Note 547 — Chapter VI

After Moaviah’s death, A. D. 679, Yazid, his son, assumed the khalifat, but Hosain, another son of Alí, still lived, and was invited by the inhabitants of Kufa to their town for receiving their oath of allegiance. Yielding to their invitation, he set out from Mecca, where he had concealed himself, with thirty-two horsemen and forty men on foot. Not far from Kerbela, in an arid tract of country in Jrak Arabi, he was encountered by five or ten thousand men, sent by Yazid to destroy him. The son of Alí bravely fought this superior force during one-half of the day, but at last fell, with four of his brothers, as many of his own sons, and all his surrounding friends, seventy-two in number. The survivors, his women, were conducted to Damascus, where Hosain’s head, severed from his body, rejoiced the savage eyes of Yazid, now fixed in the khalifat. Hosain’s relics (as mentioned vol. I. p. 48) lie buried at Kerbela. The anniversary of his death, the 30th September, A. D. 680, is still celebrated by the Shiâhs, with every imaginable demonstration of grief about the fate of Alí’s posterity, and of execration of their oppressors.