Karbala is a town in Iraq, approximately 80 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. It is one of the most important shrine-cities (‘atabāt) of Shi‘i Islam. After the death of the caliph Mu‘awiya b. Abi Sufyan (d. 680), Husayn b. ‘Ali, the Prophet’s grandson and third Shi‘i imam, had agreed to lead the revolt of the “party of ‘Ali” (Shi‘at ‘Ali), which considered the succession of Yazid I, designated by his father, to be unlawful. On October 10, 680, Husayn was killed in Karbala in a battle against Umayyad forces, allegedly together with 72 companions. Husayn’s tragic end made ‘Ashura’, as the day is commonly called, the central reference point of Imami Shi‘i cultural memory.
Imamis viewed Husayn’s martyrdom in cosmic dimensions as predestined: God had revealed it to Adam, all pre-Islamic prophets, and Muhammad. Husayn was believed to have been aware of his destiny and to have consented to it, as it would achieve ultimate victory for his followers on the Day of Judgment, an idea that makes Husayn a Christlike figure undergoing what seems to be redemptive suffering. In other forms of Shi‘ism, this idea is less prominent or wholly absent, and it is also wholly unknown in Sunni Islam. To the Imamis, however, Husayn was the Prince of the Martyrs (sayyid al-shuhadā’), and visiting his grave was sometimes considered more meritorious than making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The only way for the Imamis to partake in this promised salvation was by engaging in constant remembrance of the tragedy of Karbala. From early on, therefore, a number of rituals evolved that emphasized mourning and weeping over the fate of Husayn. The earliest reports stem from the tenth century, when the Buyids (a Persian dynasty that controlled the Abbasid caliphate between 945 and 1055) allowed public memorial services in Baghdad, but the tradition as such is clearly older and seems to have started shortly after the events. Processions incorporating breast beating and other expressions of grief were part of these gatherings and from the beginning had the potential to spark sectarian clashes. Gradually, a literary genre commemorating Karbala developed; its most prominent work was Rawdat al-Shuhada’ (The garden of the martyrs) by the Persian preacher Husayn al-Wa‘iz al-Kashifi (d. 1504–5). During the Safavid (1501–1722) and especially Qajar (1794–1925) periods, these works evolved into stage presentations (ta‘ziya), which took on the form of a Persian national theater over time. Eventually, self-flagellation rituals were introduced (originating probably in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan regions and possibly under Christian influence), which comprised the use of chains and swords.
The mourning rituals always aimed at linking Husayn’s fate to that of the believer in his lifetime, but until the 20th century, the interpretation focused on salvation in the hereafter. In the 20th century, it was transformed into a revolutionary ideology that placed active resistance against any oppressor in this world at the center. The Iranian writer ‘Ali Shari‘ati (1933–77) had the most lasting influence in this regard. He blended ‘Ashura’ with a Marxist view of history, and his sentence “Every day is ‘Ashura’, every place is Karbala” became a central slogan in the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the shah was equated with the caliph Yazid. Since then, the politicization of Karbala has been used in other contexts in Iran (e.g., during the war against Iraq in the 1980s) and also in India and Lebanon (where the label “Yazid” was attached to the Israeli occupying forces in the 1990s). In Iraq, the significance of Karbala itself dramatically increased since the shrine became accessible again for pilgrims after the fall of Saddam Hussein (d. 2006) in 2003.
The rituals of self-flagellation have been rejected by many Shi‘i scholars (mainly on the grounds that they were unlawful innovations and harmed the image of Shi‘ism worldwide) and even formally forbidden by Ayatollah Khamene’i in 1994. Nevertheless, they remain an integral part of the Muharram rites outside Iran as well as a major issue in anti-Shi‘i polemical literature.
See also India; Iran; Lebanon; Shi‘ism; Umayyads (661–750)
Further Reading
Kamran Scot Aghaie, The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi‘i Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran, 2004; Mahmoud Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islām: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of ‘Āshūrā’ in Twelver Shī‘ism, 1978; Werner Ende, “The Flagellations of Muharram and the Shi‘ite ‘Ulama’”, Der Islam 55, no. 1 (1978); Jan Hjärpe, “The Ta‘ziya Ecstacy as Political Expression,” in Religious Ecstasy, edited by N. G. Holm, 1982; Wayne R. Husted, “Karbalā’ Made Immediate: The Martyr as Model in Imāmī Shī‘ism,” The Muslim World 83, nos. 3–4 (1993); Yitzhak Nakash, “An Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Rituals of ‘Āshūrā’,” Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993).
RAINER BRUNNER