On 10 October 680, the 10th of Muharram in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar, an army sent by the Umayyad governor of Kufa surrounded and destroyed the small party of al-Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala on the edge of the desert west of the Euphrates, in today's Iraq. Husayn and some seventy of his followers were killed and the women and children of his household were taken captive. In military terms it was a brief and one-sided fight. Its memory, kept every year on the day of Ashura, became central to Shia Islam.
An invitation from Kufa
The caliph Muawiya died in April 680, and his son Yazid at once demanded oaths of allegiance from the leading men of Medina, Husayn among them. Husayn refused and withdrew to Mecca. In Kufa, in Iraq, the leaders of the partisans of his father Ali wrote to him again and again, urging him to come and lead them. Husayn sent his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil ahead, and at first the Kufans flocked to him.1
Then Yazid gave Kufa to a harder governor, Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, who cowed the tribal chiefs, crushed a rising and had Muslim ibn Aqil beheaded. The Encyclopaedia Iranica dates Husayn's departure from Mecca to 10 or 12 September 680, before the news of the collapse reached him, with some fifty members of his family and a few supporters. He learned on the road that his cause in Kufa was lost, and still went on.2
Cut off from the river
A Kufan cavalry troop under al-Hurr ibn Yazid met Husayn's party and, on orders from Kufa, kept it from reaching any village or fortified place. On 2 Muharram 61, 2 October 680, Husayn made camp in the open, waterless ground at Karbala. The next day a Kufan army of 4,000 men arrived under Umar ibn Sa'd, the son of one of the Prophet's most eminent companions, who took the command reluctantly. Umar posted 500 men along the Euphrates to keep Husayn's followers from the water, though Husayn's brother Abbas got through once at night with fifty men and filled their water skins.3
The Iranica describes days of talks in which Umar evidently hoped to avoid a fight. According to most of the early reports, Husayn offered to go back, to go to Yazid in Syria, or to serve on the frontier, though one of his own companions later denied that any such offer was made. Ubayd Allah would accept nothing short of submission. On the evening of 9 Muharram Umar prepared to attack, and Husayn asked for a delay until morning, released his followers from their oath and urged them to slip away in the dark.4
The tenth of Muharram
The battle lasted from morning until sunset on 10 Muharram, 10 October 680. Britannica gives Husayn perhaps 72 fighting men against perhaps 4,000. The Iranica describes not a single charge but a long series of duels, skirmishes and assaults, as Umar seemingly tried to isolate Husayn and force his surrender; Husayn had wood and reeds burned in a ditch behind the tents to keep the enemy from attacking from the rear. As the Kufans took losses, the fighting grew more brutal, and in the end Husayn himself was killed.5
The dead on Husayn's side are said to have numbered seventy or seventy-two, at least twenty of them descendants of Abu Talib, including several of Husayn's sons and brothers. Britannica notes that the bodies, Husayn's among them, were mutilated. The women and the surviving children, among them Husayn's son Ali, later known as Zayn al-Abidin, were taken as captives first to Kufa and then to Yazid in Damascus.6
Ashura
Britannica judges that the battle helped to secure the Umayyad dynasty. Yet the death of the Prophet's grandson had an effect far beyond the field. For Shia Muslims the 10th of Muharram, Ashura, became an annual day of public mourning, marked in many places by passion plays known as ta'ziyah, and Husayn's tomb at Karbala one of their holiest sites. Early accounts tended to blame Ubayd Allah and spare Yazid, but the Iranica concludes that the prime responsibility lay with the caliph, who wanted Husayn dead without being seen to order it.7
The date in the Western calendar is a conversion of the Islamic one, and it is given here in the Julian calendar in use at the time.
Also on this day
- 1471: Battle of Brunkeberg. On the Brunkeberg ridge by Stockholm, Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder fought the forces of the Danish king Christian I, who wanted to unseat him.
