in direct confrontation against the Islamic action of Muhammad. This could be seen by such instances as when Yazid, during his father's reign, once came to Medina in the season of the Hajj and became badly intoxicated from wine-drinking.
Ibn 'Abbas and Husayn happened to pass by him, whereupon Yazid called his servant and ordered him to serve wine to Husayn, insisting that the latter take it. And among them [the singing girls] there is one who has captured your heart, and she did not repent by doing this.
Husayn's acceptance of Yazid, with the latter's openly reactionary attitude against Islamic norms, would not have meant merely a political arrangement, as had been the case with Hasan and Mu'awiya, but an endorsement of Yazid's character and way of life as well.
This was unthinkable to the grandson of the Prophet, now the head of Muhammad's family and the embodiment of his Sunna. In order to counteract this reaction against Islamic action, Husayn prepared his strategy. In his opinion he had the right, by virtue of his family and his own position therein, to guide the people and receive their respect. However, if this right were challenged, he was willing to sacrifice and die for his cause.
He realized that mere force of arms would not have saved Islamic action and consciousness. To him it needed a shaking and jolting of hearts and feelings. This, he decided, could only be achieved through sacrifice and sufferings. This should not be difficult to understand, especially for those who fully appreciate the heroic deeds and sacrifices of, for example, Socrates and Joan of Arc, both of whom embraced death for their ideals, and above all of the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind.
It is in this light that we should read Husayn's replies to those well-wishers who advised him not to go to Iraq. It also explains why Husayn took with him his women and children, though advised by Ibn 'Abbas that should he insist on his project, at least he should not take his family with him.
Aware of the extent of the brutal nature of the reactionary forces, Husayn knew that after killing him the Umayyads would make his women and children captives and take them all the way from Kufa to Damascus. This caravan of captives of Muhammad's immediate family would publicize Husayn's message and would force the Muslims' hearts to ponder on the tragedy.
It would make the Muslims think of the whole affair and would awaken their consciousness. The Prophet shook its dust off his feet, and went to Medina. It was the well-watered city of Yathrib, with a considerable Jewish population. It received with eagerness the teaching of the Prophet; it gave asylum to him and his Companions and Helpers. He reconstituted it and it became the new City of Light. Mecca, with its old gods and its old superstitions, tried to subdue this new Light and destroy it.
The human odds were in favour of Mecca. But God's purpose upheld the Light, and subdued the old Mecca. But the Prophet came to build as well as to destroy. He destroyed the old paganism, and lighted a new beacon in Mecca - the beacon of Arab unity and human brotherhood.
When the Prophet's life ended on this earth, his spirit remained. It inspired his people and led them from victory to victory. Where moral or spiritual and material victories go hand in hand, the spirit of man advances all along the line. But sometimes there is a material victory, with a spiritual fall, and sometimes there is a spiritual victory with a material fall, and then we have tragedy.
Islam's first extension was towards Syria, where the power was centred in the city of Damascus. Among living cities it is probably the oldest city in the world. Its bazaars are thronged with men of all nations, and the luxuries of all nations find ready welcome there.
If you come to it westward from the Syrian desert, as I did, the contrast is complete, both in the country and in the people. From the parched desert sands you come to fountains and vineyards, orchards and the hum of traffic. From the simple, sturdy, independent, frank Arab, you come to the soft, luxurious, sophisticated Syrian. That contrast was forced on the Muslims when Damascus became a Muslim city.
They were in a different moral and spiritual atmosphere. Some succumbed to the softening influences of ambition, luxury, wealth pride of race, love of ease, and so on.
Islam stood always as the champion of the great rugged moral virtues. It wanted no compromise with evil in any shape or form, with luxury, with idleness, with the seductions of this world. It was a protest against these things. And yet the representatives of that protest got softened at Damascus. They aped the decadent princes of the world instead of striving to be leaders of spiritual thought. Discipline was relaxed, and governors aspired to be greater than the Khalifas.
This bore bitter fruit later. Meanwhile Persia came within the Muslim orbit. When Medain was captured in the year 16 of the Hijra, and the battle of Jalula broke the Persian resistance, some military booty was brought to Medina - gems, pearls, rubies, diamonds, swords of gold and silver.
A great celebration was held in honour of the splendid victory and the valour of the Arab army. In the midst of the celebration they found the Caliph of the day actually weeping. Their women fought with them and shared their dangers. They were not caged creatures for the pleasures of the senses. They showed their mettle in the early fighting round the head of the Persian Gulf.
When the Muslims were hard pressed, their women turned the scale in their favour. They made their veils into flags, and marched in battle array. The enemy mistook them for reinforcements and abandoned the field. Thus an impending defeat was turned into a victory.
In Mesopotamia the Muslims did not base their power on old and effete Persian cities, but built new outposts for themselves. The first they built was Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf, in the 17th year of the Hijra. And what a great city it became! Not great in war and conquest, not great in trade and commerce, but great in learning and culture in its best day, - alas!
But its situation and climate were not at all suited to the Arab character. It was low and moist, damp and enervating. This was the city of Kufa, built in the same year as Basra, but in a more bracing climate. It was the first experiment in town-planning in Islam.
In the centre was a square for the principal mosque. That square was adorned with shady avenues. Another square was set apart for the trafficking of the market. The streets were all laid out intersecting and their width was fixed. The main thoroughfares for such traffic as they had we must not imagine the sort of traffic we see in Charing Cross were made 60 feet wide; the cross streets were 30 feet wide; and even the little lanes for pedestrians were regulated to a width of Kufa became a centre of light and learning.
But its rival, the city of Damascus, fattened on luxury and Byzantine magnificence. Its tinsel glory sapped the foundations of loyalty and the soldierly virtues. Its poison spread through the Muslim world. Governors wanted to be kings. Pomp and selfishness, ease and idleness and dissipation grew as a canker; wines and spirituous liquors, scepticism, cynicism and social vices became so rampant that the protests of the men of God were drowned in mockery.
Mecca, which was to have been a symbolical spiritual centre, was neglected or dishonoured. Damascus and Syria became centres of a worldliness and arrogance which cut at the basic roots of Islam. We have brought the story down to the 60th year of the Hijra.
Yazid assumed the power at Damascus. He cared nothing for the most sacred ideals of the people. He was not even interested in the ordinary business affairs of administration. His passion was hunting, and he sought power for self-gratification. The discipline and self-abnegation, the strong faith and earnest endeavour, the freedom and sense of social equality which had been the motive forces of Islam, were divorced from power.
The throne at Damascus had become a worldly throne based on the most selfish ideas of personal and family aggrandisement, instead of a spiritual office, with a sense of God-given responsibility. The decay of morals spread among the people. There was one man who could stem the tide. That was Imam Husayn. He, the grandson of the Prophet, could speak without fear, for fear was foreign to his nature.
But his blameless and irreproachable life was in itself a reproach to those who had other standards. They sought to silence him, but he could not be silenced.
They sought to bribe him, but he could not be bribed. They sought to waylay him and get him into their Power. What is more, they wanted him to recognise the tyranny and expressly to support it. For they knew that the conscience of the people might awaken at any time, and sweep them away unless the holy man supported their cause.
The holy man was prepared to die rather than surrender the principles for which he stood. Medina was the centre of Husayn's teaching. They made Medina impossible for him. He left Medina and went to Mecca, hoping that he would be left alone. But he was not left alone.
The Syrian forces invaded Mecca. The invasion was repelled, not by Husayn but by other people. For Husayn, though the bravest of the brave, had no army and no worldly weapons. His existence itself was an offence in the eyes of his enemies.
His life was in danger, and the lives of all those nearest and dearest to him. He had friends everywhere, but they were afraid to speak out. They were not as brave as he was. So they sent and invited the Imam to leave Mecca, come to them, live in their midst, and be their honoured teacher and guide. His father's memory was held in reverence in Kufa.
The Governor of Kufa was friendly, and the people eager to welcome him. But alas, Kufa had neither strength, nor courage, nor constancy. When the Kufa invitation reached the Imam, he pondered over it, weighed its possibilities, and consulted his friends. He sent over his cousin Muslim to study the situation on the spot and report to him. The report was favourable, and he decided to go. He had a strong presentiment of danger.
Many of his friends in Mecca advised him against it. But could he abandon his mission when Kufa was calling for it? Was he the man to be deterred, because his enemies were laying their plots for him, at Damascus and at Kufa?
At least, it was suggested, he might leave his family behind.
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