Husayn ibn Ali

Husayn ibn Ali was the grandson of Muhammad and the third Shi'a imam, and his death at Karbala is the central event of Shi'a Islam. He was the younger son of Ali and of Fatima, the Prophet's daughter, and he lived most of his life quietly in Medina under the settlement his elder brother Hasan had made with Mu'awiya. That settlement held until Mu'awiya died in 680 and was succeeded by his son Yazid, converting the caliphate into a hereditary monarchy. Husayn refused to give the oath of allegiance. Invited by the people of Kufa, who wrote to him in large numbers promising support, he set out across the desert with his household - some seventy men and their women and children. Kufa was secured by the governor before he arrived and the letters came to nothing. His party was intercepted at Karbala on the Euphrates by a much larger force under Umar ibn Sa'd, cut off from the water for three days, and destroyed on the tenth of Muharram. Husayn was killed last, and his head was taken to Damascus. The survivors were his sister Zaynab, whose testimony in Yazid's court is part of the tradition, and one sick son through whom the imams descend. The martyrdom is commemorated every year at Ashura, and it defines the Shi'a understanding of legitimate authority: that a just claim resisted to the death outweighs a victorious one. Karbala is a place of pilgrimage for millions, and the Arbaeen walk to it forty days after Ashura is among the largest annual gatherings anywhere in the world.

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