Umar ibn Sa'd

Umar ibn Sa'd commanded the Umayyad force at Karbala and is one of the most reviled figures in Shi'a tradition, in a way that has as much to do with what he is said to have known as with what he did. He was the son of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a companion of Muhammad and the conqueror of Iraq at Qadisiyya, which gave him standing in Kufa without giving him power. The governor Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad offered him the governorship of Rayy, a rich province he wanted, on condition that he first deal with Husayn. The tradition preserves him hesitating for a night over the choice, and the verse attributed to him - weighing this world against the next and taking this one - is quoted in every account, which means it is theology as much as history and cannot be treated as a transcript. He took perhaps four thousand men to Karbala, cut Husayn's party off from the Euphrates, conducted negotiations that came close to a settlement, and then carried out the order to attack when Ibn Ziyad refused any terms short of submission. He is reported to have fired the first arrow himself. He did not get Rayy. He survived the reaction for six years and was killed in 686 by Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who had risen in Kufa specifically to avenge Karbala and who hunted down those involved. His son was killed with him. Sunni tradition treats him far less harshly, generally as a weak man carrying out an order he had tried to avoid, and the distance between the two portraits is itself part of what Karbala became. Nothing about the day is neutrally recorded, since every surviving account was written by people for whom it already meant something.

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