Karbala and the Imam Husayn(A.S.) in Persian

and Indo-Muslim literature
Annemarie Schimmel
Harvard University
Al-Serat, Vol XII (1986)
I still remember the deep impression which the first Persian poem I ever read in connection with the tragic events of Karbala' left on me. It was Qaani's elegy which begins with the words:
What is raining? Blood.
Who? The eyes.
How? Day and night.
Why? From grief.
Grief for whom?
Grief for the king of Karbala'
This poem, in its marvellous style of question and answer, conveys much of the dramatic events and of the feelings a pious Muslim experiences when thinking of the martyrdom of the Prophet's beloved grandson at the hands of the Umayyad troops.
The theme of suffering and martyrdom occupies a central role in the history of religion from the earliest time. Already, in the myths of the ancient Near East, we hear of the hero who is slain but whose death, then, guarantees the revival of life: the names of Attis and Osiris from the Babylonian and Egyptian traditions respectively are the best examples for the insight of ancient people that without death there can be no continuation of life, and that the blood shed for a sacred cause is more precious than anything else. Sacrifices are a means for reaching higher and loftier stages of life; to give away parts of one's fortune, or to sacrifice members of one's family enhances one's religious standing; the Biblical and Qur'anic story of Abraham who so deeply trusted in God that he, without questioning, was willing to sacrifice his only son, points to the importance of such sacrifice. Iqbal was certainly right when he combined, in a well known poem in Bal-i Jibril (1936), the sacrifice of Ismail and the martyrdom of Husayn, both of which make up the beginning and the end of the story of the Ka'ba.
Taking into account the importance of sacrifice and suffering for the development of man, it is not surprising that Islamic history has given a central place to the death on the battlefield of the Prophet's beloved grandson Husayn, and has often combined with that event the death by poison of his elder brother Hasan. In popular literature we frequently find both Hasan and Husayn represented as participating in the battle of Karbala', which is historically wrong, but psychologically correct.
It is not the place here to discuss the development of the whole genre of marthiya and taziya poetry in the Persian and Indo-Persian world, or in the popular Turkish tradition. But it is interesting to cast a glance at some verses in the Eastern Islamic tradition which express predominantly the Sunni poets' concern with the fate of Husayn, and echo, at the same time, the tendency of the Sufis to see in him a model of the suffering which is so central for the growth of the soul.
The name of Husayn appears several times in the work of the first great Sufi poet of Iran, Sana'i (d. 1131). Here, the name of the martyred hero can be found now and then in connection with bravery and selflessness, and Sana'i sees him as the prototype of the shahid, higher and more important than all the other shahids who are and have been in the world:
Your religion is your Husayn, greed and wish are your pigs and dogs
You kill the one, thirsty, and nourish the other two. [Divan, p. 655]
This means that man has sunk to such a lowly state that he thinks only of his selfish purposes and wishes and does everything to fondle the material aspects of his life, while his religion, the spiritual side of his life, is left without nourishment, withering away, just like Husayn and the martyrs of Karbala' were killed after nobody had cared to give them water in the desert.
This powerful idea is echoed in other verses, both in the Divan and in the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa; but one has to be careful in one's assessment of the long praise of Husayn and the description of Karbala' as found in the Hadiqa, as they are apparently absent from the oldest manuscripts of the work, and may have been inserted at some later point. This, however, does not concern us here. For the name of the hero, Husayn, is found in one of the central poems of Sana'is Divan, in which the poet describes in grand images the development of man and the long periods of suffering which are required for the growth of everything that aspires to perfection. It is here that he sees in the 'street of religion' those martyrs who were dead and are alive, those killed by the sword like Husayn, those murdered by poison like Hasan (Divan 485).
The tendency to see Husayn as the model of martyrdom and bravery continues, of course, in the poetry written after Sana'i by Persian and Turkish mystics, and of special interest is one line in the Divan of 'Attar (nr. 376) in which he calls the novice on the path to proceed and go towards the goal, addressing him:
Be either a Husayn or a Mansur.
That is, Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, the arch-martyr of mystical Islam, who was cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922. He, like his namesake Husayn b. 'Ali, becomes a model for the Sufi; he is the suffering lover, and in quite a number of Sufi poems his name appears alongside that of Husayn: both were enamoured by God, both sacrificed themselves on the Path of divine love, both are therefore the ideal lovers of God whom the pious should strive to emulate. Ghalib skillfully alludes to this combination in his tawhid qasida:
God has kept the ecstatic lovers like Husayn and Mansur in the place of gallows and rope, and cast the fighters for the faith, like Husayn and 'Ali, in the place of swords and spears: in being martyrs they find eternal life and happiness and become witnesses to God's mysterious power.
This tradition is particularly strong in the Turkish world, where the names of both Husayns occur often in Sufi songs.
Turkish tradition, especially in the later Bektashi order, is deeply indebted to Shi'i Islam; but it seems that already in some of the earliest popular Sufi songs in Turkey, those composed by Yunus Emre in the late 13th or early 14th century, the Prophet's grandsons played a special role. They are described, in a lovely song by Yunus, as the 'fountain head of the martyrs', the 'tears of the saints', and the 'lambs of mother Fatima'. Both of them, as the 'kings of the eight paradises', are seen as the helpers who stand at Kawthar and distribute water to the thirsting people, a beautiful inversion of Husayn suffering in the waterless desert of Karbala'. (Yunus Emre Divani, p. 569.)
The well known legend according to which the Prophet saw Gabriel bring a red and a green garment for his two grandsons, and was informed that these garments pointed to their future deaths through the sword and poison respectively, is mentioned in early Turkish songs, as it also forms a central piece of the popular Sindhi manaqiba which are still sung in the Indus Valley.
And similar in both traditions are the stories of how the boys climbed on their grandfather Prophet's back, and how he fondled them. Thus, Hasan and Husayn appear, in early Turkish songs, in various, and generally well known images, but to emphasize their very special role, Yunus Emre calls them 'the two earrings of the divine Throne'. (Divan, p. 569)
The imagery becomes even more colourful in the following centuries when the Shi'i character of the Bektashi order increased and made itself felt in ritual and poetical expression. Husayn b. 'Ali is 'the secret of God', the 'light of the eyes of Mustafa' (thus Seher Abdal, 16th cent.), and his contemporary, Hayreti, calls him, in a beautiful marthiya, 'the sacrifice of the festival of the greater jihad'. Has not his neck, which the Prophet used to kiss, become the place where the dagger fell?
The inhabitants of heaven and earth shed black tears today.
And have become confused like your hair, O Husayn.
Dawn sheds its blood out of sadness for Husayn, and the red tulips wallow in blood and carry the brandmarks of his grief on their hearts ... (Ergun, Bektasi sairleri, p. 95).
The Turkish tradition and that in the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent are very similar. Let us have a look at the development of the marthiya, not in the major literary languages, but rather in the more remote parts of the subcontinent, for the development of the Urdu marthiya from its beginnings in the late 16th century to its culmination in the works of Sauda and particularly Anis and Dabir is well known.
In the province of Sind, which had a considerable percentage of Shi'i inhabitants, Persian marthiyas were composed, as far as we can see, from around 1700 onwards. A certain'Allama (1682-1782), and Muhammad Mu'in T'haro are among the first marthiya-gus mentioned by the historians, but it is particularly Muhammad Muhsin, who lived in the old, glorious capital of lower Sind, Thatta, with whose name the Persian marthiya in Sind is connected. During his short life (1709-1750), he composed a great number of tarji'band and particularly salam, in which beautiful, strong imagery can be perceived:
The boat of Mustafa's family has been drowned in blood;
The black cloud of infidelity has waylaid the sun;
The candle of the Prophet was extinguished by the breeze of the Kufans.
But much more interesting than the Persian tradition is the development of the marthiya in Sindhi and Siraiki proper. As Christopher Shackle has devoted a long and very informative article on the Multani marthiya, I will speak here only on some aspects of the marthiya in Sindhi. As in many other fields of Sindhi poetry, Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif of Bhit (1689-1752) is the first to express ideas which were later taken up by other poets.
He devoted Sur Kedaro in his Hindi Risalo to the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet, and saw the event of Karbala' as embedded in the whole mystical tradition of Islam. As is his custom, he begins in media res, bringing his listeners to the moment when no news was heard from the heroes:
The moon of Muharram was seen, anxiety about the princes occurred.
What has happened?
Muharram has come back, but the Imams have not come.
O princes of Medina, may the Lord bring us together
He meditates about the reason for their silence and senses the tragedy:
The Mirs have gone out from Medina, they have not come back.
But then he realizes that there is basically no reason for sadness or mourning, for:
The hardship of martyrdom, listen, is the day of joy.
Yazid has not got an atom of this love.
Death is rain for the children of 'Ali.
For rain is seen by the Oriental poets in general, and by Shah 'Abdul Latif in particular, as the sign of divine mercy, of rahmat, and in a country that is so much dependant on rain, this imagery acquires its full meaning.
The hardship of martyrdom is all joyful rainy season.
Yazid has not got the traces of this love.
The decision to be killed was with the Imams from the very beginning.
This means that, already in pre-eternity, Hasan and Husayn had decided to sacrifice their lives for their ideals: when answering the divine address Am I not you Lord? (7:171), they answered 'Bala' (=Yes)', and took upon themselves all the affliction (bala) which was to come upon them. Their intention to become a model for those who gain eternal life by suffering and sacrifice was made, as Shah'Abdu'I-Latif reminds his listeners, at the very day of the primordial covenant. Then, in the following chapter, our Sindhi poet goes into more concrete details.
The perfect ones, the lion-like sayyids, have come to Karbala';
Having cut with Egyptian swords, they made heaps of carcasses;
Heroes became confused, seeing Mir Husayn's attack.
But he soon turns to the eternal meaning of this battle and continues in good Sufi spirit:
The hardship of martyrdom is all coquetry (naz).
The intoxicated understand the secret of the case of Karbala'.
In having his beloved suffer, the divine Beloved seems to show his coquetry, trying and examining their faith and love, and thus even the most cruel manifestations of the battle in which the 'youthful heroes', as Shah Latif calls them, are enmeshed, are signs of divine love.
The earth trembles, shakes; the skies are in uproar;
This is not a war, this is the manifestation of Love.
The poet knows that affliction is a special gift for the friends of God, Those who are afflicted most are the prophets, then the saints, then the others in degrees', and so he continues:
The Friend kills the darlings, the lovers are slain,
For the elect friends He prepares difficulties.
God, the Eternal, without need what He wants, He does.
Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif devotes two chapters to the actual battle, and to Hurr's joining the fighters 'like a moth joins the candle', e.g., ready to immolate himself in the battle. But towards the end of the poem the mystical aspect becomes once more prominent; those who 'fight in the way of God' reach Paradise, and the houris bind rose chains for them, as befits true bridegrooms. But even more:
Paradise is their place, overpowering they have gone to Paradise,
They have become annihilated in God, with Him they have become He ...
The heroes, who have never thought of themselves, but only of love of God which makes them face all difficulties, have finally reached the goal: the fana fi Allah, annihilation in God and remaining in Him. Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif has transformed the life of the Imams, and of the Imam Husayn in particular, into a model for all those Sufis who strive, either in the jihad-i asghar or in the jihad-i akbar, to reach the final annihilation in God, the union which the Sufis so often express in the imagery of love and loving union. And it is certainly no accident that our Sindhi poet has applied the tune Husayni, which was originally meant for the dirges for Husayn, to the story of his favourite heroine, Sassui, who annihilated herself in her constant, brave search for her beloved, and is finally transformed into him.
Shah'Abdu'l-Latif's interpretation of the fate of the Imam Husayn as a model of suffering love, and thus as a model of the mystical path, is a deeply impressive piece of literature. It was never surpassed, although in his succession a number of poets among the Shi'i of Sindh composed elegies on Karbala' . The most famous of them is Thabit 'Ali Shah (1740-1810), whose speciality was the genre of suwari, the poem addressed to the rider Husayn, who once had ridden on the Prophet's back, and then was riding bravely into the battlefield.
This genre, as well as the more common forms, persists in Sindhi throughout the whole of the 18th and 19th centuries, and even into our own times (Sachal Sarmast, Bedil Rohriwaro, Mir Hasan, Shah Naser, Mirza Baddhal Beg, Mirza Qalich Beg, to mention only a few, some of whom were Sunni Sufis). The suwari theme was lovingly elaborated by Sangi, that is the Talpur prince 'Abdu'l-Husayn, to whom Sindhi owes some very fine and touching songs in honour of the prince of martyrs, and who strongly emphasizes the mystical aspects of the event of Karbala', Husayn is here put in relation with the Prophet.
The Prince has made his miraj on the ground of Karbala',
The Shah's horse has gained the rank of Buraq.
Death brings the Imam Husayn, who was riding his Dhu'l janah, into the divine presence as much as the winged Buraq brought the Prophet into the immediate divine presence during his night journey and ascent into heaven.
Sangi knows also, as ever so many Shi'i authors before him, that weeping for the sake of the Imam Husayn will be recompensed by laughing in the next world, and that the true meditation of the secret of sacrifice in love can lead the seeker to the divine presence, where, finally, as he says
Duality becomes distant, and then one reaches unity.
The theme of Husayn as the mystical model for all those who want to pursue the path of love looms large in the poetry of the Indus Valley and in the popular poetry of the Indian Muslims, whose thought was permeated by the teaching of the Suf'is, and for whom, as for the Turkish Suf'is and for 'Attar (and innumerable others), the suffering of the Imam Husayn, and that of Hasan b. Mansur, formed a paradigm of the mystic's life. But there was also another way to understand the role of Husayn in the history of the Islamic people, and importantly, the way was shown by Muham-mad Iqbal, who was certainly a Sunni poet and philosopher.
We mentioned at the beginning that it was he who saw the history of the Ka'ba defined by the two sacrifices, that of Ismail at the beginning, and that of Husayn b. 'Ali in the end (Bal-i Jibril, p. 92). But almost two decades before he wrote those lines, he had devoted a long chapter to Husayn in his Rumuz-i bekhudi (p. 126ff). Here, Husayn is praised, again in the mystical vocabulary, as the imam of the lovers, the son of the virgin, the cypresso of freedom in the Prophet's garden. While his father, Hazrat 'Ali, was, in mystical interpretation, the b of the bismi'llah, the son became identified with the 'mighty slaughtering', a beautiful mixture of the mystical and Qur'anic interpretations.
But Iqbal, like his predecessors, would also allude to the fact that Husayn, the prince of the best nation, used the back of the last prophet as his riding camel, and most beautiful is Iqbal's description of the jealous love that became honoured through his blood, which, through its imagery, again goes back to the account of the martyrdom of Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, who rubbed the bleeding stumps of his hands over his blackened face in order to remain surkh ru, red-faced and honoured, in spite of his suffering.
For Iqbal, the position of Husayn in the Muslim community is as central as the position of the surat al-ikhlas in the Holy Book.
Then he turns to his favourite topic, the constant tension between the positive and negative forces, between the prophet and saint on the one hand, and the oppressor and unbeliever on the other. Husayn and Yazid stand in the same line as Moses and Pharaoh. Iqbal then goes on to show how the khilafat was separated from the Qur'anic injunctions and became a worldly kingdom with the appearance of the Umayyads, and it was here that Husayn appeared like a raincloud, again the image of the blessing rain which always contrasts so impressively with the thirst and dryness of the actual scene of Karbala'. It was Husayn's blood that rained upon the desert of Karbala' and left the red tulips there.
The connection between the tulips in their red garments and the bloodstained garments of the martyrs has been a favourite image of Persian poetry since at least the 15th century, and when one thinks of the central place which the tulip occupies in Iqbal's thought and poetry as the flower of the manifestation of the divine fire, as the symbol of the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai, and as the flower that symbolizes the independent growth of man's khudi (=self) under the most difficult circumstances, when one takes all these aspects of the tulip together, one understands why the poet has the Imam Husayn 'plant tulips in the desert of Karbala". Perhaps the similarity of the sound of la ilah and lala (=tulip), as well as the fact that lala has the same numerical value as the word Allah, e.g., 66, may have enhanced Iqbal's use of the image in connection with the Imam Husayn, whose blood 'created the meadow', and who constructed a building of 'there is no deity but God.'
But whereas earlier mystical poets used to emphasize the person of Husayn as model for the mystic who through self-sacrifice, finally reaches union with God, Iqbal, understandably, stresses another point: 'To lift the sword is the work of those who fight for the glory of religion, and to preserve the God-given order.' 'Husayn blood, as it were, wrote the commentary on these words, and thus awakened a sleeping nation.'
Again, the parallel with Husayn b. Mansur is evident (at least with Husayn b. Mansur in the way Iqbal interprets him: he too claims, in the Falak-i mushtari in the Javidnama, that he had come to bring resurrection to the spiritually dead, and had therefore to suffer). But when Husayn b. 'Ali drew the sword, the sword of Allah, he shed the blood of those who are occupied with, and interested in, things other than God; graphically, the word la, the beginning of the shahada, resembles the form of a sword (preferably a two-edged sword, like Dhu'l-fiqar), and this sword does away with everything that is an object of worship besides God. It is the prophetic 'No' to anything that might be seen beside the Lord. By using the sword of 'No', Husayn, by his martyrdom, wrote the letters 'but God' (illa Allah) in the desert, and thus wrote the title of the script by which the Muslims find salvation.
It is from Husayn, says Iqbal, that we have learned the mysteries of the Qur'an, and when the glory of Syria and Baghdad and the marvels of Granada may be forgotten, yet, the strings of the instrument of the Muslims still resound with Husayn's melody, and faith remains fresh thanks to his call to prayer.
Husayn thus incorporates all the ideals which a true Muslim should possess, as Iqbal draws his picture: bravery and manliness, and, more than anything else, the dedication to the acknowledgement of God's absolute Unity; not in the sense of becoming united with Him in fana as the Sufi poets had sung, but, rather, as the herald who by his shahada, by his martyrdom, is not only a shahid, a martyr, but at the same time a witness, a shahid, for the unity of God, and thus the model for all generations of Muslims.
It is true, as Iqbal states, that the strings of the Muslims' instruments still resound with his name, and we may close with the last verse of the chapter devoted to him in the Rumuz-i bekhudi:
O zephir, O messenger of those who are far away
Bring our tears to his pure dust.
Elegy (Marthiya) on Imam Husayn(A.S.): Arabic and Persian
Lynda Clarke, University of Toronto.
From Al-Serat, Vol XII (1986).
I propose to give here an account neither of the development, nor of the themes, of the elegy on Husayn, in Arabic or Persian, nor of the outstanding poets of elegy, the literature in both these languages is too vast for that, and spread out over too great a period. Rather, I would like to give some idea of the place of these marathi in literary and religious tradition, while giving in translation some examples of elegy on Husayn which should serve for those unfamiliar with these languages to form an idea of the beauty and effectiveness of this type of poetry.
I should warn English-speakers that my translations, in one essential respect, do not bear much resemblance to the originals. The Arabic and Persian poetical traditions, at least until very recently (only a few decades ago), required adherence to strict rhyme patterns, often monorhyme, and strict quantitative metre. These things are not only nearly impossible to reproduce in our English language, but also undesirable. It is necessary to imagine that the examples I give had in their original a very regular rhythm, a rhythm which could also be important for ritual purposes, for instance, in religious processions. If the conceits used are sometimes also a little difficult for us to understand immediately, the ideas expressed, and the effect, are, I think, universal.
The tradition of elegiac poetry known in Arabic as marthiya had its roots, as regards themes as well as form, in pre-Islamic times.
The Arabic elegy, in the sometimes lengthy monorhyme qasida form, was like all pre-Islamic poetry highly conventionalized. The virtues of the deceased and the loss of the mourner are described, which then provides an opportunity to dwell on the pathos of this transitory life in the face of fate, always unalterable. Often the mourner curses the enemy and calls for vengeance.
While the pre-lslamic elegy was conventionalized, it was also highly specific, or occasional: reflections on mortality only serve to frame a threnodic tribute to a specified personality.
If we express 'marthiya' as 'elegy', then it should be kept in mind that what we mean is not the elegy of Western tradition, which may designate any poem of a subjective kind, and one quite generally connected with the question of mortality. Most of even the earliest forms of the Greek elegiac couplet (from which the Latin and then Western languages take the genre and the name) do not display exclusively themes of death or loss.
If I bring up this point - which may seem somewhat distant from the question of elegy on Husayn in Arabic and Persian - it is to emphasize that the literature of marathi has but weak parallels in Western tradition. More particularly, it is not paralleled in Western Christian tradition, despite an extensive martyrology. Some of the social and attendant historical factors in this contrasting development may be surmised: for one thing, the influence of poetic tradition has been comparatively much stronger among the Arab-speaking peoples and among the once much wider circle of Persian speakers than in the West.
What is of relevance here is that it has clearly been the event of Karbala' which allowed this pre-Islamic Arabic tradition to continue into Islamic times and take its central place in the languages of the Islamic tradition. Any elegy (in the restricted sense in which we are speaking here) may strike a universal note; in fact that is one of the requirements of an elegy, but very few examples tend to survive as poetry or as something which would continue to evoke deep emotion. Practically our whole tradition of funeral elegy in English, for example, seems to be quite dead, in the poetical sense.
In contrast to this, we have the tradition of Husayn and those martyred with him: the sacrifice of Husayn has provided a vital and meaningful subject for authors (both Shia and Sunni) for all of fourteen centuries (and into the future, God willing). Thus we see that even in Arabic, although the strong tradition of secular elegy continued into this century, that too has declined with other forms and themes considered 'artificial' by modern movements, while marthiya on Husayn and the other martyrs of Karbala' continues in both formal and popular language.
Alongside this, the event of Karbala' has provided a continuing ritual context for elegiac poetry. The marthiya in pre-Islamic times has a ritual function as a lamentation (nawh), often recited by women (and the best of its earliest practitioners known to us were women). Not only would the listener be invited to dwell in the virtues of the deceased, but the pathos of the situation was also revealed, and it may be assumed that those present were then moved to weep. Some of the earliest examples we have of marthiya on Husayn are in fact simple poems of this type: lamentations by his wives and daughters. This piece attributed to Rabab, beloved wife of Husayn, is particularly moving. Rabab said:
He who was a light, shining, is murdered;
Murdered in Karbala', and unburied.
Descendant of the Prophet, may God reward you well;
May you be spared judgement on the day when deeds are weighed:
For you were to me as a mountain, solid, in which I could take refuge;
And you treated us always with kindness, [1] and according to religion.
O who shall speak now for the orphans, for the petitioners;
By whom shall all these wretched be protected, in whom shall they take refuge?
I swear by God, never will I wish to exchange marriage with you for another;
No, not until I am covered; covered in the grave.
And on another occasion Rabab said:
O Husayn! Never shall I forget Husayn!
Pierced by the spears of his enemies,
He whom they abandoned, in Karbala'.
May God now never water the plains of Karbala' ![2]
And regardless of how well attested these pieces of elegy are as literary remains, I think we would have to say that the beauty and deep feeling here has something of the force of memory to testify to their authenticity. In many later elegies on Husayn, the lament is put into the mouths of females of his family, Fatima, for instance, or Zaynab, and this recalls the pre-Islamic elegy.
In the Umayyad period poets were invited to compose laudations (madh) and marathi for the rituals of the gatherings (majalis) of the noble members of the family of the Prophet. This narration concerning the sixth Imam shows the place of marathi in these gatherings:
Jafar b. 'Affan came to al-Sadiq's residence and seated himself next to him, upon which the Imam said, Ja'far, I have been told that you recite poetry for Husayn, peace be upon him, and that you do it well.' 'Yes, and may God make me a sacrifice for you!' replied the poet. 'Recite, then', said al-Sadiq, and Jafar recited these verses:
He who weeps for Husayn might well weep for Islam itself, For the principles of Islam have been destroyed, and used unlawfully: On the day when Husayn became the target of spears, When swords drank from him, busy with their work. And corpses, scattered, were abandoned in the desert. Great birds hovering over by night and by day ...
And the Imam Sadiq wept and those around him with him, until his face and beard were covered with tears. Then he said, 'By God, Jafar, the angels closest to God are witness here and they hear your words; they have wept as we have, and more ... '[3]
At the end of the 'Abbasid period, the reciter in these commemorative sessions was still known as a na'ih, a lamenter, or mourner. [4]
These marathi, then, provided the germ for early gatherings of partisans of the House of the Prophet; they may also then be seen as the origin or earliest form of the ta'ziya as it is known today among Shi'i peoples. The literary forms known as ta'ziya and marthiya in Arabic are related, the ta'ziya being a kind of extended lamentation which is also intended to comfort the hearer in the face calamity, as the root meaning of the Arabic - 'comforting' - suggests.[5] The 'ritual context' for elegy on Husayn continues to be provided today not only by the developed ta'ziya, but also by various other gatherings within the ten days of Muharram in which marathi are recited. In the Shi'i area of Lebanon, for instance, there are many such gatherings held, and in both the Arabic- and Persian-speaking world gatherings are held exclusively for women.[6]
It was inevitable that once the force of memory receded, themes had to be introduced into elegy on Husayn which would have the desired effect on the hearer by bringing forward the significance of his martyrdom; thus the elegy is linked with the issues surrounding his martyrdom. In the example we have already given by the poet Ja'far ibn 'Affan al-Ta'i (d. 150), Islam itself is put in the position of a martyr. This marthiya of the imam al-Shafi'i introduces, after protestations of personal sorrow, and the image of the martyr, his declaration of love for the House of the Prophet overall. The imam Shafi'i said:
My heart sighed, for my innermost being was in dejection;
Sleep no longer came, and sleeplessness was bewildering.
O who shall be the bearer of a message from me to Husayn,
(Though the hearts and minds of some may disapprove

Slaughtered, though without sin himself,
His shirt as if dyed through with crimson.
Now the sword itself wails, and the spear shrieks,
And the horse which once only whinnied, laments.
The world quaked for the sake of the Family of Muhammad;
For their sake, the solid mountains might have melted away.
Heavenly bodies sunk, the stars trembled,
Oh veils were torn, and breasts were rent!
He who asks blessing for the one sent from the Tribe of Hashim,
But attacks his sons;truly, that is strange!
And if my sin is love of the Family of Muhammad:
Then that is a sin which I do not repent.[7]
This qasida of the imam Shafi'i is also notable in that it is, of course, a Sunn'i production; the fact that he composed other such elegies is well attested, and apparently many other Shafi'ites (and Hanafites) in this early period did the same. [8]However, even the attestation by such a person as the imam Shafi'i of his love for the Family of the Prophet left him open in those dangerous times to accusations of 'unorthodoxy', as the following lines attributed to him suggest. The imam Shafi'i said:
They said, 'You are a Rafidi!', and I said, 'But no,
Nor is my religion nor are my beliefs of that kind ...
'But if love of the viceregent of God be Rafidism,
Then I am the most Rafidi of the servants of God!'[9]
Continuing on the subject of 'Sunni' or perhaps we should say 'non-Shi'i, elegy about Husayn, here is a strong piece from the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa or 'Garden of Truth' of Sana'i, as a Persian example from the early twelfth century. I have abridged it in translation by about half; it is given the title 'Concerning Karbala', and the fragrant air of that most glorious place of martyrdom'. Sana'i says:
How excellent Karbala' ! and that honour it received,
Which brought to mankind the odour of Paradise as if on a breeze;
And that body, headless, Iying in clay and dust,
And those precious ones, hearts rent by the sword.
And that elect of all the world, murdered,
His body smeared with earth and blood;
And those great oppressors, those doers of evil,
Persistent in the evil they do.
The sanctity of religion and the Family of the Prophet
Are both borne away, both by ignorance and inanity;
Swords are red like precious ruby with the blood of Husayn,
What disgrace in the world worse than this!
And Mustafa, his garments all torn,
And 'Ali, tears of blood raining from his eyes.
A whole world has become insolent in its cruelty;
The cunning fox has become a roaring lion.
But still unbelievers at the start of the battle,
Were reminded of the stroke of Dhu'l-Fiqar.
Yes, from Husayn they sought satisfaction for their rancour, but that was not to be;
They had to be content with their own malice and disgrace.
And know that any who speak ill of those dogs [those murderers of Husayn]
Will be kings in the world to come![10]
In Arabic poems on Husayn, the elegy, the marthiya proper, becomes very soon only part of a larger developed narrative in which the deeds and nobility of the martyrs of Karbala' are described. This development of narrative can be seen already in the poetry of Di'bil b. 'Ali al-Khuza'i (d. 246) and in the large body of poetry composed by Ibn Hammad al-'Abdi (end of the 4th cent.).
However, the marthiya form can still be seen intact within these longer qasidas, and the lament for Husayn still provides the emotional high point; it is often placed at the beginning of the composition. As another example from this early period we give a part of this well known elegy by al-Sharif al-Murtada (d. 406), which he is said to have extemporized on the spot at Karbala'. In this qasida al-Sharif al-Murtada pictures Husayn calling out to his ancestors for aid, but they do not respond; the poet even seems to reproach God for the deaths of the martyrs. In fact, the 'reproach' is a common theme in elegy on Husayn, of the hearer, of the dead relatives of the martyr, or even of God. The elegy for Husayn then turns into a lament for all the Imams supposed to have been martyred, and ends with a call for revenge from the Prophet himself.
O Karbala'! Ever is your name sorrow (karb) and tragedy (bala)!
O what you brought upon the family of Mustafa!
How much blood flowed upon your soil when they fell,
And how many tears were shed there!
And how many a noble horse there was, weeping, its tears coursing,
Its cheek next to one perished of thirst,
Wiping the dust off its hooves
On the stain of a throat covered in blood!
These guests came to a barren plain,
And there was no food to be served them;
Nor did they taste water, until they gathered
At the edge of the sword, and the spring of death.
O murdered one, who struggled with death,
Without uttering an insult, without killing anyone!
And they washed him only with his own blood, shed by spears:
Shrouded him only with a shroud of dust.
Exhausted, he calls, while there is no help for him,
In the name of his benificent father, and his grandfather Mustafa,
And in the name of a mother for whom God has raised a standard,
Not found among all the women of humankind.
And what father, what grandfather does he call!
O grandfather, grandfather, help me, O father!
O Messenger of God, O Fatima,
O Prince of the Faithful, 'Ali, Murtada!
How would God not hasten for their sakes,
To cause the earth to heave, the sky to rain stones!
And O Imams, mountains of the earth, most great, most high;
O moons of this earth, shining, brilliant!
The disaster which befell you
Brought to us deep grief and weeping, never ending.
I know that sorrow for you is not to be forgotten, nor grief for your sake comforted,
Though ages may pass;
For much time has passed since your deaths, and continues to pass,
Yet neither has grief abated, nor tears.
How far are you, O Imams, from him who hoped to achieve by you,
With the Apostle of God, victory and salvation;
On the day of the Great Encounter, when the Apostle Will turn his face from those gathered, and say:
(Speaking to God against them, And how could a generation thus accused prosper?)
'O Lord, on this day I am enemy to them;
I come as one wronged, and this is the day to judge.'[11]
The great impetus for the vast literature of elegy and dirge for Husayn in the Persian language, a literature which is now much larger than the Arabic, which includes a much greater element of elegy on the other martyrs of Karbala', and which has many more forms and recognized ritual uses than in the Arabic tradition, came with the establishment of the Safavid dynasty and the consequent consolidation for Shi'ism of the larger part of the Persian-speaking world. Here as an example from the beginning of the Safavid period, is an elegiac qasida (abridged in translation) by Muhtasham-i Kashani, a favourite court poet. It shows some of the typical themes and imagery of the Persian genre, as well as imaginative expressions of the favourite elegiac theme of what later came to be known in Europe as 'pathetic fallacy'. Kasham says:
The name of this land full of tragedy (bala') is Karbala'.
O pitiless heart, where is your sigh of burning sorrow to burn the heavens?
This desert is the place of the murder of a lord who died athirst.
O tongue. it is the time for lamentation; O eye, it is time to weep!
This space still bears the mark of the sighs ot ones wronged,
So if the sky is become black through the smoke of our sights, it is fitting
This spot which today is covered by the canopies of the bubbles of our tears,
Was once the place where the tents of the People of the House were set up
Here the ship of Husayn's life foundered in disaster;
Then why is the ocean of our tears, in such a maelstrom, stormless?
Behold that dome filled with light from near and far;
Its world-illuminating rays show the way to those gone astray
Behold a grave most illumined, before which
The casket of the horizons with its hundred thousand petals and precious stones is as without value.
Behold beneath the earth, the cypress of the garden of the Prophet,
For sorrow of whom the sky is arched, bent over.[12]
Behold, one clotted with blood, the tree of roses in the garden of Fatima, a woman pure.
For whose defeat of whom the garments of the houris are rent like the rose.
This is the lamp to the eyes of mankind, and now by the sword of oppression,
Extinguished, as though merely a candle - a naked body, the head separated from the rest.
This is the joy of Zahra's breast, and now by horses' hooves
His breast so full of wisdom trampled from all sides by tragedy (bala)
This is Husayn, son of 'Ali, beloved of the Prophet,
Now pierced through by the blade of oppression at the hand of his murderer Sinan.[13]
Set foot with reverence in this place of martyrdom, for its carpet most illumed,
Is anemone colour with blood from the head of him who was the light of the eyes of 'Ali, Murtada.
And even if the eye of a friend should not weep bitterly with sorrow,
Still the cry 'O sorrow!' would be upon the tongues of enemies, a cry of regret!
Now night appears from the setting of the sun, for on the roof of the horizons,
The black standard of the People of the Cloak falls from the shoulder of ever-revolving time,
O viceregent of God, I, Muhtasham, the beggar at your threshold,
Stand at the door of helplessness, empty, and empty-handed.
O how long since I tore my heart from my homeland for your sake!
And now after the long road it has taken, it enters in this palace.
Now the suppliant hand of my heart is raised in wretchedness to the sky,
And that which it seeks depends on your favour.
And though, O Husayn, through the desires of the self, that lover of sin,
My heart sits at the banquet of sin, and astrlde the horse of error,
Yet since the plain of Karbala' is become covered with dust, it would be fit
If you were to take away from this heart, the dust of sin.'[14]
Muhtasham's tarkib-band, a long strophic poem of twelve parts, is much more well known than any other of his numerous elegies on Husayn, and was imitated for centuries after him. Each strophe ends with a refrain, which is particularly effective in elegy. As an example of a modern tarkib-band, here is one strophe taken from a piece by a very popular contemporary poet, Ansari, 'Poet of the House of the Prophet'. It seems that the poet may have been inspired not only by the differing circumstances surrounding the martyrdoms of 'Ali and Husayn, but by the contrast between Najaf and Karbala' as well (Najaf is fairly well watered, but Karbala' is like a desert).
O breeze of morning, take to 'Ali these words of the poet Ansari;
Say: Husayn is fallen. Rise, then, go and see:
To Karbala' from Najaf where you lie,
His body in a hundred pieces pierced by the lance, the dagger, the sword.
O 'Ali! See who was once the light of your eyes,
Now the enemy around him like eyelashes around the eye;
And here you lie, in pleasant repose with Adam and Noah, at rest
While Husayn has as his resting place the burning sand of Karbala' !
Although you were made stranger to yourself by the stroke of the sword,
Around you were both stranger and kin, with refreshment and sweets;
While the body of your Husayn is rent the whole length with wounds.
And would you know the number of those wounds?
They are as many as the stars!
Wherever you turned your gaze, there stood a friend to see,
While Husayn's eye falls only on the enemy.
'Ali. when you gave your life, your family was there beside,
But there on a desert plain far from daughter or sister Husayn dies.
For you the Faithful Spirit, Gabriel, brought a shroud from heaven,
But Husayn fell there on the earth without ablution, without shroud!
'Ali, since Husayn in the last hour took your head on his lap to lie,
As kindness in return, then, lay his head on your lap 'til he dies.[15]
As an example of modern Arabic elegy in the traditional style, here is a piece from the great Lebanese Shi'i scholar Muhsin al-Amin al-'Amili, taken from a collection of elegies he has made of his own and others' poems. Al-Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin died only recently; it should be mentioned that he was active not only in Shi'i scholarship and especially biography, but also in Sunn'i - Shi'i taqrib or rapprochement. This qasida, in a lightweight metre and a simple style, was composed in 1353/1934-5 while the author was travelling in Iraq and Iran, and it might not be too much to see some allusions to the political situation of those areas in certain lines. Al-Sayyid al-Amin says:
O Karbala', you have brought upon us great sorrow;
You have excited sadness and grief.
Now the eye must let its tears flow
To water the grave of one who died thirsty in al-Taff.
Glory, O Abu Fadl, brother of Husayn, for your ways have become
A lesson to the courageous; an example to the brave.
Your way, yes this is the way of brothers
(May the one not live who betrays his brother