In His Name, the Most High
اَلسَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكَ يَا أَبَا عَبْدِاللَّهِ
وَعَلَى الْأَرْوَاحِ الَّتِي حَلَّتْ بِفِنَائِكَ
عَلَيْكُمْ مِنَّا جَمِيعًا سَلاَمُ اللَّهِ أَبَدًا مَا بَقِينَا وَبَقِيَ اللَّيْلُ وَالنَّهَارُ
وَلا جَعَلَهُ اللَّهُ آخِرَ الْعَهْدِ مِنَّا لِزِيَارَتِكُمْ
اَلسَّلاَمُ عَلَى الْحُسَيْنِ
وَعَلَى عَلِيِّ بْنِ الْحُسَيْنِ
وَعَلَى أَوْلَادِ الْحُسَيْنِ
وَعَلَى أَصْحَابِ الْحُسَيْنِ
Peace be upon you, O Aba Abdillah (O Husayn),
and upon the souls who have gathered in your courtyard.Upon you, from us all, is the peace of God—forever,
for as long as we remain and as long as night and day endure.And may God never make this our last pledge to visit you.
Peace be upon al-Husayn,
and upon Ali, son of al-Husayn,
and upon the children of al-Husayn,
and upon the companions of al-Husayn.— Adapted from Ziyarat Ashura
A Maqtal for Night Six
The Voice of the Awaited One
This is the sixth of fifteen maqtals in the Shahada series.
On the first night, the Hidden Imam — may our souls be his ransom, and may God hasten his return —came to us for Abel — the first witness, the first blood the earth had ever known.
On the second night he came for the prophetic chain of grief — the inherited tear.
On the third night he came for a doorway.
On the fourth night he came for an ambassador and a city of broken promises.
On the fifth night he came for two who crossed over — a captain who turned, and a young Christian on the road who walked into the completion of a tradition.
Tonight he comes for the four young men of the morning of Ashura, who never had to turn — because they were born facing the right direction.
Their names were Qasim ibn al-Hasan — peace and blessings be upon him; Ali al-Akbar ibn al-Husayn — peace and blessings be upon him; and the two brothers Aun and Muhammad, the sons of Abdullah ibn Ja'far at-Tayyar —peace and blessings be upon them all — sent by their mother Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her, the sister of the Master of Witnesses, to stand in the place their father could not stand.
They were children, my beloved.
And they walked out as calmly as bridegrooms walking into a hall.
The maqtal is performed by Abdullah al-Mukhlis.
The accompanying sermon for this session — [6] Shahada (Witness) — The Wretched and the Witness — is available on Reflections313.
The Maqtal — “Cherry Blossoms at Dawn”
I. Four Who Were Born Facing the Right Direction
I came to you the first night for my brother Abel.
I came to you the second night for the inherited tear.
I came to you the third night for a doorway.
I came to you the fourth night for an ambassador and a city of broken promises.
I came to you the fifth night for two who crossed.
Tonight —
tonight I come to you for four who never had to cross.
Four who were born inside the household.
Four who were born facing the right direction, the way some flowers are born facing the sun before they have opened.
My beloved.
Last night I told you of two men who turned — one out of an army, one out of a tradition.
Tonight is different.
Tonight there is no turning.
There is only walking — the kind of walking a young man does on the morning of his wedding, when the road from his father’s house to the hall is so familiar he could walk it with his eyes closed.Their names were Qasim and Ali al-Akbar.
And the two brothers — Aun and Muhammad — sent by their mother before her vigil at Ashura had even begun.They were my cousins.
They were the boys I would have grown up beside, had I been permitted to be there.Listen.
II. The Asking
The night before Ashura.
In the camp of my forefather, the lamps had been put out.
The companions had been released from their oath and had refused to leave.
The old men had said their goodbyes.
The women had gone to their tents and were not asleep.And in two corners of the same camp, two boys were waiting.
The first of the two — Qasim — was fourteen years of age, or thereabouts; the chronicles differ slightly, and I will not arbitrate.
He was the son of my forefather Hasan, peace and blessings be upon him — the Imam who had been poisoned in his own house by his own wife, Ja’da bint al-Ash’ath, whom Mu’awiya had bribed with the false promise that she would be married to his son Yazid and made a queen — a promise that, after the poison did its work, Mu’awiya never honoured.
And he was the nephew of my forefather Husayn, who was now about to be slaughtered.
He had grown up in a house where both of his fathers had been taken from him before he was old enough to grieve them properly.He went to his uncle on the night of Ashura.
He sat at his feet.
And he asked the question that would open the door for the answer that would seal his place in the chain.He said:
“Uncle — am I among those who will be killed tomorrow?”
And my forefather looked at the boy at his feet — the boy whose father had been poisoned, the boy who had no one in the world but the man whose hand he was holding — and he did not answer at once.
Instead, his hand reached out and caressed the boy’s head — gently, the way a man caresses something he is about to release into the keeping of God.And then he asked Qasim a question of his own.
He said:
”O nephew — how do you see death?”And Qasim’s face — and listen, my beloved, because this is the moment you must not miss — Qasim’s face brightened.
And he said:
”Uncle — sweeter than honey.”And my forefather wept.
Not because Qasim was wrong.
Because Qasim was right, and was fourteen, and had not been taught to be wrong about the things fourteen-year-olds are usually wrong about.And my forefather said:
”Yes, by God, my son.
By God, it is sweeter still.
And you, my son — yes, you are among those who will be martyred with me tomorrow.”And Qasim slept that night with the answer in his pocket like a piece of bread for the morning.
III. The Other Asking
In another corner of the same camp, on the same night, the other boy was awake.
His name was Ali.
They called him al-Akbar — the elder — because he was the eldest of my forefather’s sons, and because there was a younger Ali in the same camp, an infant, who in the providence of God was being given a different shahada to bear.He was eighteen years old.
He had been raised in the lap of his father.
He had been raised in the gaze of the Messenger of God’s grandsons — for he had known his great-grandfather’s friends, and the men who had heard the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, his family, and his righteous companions, with their own ears.And — listen — his face was the face of the Prophet himself.
The chronicles preserve this.
Whoever among the household longed to remember the Messenger of God in the years after his passing — the way his cheekbones sat under his eyes, the way the light fell on his beard, the way his voice carried — they would look at Ali al-Akbar.The Prophet had not stopped being missed.
He had only become Ali al-Akbar to the eyes of those who had loved him.And on the night of Ashura, this boy — the face of the Prophet, eighteen years old, the eldest son of the Master of Witnesses — went to his father.
He did not ask, am I among the killed?
The answer to that question had been answered in his bones from the moment he had walked out of Medina at his father’s stirrup.
He asked something else.
He said:
“Father — are we not on the truth?”
And my forefather looked at the boy who carried his grandfather’s face — the boy who, every time he turned his head, made the family see the Prophet again — and said:
“Yes, my son. We are on the truth.”
And Ali al-Akbar said:
“Then we do not fear death.
Death is closer to us than the ear is to the side of the head.”And my forefather — who had wept for Qasim’s joy a few hours earlier — wept again.
For different reasons.He wept because the boy had said the right thing.
He wept because the right thing had been said by a face that looked exactly like his grandfather’s, and his grandfather had not been there to hear it.
IV. The Third Asking — A Sister Takes Her Sons to Her Brother
There was a third asking that night, my beloved.
But the one doing the asking was not a young man.The one doing the asking was the sister of the Master of Witnesses.
The chronicles preserve her arc carefully.
She had set out from Medina at her brother’s stirrup.
She had crossed the desert beside the women and the children of his household.
She had taken upon herself, in those last days, the office no chronicle had imagined a woman could hold — the office that would, in less than a day, make her the keeper of the surviving caravan, the voice that would speak in the courts of Kufa and Damascus, the woman whose carriage of grief would, for fourteen centuries, be the silent commentary on her brother’s silence.Her name was Zaynab.
The chronicles call her Zaynab bint Ali, daughter of the Commander of the Faithful, daughter of Sayyedah Fatimah al-Zahra, granddaughter of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, his family and his righteous companions.She had two sons of the household with her.
Aun and Muhammad.
Their father, Abdullah ibn Ja’far at-Tayyar — the son of Ja’far, the one whose two wings carried him in paradise after the Battle of Mu’tah — peace and blessings be upon him — had been kept in Medina by illness, by infirmity, by a body that could no longer carry him to the field. He had not been able to come.But he had sent his sons.
He had sent them with a letter to my forefather at Mecca, begging him to turn back — and when my forefather did not turn back, the two sons had stayed.
Their father’s letter had been read.
Their father’s wish had been heard and gently set aside.
And the sons had remained, in the caravan of their uncle, in the keeping of their mother.And on the night of Ashura, as the lamps burned out in the camp and the asking-and-answering went on among the household, Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her — went to her brother.
She did not approach as a sister.
She approached as a mother.She took the hand of one boy in her right hand and the hand of the other in her left, and she brought them to the tent of my forefather, and she stood at the entrance.
And the chronicles preserve the asking that has held our community for fourteen centuries.
She said:
“Brother.
The sons of our uncle Aqil have gone out before you.
The sons of our brother Hasan have gone out before you.
The sons of our cousins have gone out before you.
How is it that the sons of our brother Ja’far do not go out before you also?Their father is not here.
He could not come.
But I am here.
And I am their mother.
And I have brought them.
Take them, brother.
That they may stand for you.
That the line of Ja’far at-Tayyar, the one who flew in paradise on his two wings, may not be the only line of this household missing from your field tomorrow.”My forefather looked at his sister.
He looked at the boys at her side — Aun, who was older; Muhammad, who was younger — the boys he had watched grow up in the gardens of Medina, the boys whose father he had ridden beside in his own youth, the boys whose grandfather Ja’far had taught the family how to fly.
And he did not refuse her.
The chronicles do not say that he spoke.
The chronicles say that he wept, and that he took the boys’ hands from his sister’s hands, and that he laid his own hand on their heads — the way a man lays his hand on a thing he is about to release into the keeping of God.And Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her — did not weep then.
The chronicles say she did not weep until much, much later.
On the night of Ashura she had no tears yet.
She had a duty.She had brought her sons.
She returned to her tent.
And the boys went to sleep in their uncle’s tent, my beloved, the way boys sleep on the night before a wedding they have been waiting for since they were small.
V. What the Tents Did Not Carry
Before the morning takes them, my beloved, I want to set something down between us.
You may have heard — from a grandmother, from a reciter on a minbar, from a za’kir who reached for the most tender thing he could imagine — that on the night before Ashura my forefather called for a wedding.
That the daughter of Husayn was betrothed to Qasim.
That a wedding henna was put on the boy’s hand.
That somewhere in the camp a young woman waited in a tent for a husband who would not return.I know the image.
I know how the husayniyyas have carried it for centuries.But hear me, my beloved.
It is not in the chronicles.
Not in al-Mufid’s Irshad.
Not in al-Tabari.
Not in Abu Mikhnaf.
Not in Lohoof.
Not in Khwarizmi.
None of the early hands that wrote down the dust of Karbala wrote this down.The story entered our tradition five centuries after Karbala — through a single book, Rawdat al-Shuhada, by a man named Mulla Husayn Kashifi.
Shaheed Mutahhari — may God rest his pure soul — examined the book and was unsparing.
He wrote, and these are his words —“They have concocted a story that the Imam called for a wedding ceremony on this day.
By God, see what kind of things they have attributed to a man like Husayn ibn ‘Ali.
Such an episode is not mentioned in any reliable book of history.
Mulla Husayn Kashifi was the first man to write this story in a book named Rawdat al-Shuhada — and it is totally fictitious.”And then — the part that has held me from behind these veils for as long as I have stood here — Shaheed Mutahhari — may God rest his pure soul, rendered my forefather’s reproach.
He said: if Husayn were to come and see what we have done to his nephew with our embellishments, he would say —“The Qasim ibn Hasan that you have painted in your fancy is not my nephew.”’
Hear that, my beloved.
“The Qasim you have painted is not my nephew.”
Hear me carefully now.
The hands that placed a bride into the tents were not the hands of liars.
They were the hands of people who could not bear that a fourteen-year-old went out at dawn and never came back.
They reached for the most beautiful image they had to dress the morning that took him.
That wanting was love.
I know the wanting.But here is what their tenderness did not see:
Qasim did not need a bride.A boy who answered sweeter than honey when his uncle asked him how he saw death — that boy’s witness was already complete the moment he answered.
To paint a wedding onto his hand is, with respect to everyone who has wept for him across fourteen centuries, to mistake what made him beautiful.
It is — gently, lovingly — an injury to the witness it claims to honour.And the same, my beloved — for I know what the husayniyyas have whispered — of the smaller image, that Ali al-Akbar walked out wearing his father’s cloak; the cloak that smelled of his great-grandfather.
The chronicles do not say this either.
Like the bride, it is a thing the love of later centuries placed onto the boy who carried the Prophet’s face.
I do not say it harshly.
Akbar did not need a perfumed cloak to carry the Prophet’s face.
He carried it on his face.
The image is tenderness reaching for a way to speak. It is not history.I — from behind these veils, where I keep watch over what was said and what was done — I will not romanticise the morning of Ashura.
Its grief needs no ornament.
Its tragedy needs no garland.
It does not need a bride to be beautiful.
It does not need a perfumed cloak to be holy.
It has Husayn.
It has Qasim.
It has Akbar.
It has the dust.
That is enough.So when we go out with them in a moment, my beloved, we go out with them as they were.
Two children of the household.
A nephew.
A son.
A boy of fourteen with his uncle’s sword belt on his waist.
A young man of eighteen with his father’s blessing on his face.
No bride.
No perfumed cloak.
Just two boys who had answered the truth when the truth was asked of them.Let that be enough.
It was enough for them.
It is enough for me.
VI. The Going Out — Qasim
Qasim went out first.
He was fourteen, and he was the youngest male of the household to take the field, and his uncle delayed permitting him for as long as he could.
The histories preserve the moment.
Qasim asked.
My forefather looked at him and could not say yes.
Qasim asked again.
My forefather looked at the sky.
Qasim — the boy whose face still carried the brightness of his answer about honey — asked a third time.And my forefather pulled the boy to his chest, and held him, and they wept together.
I do not know how long they wept; the chronicles do not say.
The tradition says it was long enough that the men of the camp watching from a distance turned their faces, because the watching was too sacred for anyone outside that embrace.Then my forefather released him.
He loosened his own sword belt and put it on the boy.
He lifted him onto a horse.And Qasim rode out.
VII. The Falling — Qasim in Pieces
He fought beautifully, the chronicles say.
Beautifully is the word the lamenters have used, and I will not change it.
The young man fought beautifully — a boy in his uncle’s sword belt, swinging a blade he was barely strong enough to swing.He killed several.
The army of the wretched closed around him.
They were embarrassed.
They had not expected to be held even briefly by a fourteen-year-old.And then a horseman rode at him from the side, and his blade came down on the boy’s head.
Qasim cried out.
He cried for his uncle.He cried — and, my beloved, this is the cry that has held our community for fourteen centuries — he cried:
“O uncle — receive me!”
And my forefather heard him.
From across the field, he heard him.He ran.
He ran the way only a man who has heard a child of his blood call for him can run.
He ran past spears, past horsemen, past every law of war that says the commander does not leave his post.He ran.
He reached the place where Qasim had fallen.
And — here, my beloved, the parallel that has held all night begins to break open into something the chronicles cannot prepare you for —
the army of the wretched, in the chaos of the engagement, had ridden their horses across the boy’s body.
Many horses.
Many hooves.When my forefather reached the place where Qasim had fallen, the body of the boy who, the night before, had told his uncle that death was sweeter than honey was no longer one body.
It was many small things on the sand.My forefather did not cry out.
He did not curse.
He did not call for vengeance.He knelt.
He gathered, with his own two hands, every small thing he could find of his nephew on the sand.
The chronicles preserve what he said.
He said:“Away with the people who killed you.
Their accuser on the Day of Resurrection shall be your grandfather.”And then, softly — for the boy alone — he said:
“By God, my son, it is grievous for your uncle that you called him and he could not come to you in time, or that he came and could not be of use to you.
By God, those who have gathered to kill the family of Muhammad are many — and those who would help them are few.”He gathered him into his cloak.
And he carried what was left of his brother’s son back to the tents.
VIII. The Going Out — Ali al-Akbar
Now the second one.
Ali al-Akbar asked his father for permission.
He had been asking for hours.
He was eighteen and the eldest son and the ranks of the household had thinned and he could not bear being held back any longer.My forefather granted it.
He looked at the boy — the same gaze that had blessed and released Qasim a short while before now rested on the eldest son — and he could not speak.
He looked at him with lowered eyes and wept.Then he kissed him.
He kissed his face.
He kissed the face that was his grandfather’s face.
And then he raised his head to the sky, and the army of the wretched standing in earshot heard him, and the chronicles preserve every word he said:
“O God, bear witness over these people — for there has gone out against them a young man who most resembles Your Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, in face and in nature and in speech.
Whenever we longed to look upon Your Prophet, we would look at him.”Then he raised his voice once more and called out:
“O Ibn Sa’ad — may God cut off your progeny, as you have cut off mine.”
The army of the wretched heard it.
They knew what they were about to do.
They had been told — by Mu’awiya, by Yazid, by the long chain of preachers who had been paid in coin to forget — that the family of the Prophet was someone else, somewhere else, not here on this plain.And then a young man with the Prophet’s face rode out of the tents with the Prophet’s grandson’s blessing in his ears, and they could not pretend any longer.
Some of them, the tradition says, dropped their swords.
Most of them, the tradition says, did not.
IX. The Falling — Ali al-Akbar Whole
He fought as no one of his age had any right to fight.
He killed many.
The chronicles differ on the number.
Some say a hundred and twenty.
Some say more.
The numbers do not matter to me — I tell you this because I was watching, and what I watched was not a count but a refusal.A refusal to let his father be taken before he himself had been taken.
A refusal to let the line of the Prophet end in old men.
A refusal that wore the Prophet’s face and carried the Prophet’s voice and called out the Prophet’s name into a desert that had been made to forget him.
He returned to his father.
His mouth was dry.
He asked for water.
And there was no water.
My forefather pressed his own tongue to his son’s mouth — to give him whatever moisture his own dry mouth could give — and sent him back out.And on his way out, a man named Murra ibn Munqidh — and let his name be remembered, so that the distance of God’s mercy may settle on it — speared him in the chest from behind.
The spear went through.
Ali al-Akbar called out.
His voice carried across the field.
And the words he chose — the words the face of the Prophet chose for his last breath in this world — are the words I still keep in my heart from behind the veils:“Father — peace be upon you.
The Messenger of God sends his peace upon you.
He says, hasten — hasten to us.”He had seen his great-grandfather.
In the moment of dying, the boy who carried the Prophet’s face had been allowed to look up and see the Prophet himself.He died.
His father reached him.
Caught him in the cradle of his arms.
Held him.The body did not come apart.
The body was whole.
The Prophet’s face on his chest, intact, only the spear-wound in the breastbone, only the blood at the corner of his mouth.My forefather held his son.
Whole.
Undivided.
Recognisable.And he said — he said this to no one in particular, to the air, to the sand, to me from across the centuries —
“After you, my son, may dust be on this world.”
X. The Going Out — Aun and Muhammad Together
And then, my beloved — while the dust of his eldest son was still settling on my forefather’s beard — there came forward, side by side, the two brothers.
Aun first, because he was older.
Muhammad a half-step behind, because he was younger and because his whole life he had walked a half-step behind his brother.They came together as they had been brought up together.
They came together as their mother had stood them at the entrance of the tent the night before.
They had been born inside the same household — the household their father had built around them in Medina, the household their mother had tended through the journey from Medina to Mecca and from Mecca to Karbala — and they had never, in all their years, faced any danger that they had not faced together.They were not going to face this one apart either.
The chronicles say Aun was reciting as he rode out.
His voice was the voice of a young man who had been taught Qur’an by the same teachers who had taught his cousins, in the same lap of the household, and the verses came easily off his tongue.
The chronicles preserve the form of his recitation but not all of its words; what they preserve is that he was a reciter of the chapters and verses — and that he rode out reciting.Muhammad rode beside him.
He did not recite.
He had not been given the same gift.
But the chronicles say that he turned his head, once, toward the tents — toward his mother’s tent, my beloved, where Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her, was standing at the entrance and watching her sons go — and that he raised his hand to her, briefly, the way a child raises his hand to his mother when he is going to school for the first time, and is not yet sure he can do it without her watching from the door.And Sayyedah Zaynab — standing in the entrance of her tent on the morning that would, before the sun was high, make her the keeper of every surviving body and every surviving voice in this caravan — Sayyedah Zaynab raised her hand back.
She did not speak.
She did not weep.
She raised her hand to her son, and her son, riding off to the field, lowered his hand and went.
That, my beloved, is the farewell.
That is the whole farewell.
No words.
A hand at a tent’s mouth.
A hand from the back of a horse.
And a mother who would not weep until much, much later.My forefather met them in the field as they rode toward the line.
He looked at them — as he had looked at Qasim a while earlier, as he had looked at Akbar a while earlier than that — and he could not speak.
He raised his head to the sky.
He said:
“O God. Bear witness over these people — for there have gone out against them the sons of Ja’far, the one who flew in paradise on his two wings. May they fly as their grandfather flew.”
And then he kissed each of them on the forehead — Aun first, Muhammad second — and let them go.
XI. The Falling — Aun and Muhammad Side by Side
They fought as brothers fight when neither of them is willing to be the one who lives.
Aun went deeper into the line first.
He cut down those who came at him with the practised hand of a young man who had been trained, in the courtyards of Medina, by the same hands that had trained his cousins.
He killed — the chronicles preserve the number variously; the numbers do not concern me — what concerns me is that he held the line that he had been sent to hold.A horseman from the tribe of Tay — a man called Abdullah ibn Qutbah al-Nabhani, and let his name be remembered, so that the distance of God’s mercy may settle on it — saw Aun, the one who flies, and charged him.
The blow came down.
Aun fell.
And before Aun had reached the ground, my beloved, his brother Muhammad was already at his side.
Muhammad had been a half-step behind his whole life.
He was a half-step behind now.He drove his horse into the place where his brother had fallen and he put himself between his brother and the closing line, and he fought — not because he thought he could save Aun, because by now Aun was gone, but because he could not bear that his brother should be alone in the sand on the morning he had been preparing for since they were small.
And then a man called Amir ibn Nahshal al-Taymi — and let his name, too, be remembered, so that the distance of God’s mercy may settle on it — struck Muhammad from the side.
The chronicles preserve the form of the blow but not its precise weight.
What they preserve is that Muhammad fell beside his brother, and that the place where the two brothers fell was the same patch of sand, and that when my forefather reached them, they were already lying where the lamenters’ eye has imagined them ever since: two boys side by side, the older one a half-step ahead, the younger one a half-step behind, both faces turned to the same sky.My forefather knelt between them.
He laid his hand on Aun’s forehead first.
He said:
”Peace upon you, my nephew.
May your grandfather Ja’far — the one who flew — fly with you to your Lord.”He laid his hand on Muhammad’s forehead second.
He said:
”Peace upon you, my nephew.
You followed him in life and you followed him in death — and God will not separate a brother from his brother on the Day He gathers His friends.”Then he raised his head, and he looked across the field at the tents — at the entrance of one tent in particular, where a woman who had not yet wept was standing — and the chronicles say that for the first time that morning my forefather wept aloud.
He wept for his sister.
He wept for the price his sister had paid in less than an hour of the morning of Ashura — and he knew, my beloved, what the rest of the day would still ask her to pay.
And then, with his own two hands, he lifted Aun in his right arm and Muhammad in his left, and he carried them back together — because they had come into the world together, and they had been raised together, and they had ridden out together, and they would not, on this last morning, be separated from each other.
XII. The Bringing Back
Four bodies.
Carried to the camp.
The orphan-child gathered into a cloak — many small pieces, kept together only by the cloth my forefather had wrapped around them — laid down at the edge of the tents.
And beside him: the perfect resemblance, borne whole — eighteen years of growing, eight feet of his father’s cradling, one spear-wound in the chest, one face that the family had been looking at to remember the Prophet.
And beside the two of them: Aun in my forefather’s right arm and Muhammad in my forefather’s left, the older brother a half-step ahead of the younger the way they had always walked, the way they had always ridden, the way they had fallen — laid down so that no one had to choose which of them to lay down first.
Side by side.
The four of them.The mothers came.
Sayyedah Layla bint Abi Murra — peace and blessings be upon her — came for Ali al-Akbar.
The chronicles preserve her grief in lines that are too sacred to cite tonight in full.
It is enough to say that she pressed her face to her son’s face and gave the air the sound that mothers have given the air since the first mother and the first son.Sayyedah Ramla — Qasim’s mother — came for the cloak full of pieces.
She did not lift it.
She knelt beside it.
She placed her hand on what she could not see.And then, my beloved — and here, on this third farewell of the morning, the chronicles slow —
Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her — came for her sons.
She did not run.
She did not cry out.The chronicles say she walked.
She walked the way a woman walks who knows she has a long road still ahead of her and cannot afford to spend her strength too early.
She walked the way her grandmother Sayyedah Khadija had walked behind the bier of the Messenger of God’s first son.
She walked the way her mother Sayyedah Fatimah al-Zahra had walked behind the bier of her father.She came to the place where her two boys were laid.
She knelt.
She placed her hand on Aun first — the older one, the one whose father had called him the one who flies in honour of the grandfather who had flown.
She placed her hand on Muhammad second — the younger one, the half-step-behind, the one who had raised his hand to her from the back of the horse on his way out.
And — listen, my beloved, because this is the moment the chronicles preserve in a sentence that has held our community for fourteen centuries — she did not weep over them.
She raised her face to her brother.
And what she said, in the form the lamentation tradition has carried it, was not a complaint and not a question and not even quite a prayer. It was three words.
She said:
“Brother. They are yours.”
And my forefather sat down in the sand beside her, between his nephews, and the chronicles say that for the first time on the morning of Ashura he could not raise his face from the ground.
He wept silently.
His beard was wet with tears.
He did not move for a long time.Sukayna and Ruqayyah, the daughters of the household, wept for all four.
The four boys had walked out at dawn.
By midday, the morning had taken them all.
XIII. I Was Not There — But I Remember
I was not there.
I was not to be born for centuries more.
I was not there on the night Qasim sat at his uncle’s feet and was asked how he saw death — and answered, sweeter than honey.
I was not there when Ali al-Akbar asked his father whether they were on the truth.
I was not there when my aunt Zaynab took her two sons by the hand and brought them to the entrance of my forefather’s tent and asked him to receive them.
I was not there when my forefather kissed the face of his son and raised it to the sky and named it the face of the Messenger of God.
I was not there when Qasim fell, and the horses passed over him, and his uncle gathered the small pieces in his cloak.
I was not there when the spear went through the breastbone of the eldest son.
I was not there when Muhammad rode out a half-step behind his brother Aun, and turned his head once toward the tents, and raised his hand to his mother, and his mother raised her hand back without a word.
I was not there when the four bodies were laid side by side at the edge of the tents.
But I remember.
I remember the brightness on Qasim’s face when his uncle caressed his head, and asked how he saw death — and Qasim answered, sweeter than honey.
I remember the sound of his cry — O uncle, receive me — and the way it travelled across the field and reached his uncle’s ear before any human ear should have been able to hear it.
I remember the words my forefather said when he raised his eldest son’s face to God: whenever we longed for the sight of Your Prophet, we looked at him.
I remember every cut in Qasim’s body and every piece of him my forefather gathered.
I remember the spear that came through the breast of Ali al-Akbar from a man whose name will not be spoken in any house that loves the Prophet from this night to the day I am permitted to come.
I remember my aunt Zaynab standing at the entrance of her tent in the dawn, raising her hand to her son who was riding off, and lowering her hand and going inside without weeping, because she knew that the weeping would have to come later, when there was time.
I remember Aun reciting as he rode out — the one who flies — and the verses of the Qur’an that left his lips on the morning of his death.
I remember Muhammad a half-step behind his brother in life and a half-step behind his brother in death, my forefather’s right arm carrying the older one and his left arm carrying the younger one back to a mother who would not weep until much, much later.
I remember the four of them, my beloved — laid side by side at the edge of the tents, the orphan-child in pieces, the perfect-resemblance whole, the two brothers carried back together — because the loom on which the cloth of that morning was woven was placed in the unseen by my Lord, who entrusted me to keep watch over it until the day I am permitted to come.
XIV. The Benediction, the Distance, and the Return
Peace be upon Qasim, son of Hasan, son of Ali, son of Abi Talib — the boy who, when his uncle asked him how he saw death, answered without hesitation that it was sweeter than honey, and slept that night with the truth in his pocket like a piece of bread for the morning.
Peace be upon his uncle’s hand, which gathered him from the sand.
Peace be upon his mother Sayyedah Ramla, who knelt beside the cloak and placed her hand on what she could not see.
Peace be upon Ali al-Akbar, son of Husayn, son of Ali, son of Abi Talib — the eighteen-year-old whose face was the face of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him and his family.
Peace be upon his father’s hand, which blessed him as he went and caught him as he fell.
Peace be upon his mother Sayyedah Layla, peace and blessings be upon her, whose grief is preserved in lines too sacred to recite in their fullness tonight.
Peace be upon Aun, son of Abdullah, son of Ja’far, the one who flies in paradise — the elder of the two brothers, reciter of the chapters and verses of the Qur’an, who advised for the sake of the merciful Lord, and was the companion of great peers.
Peace be upon Muhammad, son of Abdullah, son of Ja’far — who was martyred in the place of his father, who followed the example of his brother, and protected him with his life.
Peace be upon their father Abdullah ibn Ja’far, peace and blessings be upon him, who could not come to the field, and who said when the news of his two sons reached him: if my own hands could not support him, my two sons supported him.
Peace be upon their mother Sayyedah Zaynab — peace and blessings be upon her — who took her sons by the hand and brought them to the entrance of her brother’s tent, and asked him to receive them, and walked back to her tent without weeping — because she knew the weeping would have to come later, when there was time.
Peace be upon every young man who has walked out, in any age, with his father’s blessing still on his face.
Peace be upon every fourteen-year-old who has been asked the question about death and answered it with the truth.
Peace be upon every face that has ever carried a forefather’s face, and was given to a cause that deserved the carrying.
Peace be upon every pair of brothers who have ridden out together because neither would let the other go alone.
Peace be upon every mother who has sent her sons before her, and stood at the entrance of her own tent on the morning of their going, and raised her hand to them without a word.
And the distance of God’s mercy — the long, eternal, unappealable distance —
the distance of God’s mercy be upon the horsemen who rode their horses across the body of a fourteen-year-old, and called it a battle.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Murra ibn Munqidh, who speared the eldest son of the Master of Witnesses from behind, and may his name be on the lips of every mother who has buried her son for fourteen centuries.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Abdullah ibn Qutbah al-Nabhani, who struck down the one who flies on the morning his mother had sent him to fly.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Amir ibn Nahshal al-Taymi, who struck down the half-step-behind brother, on the patch of sand where his elder brother had already fallen.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every regime, in every age, that has sent its soldiers to kill the children of the prophets and called it war.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every empire, in every century, that has paid its preachers in coin to forget whose grandsons walked the earth.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every age that mistakes a son’s body for a battlefield’s arithmetic.
And peace, my beloved —
peace upon those who, in our own century, have walked out at dawn the way Qasim and Ali al-Akbar and Aun and Muhammad walked out — too young, with their fathers’ blessings on their faces and their mothers’ silence at the door of the tent, into a morning that would not bring them back.
Peace upon every young man of the Resistance who took his father’s place and his grandfather’s burden in his hands.
Peace upon every young Palestinian who has died in the rubble of his father’s house in Gaza, holding what he could of his family in a cloth, because no cloak was big enough.
Peace upon every young Lebanese who fell in the south defending a road his ancestors had walked for a thousand years.
Peace upon every young Iraqi of the Hashd al-Sha’bi who walked into the open against DAESH because his father had walked into the open against Saddam.
Peace upon every young man of the Sacred Defence whose mother received what little came back of him — and may God put my forefather’s hand on her shoulder, the way it was put on the shoulder of Qasim’s mother and the shoulder of Sayyedah Layla and the shoulder of my aunt Sayyedah Zaynab on the morning she came for her sons.
Peace upon every pair of brothers — in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Palestine, in Iran, in Yemen — who rode out together because neither would let the other go alone, and were brought back together because the one who carried them would not separate them either.
Peace upon every young woman in any of these households who has waited at a doorway for a man of her family who would not return — a daughter waiting for her father, a sister waiting for her brother, a wife waiting for her husband, a mother waiting for her son — and was given only his last name and the cloth he had been wrapped in.
XV. The Closing
My beloved.
I tell you tonight, from behind the veils of the occultation, where I stand and where I wait and where I watch every one of you:
The youth of Husayn die for the Proof of God.
Revolutionary youth die for an idea.
That is the difference.
And that is everything.If your sons grow up, and the world tells them their face must wear the face of a flag, or the face of an ideology, or the face of an empire — teach them to look in the mirror and see whose face they were given.
If your sons grow up, and a horseman comes to ask them which side of the field they will take — teach them to answer, like Qasim, the way he answered when his uncle asked him how he saw death.
If your sons grow up, and the world wants them to die for a cause that is too small for the price of their lives — teach them, like Ali al-Akbar, to ask their father whether they are on the truth, before they ask anyone else for permission to fight.
If your sons grow up with brothers, and a morning comes that asks one of them to ride out — teach them, like Aun and Muhammad, that no brother of theirs is going to ride out alone, and that a half-step behind a brother is the truest place a younger brother has ever stood.
And if you are a mother, my beloved — if you are a mother, and the morning comes that the world asks for your son, and there is no father in the house to send him — learn from my aunt Sayyedah Zaynab how a mother does the sending.
She walked her sons to her brother’s tent.
She placed their hands in his hand.
She did not weep.
She raised her hand to them at the entrance of her own tent, and lowered it, and went in.
he weeping came later.
There was time.The youth of Husayn die for the Proof of God.
That is what makes a young man’s death a witness.
That is the difference between cherry blossoms falling on a wind blown by the wrong empire — and cherry blossoms falling on the wind that comes off the breath of God.
Tomorrow night I come to you for the standard-bearer — for my forefather Abbas, son of Ali — peace and blessings be upon him — the moon of the Banu Hashim, the water-carrier of Karbala, who held the standard with the right hand until the right hand was severed and held it with the left until the left was severed too.
Tomorrow you will hear of a man who carried what could not be put down.Until then —
Where is your brother?
About this Maqtal
This maqtal is the sixth of fifteen in the Shahada series, accompanying the sermon sessions for the Truth Promoters Muharram and Arbaeen 2026/1448 Programs and published on Reflections.
The maqtals of this series are spoken in the voice of Imam al-Mahdi — may our souls be his ransom, and may God hasten his return — the Hidden Imam, the Proof of God on His earth — looking back across time at the witnesses who preceded him.
Sources
The maqtal draws upon the following primary sources:
Ibn Tawus, al-Luhuf fi Qatla al-Tufuf
Qummi, Nafas al-Mahmum.
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk.
Reyshahri, Chronicles of the Martyrdom of Imam Husayn, Section 6/1, Al-Qasim ibn al-Hasan, and Section 4/i, Ali al-Akbar)
Al-Saduq, al-Amali, p. 225, no. 239
al-Khwarizmi, Maqtal al-Husayn, vol. 2, pp. 15–16
Abu Mikhnaf, Maqtal al-Husayn
Source Details
Primary — Reyshahri, Chronicles of the Martyrdom of Imam Husayn (English translation; Section 6/1, Al-Qasim ibn al-Hasan, and Section 4/i, Ali al-Akbar); Ibn Tawus, al-Luhuf fi Qatla al-Tufuf; Qummi, Nafas al-Mahmum; Abu Mikhnaf, Maqtal al-Husayn; al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk; al-Mufid, Kitab al-Irshad. The Imam’s invocation when sending Akbar to the field (“O God, bear witness…”) is preserved in al-Tabari, al-Mufid’s Irshad, Khwarizmi’s Maqtal al-Husayn, and Ibn Tawus’s Lohoof. The water request, the Imam pressing his tongue to his son’s mouth, the spear of Murra ibn Munqidh ibn al-Nu’man al-’Abdi from behind, and Akbar’s final words about the Prophet’s greeting come through the same chain.
The “sweeter than honey” exchange is preserved in Reyshahri (p. 546) and Nafas al-Mahmum, both citing Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasibi’s al-Hidayat al-Kubra via Imam Zayn al-’Abidin (peace and blessings be upon him). Reyshahri flags al-Khasibi as a transmitter on whom the rijal scholars (al-Najjashi, Ibn al-Ghada’iri) raised concerns of ghuluww; he nonetheless preserves the narration. The husayniyya / lamentation tradition has carried this exchange across the Shia world for centuries. We use it here in the form preserved by these chains: Imam Husayn, after Qasim asks whether he will be among the killed, caresses the boy’s head and asks “How do you see death?” — Qasim replies “Sweeter than honey, O uncle” — and Imam Husayn confirms the answer and tells him yes, he is among those who will be martyred.
On the trampling at Qasim’s death — there are two well-attested traditions: (1) the early historical sources (al-Tabari from Humayd ibn Muslim, Abu Mikhnaf, al-Mufid’s Irshad) report that it was the killer (‘Amr ibn Sa’d al-Azdi) who was trampled by his own comrades’ horses, after Imam Husayn severed his arm at the elbow; (2) Ibn Tawus’s al-Luhuf and Bihar al-Anwar preserve the version in which the horses passed over the body of Qasim. Reyshahri identifies (2) as a later textual tradition derivative from Bihar; the husayniyya lamentation tradition has long carried it. The maqtal here follows the Lohoof / Bihar / lamentation tradition because that is the form of the story the Shia ear has carried for centuries — the form in which Imam Husayn gathers the small pieces of his nephew in his cloak.
On the poisoning of Imam Hasan (peace and blessings be upon him) — Reyshahri (p. 842, narration #752, citing al-Kafi) preserves the testimony of Imam al-Sadiq (peace and blessings be upon him): “Al-Ash’ath ibn Qays was complicit in the [spilling of the] blood of the Commander of the Faithful (a); his daughter, Ja’da, poisoned al-Hasan (a); and his son Muhammad took part in the killing of al-Husayn (a).” Nafas al-Mahmum confirms that Mu’awiya bribed Ja’da bint al-Ash’ath, his wife. The specific inducement — that she would be married to Yazid and made a queen — is preserved in al-Mas’udi’s Muruj al-Dhahab (vol. 2, p. 47), Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s Maqatil al-Talibiyyin, Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih’s al-’Iqd al-Farid (vol. 2, p. 11), and other classical sources. The promise was never honoured.
On the Qasim wedding-henna and the father’s-cloak narratives — both are popular husayniyya / ta’ziya tradition elements that have entered the lamentation literature without classical attestation. The Qasim wedding/betrothal narrative was identified by Shaheed Ayatullah Murtadha Mutahhari (peace and blessings be upon him), in his Hamasah-yi Husayni (the four Muharram 1389 / March 1969 sermons translated as ‘Ashura: Misrepresentations and Distortions by ‘Ali Quli Qara’i, al-Tawhid journal), as a fabrication originating in Mulla Husayn Wa’iz Kashifi’s Rawdat al-Shuhada (composed circa 908 AH / 1502 CE — about five centuries after Karbala). Mutahhari writes: “They have concocted a story that the Imam called for a wedding ceremony on this day. … Such an episode is not mentioned in any reliable book of history. Mulla Husayn Kashifi was the first man to write this story in a book named Rawdat al-Shuhada — and it is totally fictitious.” (Sermon 1, p. 13.) And of Kashifi’s book as a whole: “His Rawdat al-Shuhada is replete with lies. No one has been spared of his lies.” (Sermon 4, p. 56.) And of the injury such fabrications cause to the witness: “You have changed the entire face of the event. … The Qasim ibn Hasan that you have painted in your fancy is not my nephew.” (Sermon 1, p. 14, voicing Imam Husayn’s reproach.) Mutahhari’s general principle: “Tahrif is an indirect blow and a stab in the back.” (Sermon 4, Part 2, p. 22.) The maqtal therefore lifts both the wedding-henna and the perfumed-cloak details out of the going-out scene; the tabyeen movement in Section V honours the love that produced the embellishments while restoring the witness to its actual integrity — Karbala does not need decoration.
On Aun and Muhammad, the sons of Abdullah ibn Ja’far at-Tayyar — both martyrdoms are preserved across the early historical record. Ayatollah Reyshahri, Chronicles of the Martyrdom of Imam Husayn (Part 7, sections 7/1 and 7/2, pp. 555–558), gathers the narrations: Tarikh al-Tabari (vol. 5, pp. 468–469) quoting Hisham names Muhammad’s killer as Amir ibn Nahshal al-Taymi, and Aun’s killer as Abdullah ibn Qutbah al-Ta’i al-Nabhani; al-Mufid’s Kitab al-Irshad (vol. 2, p. 124) preserves Abdullah ibn Ja’far’s response on hearing the news of his two sons — “All praise is for God at the martyrdom of al-Husayn. If my own hands could not support him, my two sons supported him” (cited at Reyshahri p. 558). Ziyarat al-Nahiyah al-Muqaddasah (preserved in al-Iqbal, vol. 3, p. 73; al-Mazar al-Kabir, p. 490) addresses Aun: “Peace be on Aun ibn Abdullah ibn Ja’far al-Tayyar (the one who flies in paradise), who was unified with faith, who was the companion of great peers, who advised for the sake of the merciful Lord, and who was a reciter of the chapters and verses of the Qur’an.” And Muhammad: “Peace be on Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Ja’far, who was martyred in the place of his father, who followed the example of his brother, and protected him with his life.” The maqtal carries both verses verbatim in the benediction.
On the mother(s) of Aun and Muhammad — the textual position — the early classical record diverges. Aun (al-Akbar) — Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani in Maqatil al-Talibiyyin (p. 95) reports that the martyr in Karbala was Aun al-Akbar, the son of Sayyedah Zaynab (peace and blessings be upon her); the same Abdullah ibn Ja’far had a second son also named Aun (al-Asghar) by a different mother (Jumanah bint al-Musayyab), and Abu al-Faraj has him martyred later, during the event of al-Harrah in Medina. The majority of other early sources (al-Tabari vol. 5, p. 468; al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh vol. 2, p. 581; Nasab Quraysh p. 83, et al.) identify the Karbala martyr as the son of Jumanah. Muhammad — Tarikh al-Tabari (vol. 5, p. 469) names his mother as al-Khawsa’ bint Khasafah ibn Thaqif ibn Rabi’a. Reyshahri (p. 555) notes that reports identifying his mother as Sayyedah Zaynab (as in Kamil Baha’i vol. 2, p. 303 and A’yan al-Shi’ah vol. 1, p. 608) are “apparently incorrect” against the majority textual record. The maqtal follows the form of the story the Shia ear has carried for centuries — the husayniyya tradition has long held Sayyedah Zaynab (peace and blessings be upon her) as the mother who sent her sons. The lamentation tradition treats her as the household-mother of both — her own son Aun by birth (per Abu al-Faraj), her stepson Muhammad raised in the same household, and both walked to her brother’s tent by her hand on the night before Ashura. This is the form of the story the lamenters have carried; this is the form in which the maqtal carries it. The strict majority textual record is preserved here in Sources Cited for transparency.
On Sayyedah Zaynab’s farewell at the entrance of her tent — the dialogue “Brother, the sons of our uncle Aqil have gone out before you. The sons of our brother Hasan have gone out before you. How is it that the sons of our brother Ja’far do not go out before you also?” is preserved in the lamentation tradition (notably Maqtal al-Husayn of al-Khwarizmi, vol. 2; Bihar al-Anwar vol. 45; and through the centuries of husayniyya and minbar recitation). The single classical anchor for her active role in sending her sons is Tabari’s narration #232 (cited at Reyshahri p. 329) on Abdullah ibn Ja’far’s letter sent with Aun and Muhammad to Imam Husayn at Mecca — the same two boys their mother subsequently walked to her brother’s tent on the night before Ashura. The maqtal preserves the lamentation tradition’s framing of her farewell — no words, a hand at the tent’s mouth, a mother who did not weep until later — as the form the Shia ear has carried. The verbatim of her words in the lamentation tradition is treated, per the series’s reconstructed-quotation protocol (see Style Protocol §1.6), as a minbar paraphrase consistent with her known voice; the maqtal renders it in English with attribution to the lamentation tradition rather than presenting an Arabic verbatim that the early historical record does not preserve.
