“How could I take these children and women to the desert?” asked Hussein, “I must move forward.”
And he rode northward till a large troop of horsemen from Kufa, under an Arab named Horr, stood before him.
“Command has been given me,” said Horr, “to bring thee to the governor. If thou come not, then go to the left, or the right, but return not to Mecca.”
Leaving Kufa on his right, Hussein turned to the left and moved westward. Obeidallah soon sent a second man, Amr, son of Sad, with four thousand horse, and a summons. Hussein now fixed his camp on the plain of Kerbala near the river, five and twenty miles above Kufa. There he denied every thought of hostility [[201]]and was ready to yield if he might take one of three courses: “Let me go to the place whence I came, or attend me to the Kalif of Damascus. Place my hand in the hand of Yezid, let me speak face to face with him. If not, let me go far away to the wars and fight against enemies of Islam.”
Obeidallah insisted on absolute surrender, and directed that Amr stop every approach to the river, thus taking water from the party. Hussein, fearing death less than the governor of Kufa, adhered to his conditions. He even brought Amr to urge Obeidallah to lead him to the Kalif. Instead of agreeing, Obeidallah sent a certain Shamir to urge action. “Hussein,” said he, “we must have dead or living in Kufa immediately; if Amr loiters, Shamir must depose him.”
Amr then encircled the camp very closely. Hussein was ready to fight to the death, and the scenes represented as following swiftly are retained in the minds of believers to this day with incredible vividness.
Hussein received a day’s respite to send off his family and kinsmen, but not one person left him.
On October 10th of 680 the two sides faced each other, and opened a parley. Hussein’s offer was repeated, Obeidallah rejected it. Hussein slipped down from his camel, his kinsmen gathered round him, and the whole party waited. From the Kufa attackers at last came an arrow which opened that struggle of tens against thousands. One after another Hussein’s brothers, sons, nephews, and cousins fell near him. No enemy struck Hussein till tortured by thirst he turned toward the river, and Shamir cut him off from his people; then, stricken down by an arrow, he was trampled by horses. Hussein’s attendants were slain every man of them. Two sons of his perished and when the action was over, six sons of Aly were corpses, also two sons of Hassan and six descendants of Abu Talib, Aly’s father. The camp was plundered, but no harm inflicted on the living, mainly women and children, who with seventy heads of the slain were taken to Obeidallah. A shudder ran through the multitude of people as the bloody head of the Prophet’s grandson was dropped at the feet of the governor. When he turned the head over roughly with his staff an aged man cried to him: “Gently, that is the grandson of the Prophet. By the Lord I have seen those lips kissed by the blessed mouth of [[202]]Mohammed.” Hussein’s sister, his two little sons, Aly Ashgar and Amr, with two daughters, sole descendants of Hussein, were treated with seeming respect by the governor, and sent with the head of their father to the Kalif. Yezid disowned every share in the tragedy. Hussein’s family were lodged in the Kalif’s own residence at Damascus for a time, and then sent with honor to Medina, where their coming caused a great outburst of grief and lamentation. Many objects in that city made the day of Kerbala seem dreadful. The deserted houses in which had dwelt those kinsmen of Mohammed who had fallen; the orphaned little children, and the widows, gave great reality to every word uttered. The story was told to weeping pilgrims in that city of the Prophet by women and by children who with their own eyes had looked at the dead and the dying and had lived through the day of Kerbala. The tale, repeated in many places, was heightened by new horrors; retold by pilgrims in their homes and on their journeys from Medina, it spread at last to every village of Islam.
The right of Aly’s line to dominion had been little thought of till that massacre, but compassion for Aly’s descendants, who were also the great grandsons of Mohammed, sank into men’s minds very deeply after that dreadful slaughter on the field of Kerbala. The woeful death of the grandsons of the Prophet seized hold of the Arab mind mightily, and fascinated millions of people. This tragic tale helped greatly to ruin the Ommayed dynasty and when, through it and other causes, the Abbasids rose to dominion and hunted to death or to exile the descendants and kinsmen of Muavia, that same tale affected the Abbasids and made it possible to raise up against them a nation in Persia and a dynasty in Egypt. So strong were men’s feelings on this point in Islam and so many the people who favored the descendants of Aly that Mamun, the son of Harun al Rashid, made an effort to consolidate the Alyite and Abbasid families. Moreover the teaching of Persian adherents of Aly had such influence that they captured this Kalif intellectually.
In Mamun’s day the Moslem world became greatly imbued with ideas from Persia and India, and with Greek theories and learning. The Koran was treated as never before till that period. Opinions and systems of all sorts were brought into Islam. A time of tremendous disturbance succeeded as the fruit, or result, of these [[203]]teachings and these were all connected, both in life and in politics with views touching Aly.