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 Seven
The Voice of the Awaited One
This is the seventh 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 he came for the prophetic chain of grief — the inherited tear.
On the third he came for a doorway.
On the fourth he came for an ambassador and a city of broken promises.
On the fifth 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.
On the sixth he came for the four young men who walked out at dawn as calmly as bridegrooms walking into a hall.
Tonight he comes for the standard-bearer.
The moon of the Banu Hashim.
The water-carrier of Karbala.
Tonight he comes for al-Abbas ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib — peace and blessings be upon him — the brother who was given two arms and used both of them to carry what could not be put down, until both arms were taken from him at the bank of a river that had been promised by the Lord of all rivers to the people who say our Lord is God, and was withheld for three days from a camp of children whose tongues had thickened in their mouths.
The accompanying sermon for this session — [7] Shahada (Witness) - Nothing More Precious Than Independence — is available on Reflections313.
The Maqtal — “The Hands at the Euphrates”
I. The Lamp on the Stone
I come to you tonight, my beloved, the way I have come every night of this Muharram.
From behind the veils.
From the place no eye has yet seen.
From the long, patient hour of the occultation, in which I am kept by my Lord — until the appointed time, when the appointed time arrives, and the appointed earth is ready, and the appointed people are standing.The taper is on the grey stone, where it has been since the first night.
It has not gone out.
It will not go out.
You should know that, my beloved.
In the seven nights you have walked through this Muharram, no one has been able to put it out.
Not the empire.
Not the army.
Not the long centuries since.The lamp keeps.
The cloth on the stone has been changed for you each night, but the candle is the same candle.
The oil is the same oil.
The fire is the same fire that was lit by my forefather Abel’s blood on the morning Cain could not answer the question, and that has been passed, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, breath to breath, through every prophet and every Imam and every witness across countless centuries — until it reached the river you and I are about to walk to.Tonight, beside the taper, my mother Fatema (peace and blessings be upon her) has placed two more things.
A standard.
A waterskin.
The wood of the standard is bare.
The cloth has been laid across the stone.
The waterskin is empty, and on its leather there is a small dark mark — a hole where a sharp thing went through, and out the other side, and let what was in it back into the world.You will know what these are, when the night is finished.
Listen.
I was not there — but I remember.
II. The Mother and Her Sons
My forefather Ali ibn Abi Talib (peace and blessings be upon him) said one day to his elder brother Aqil — who knew the lineages of the Arabs the way some men know the wells of the desert —
Find me a woman from among the warriors of the Arabs.
Marry me to her, that I may have a son who is a knight.
Aqil said to him:
“Marry Fatima bint Hizam al-Kilabiyyah, peace and blessings be upon her, for there are no braver warriors among the Arabs than her forefathers.”
So my forefather Ali married her.
Her name, before her sons were born, was Fatima bint Hizam ibn Khalid ibn Rabi’ah ibn al-Wahid al-’Amiriyyah.
She was from the tribe of Banu Kilab — the tribe of mothers and the tribe of warriors.
She came into the house of my forefather Ali after the passing of my mother, my grandmother, my Sayyedah Fatima al-Zahra (peace and blessings be upon her).She was given four sons.
You will hear their names tonight, my beloved, because they all fell on the same field, on the same morning, in the same hour — and I do not name one without naming the four.
Abd Allah ibn Ali, peace and blessings be upon him, who was twenty-five years old.
Ja’far ibn Ali, peace and blessings be upon him, who was nineteen.
Uthman ibn Ali, peace and blessings be upon him, who was twenty-one.
And al-Abbas ibn Ali, peace and blessings be upon him, who was thirty-four.
Four sons.
One mother.
One father.
One field.
One day.Because of those four sons, she was given another name.
They called her Umm al-Banin.
The mother of the sons.
They called her by it while her sons still lived — and after her sons fell, they called her by it still.She kept the name for the rest of her life.
She wore it the way another mother wears a wedding ring.
She was asked the name in the lanes of Medina by women who did not know what had happened on the plain, and when she answered, the women understood.I was not there — but I remember.
III. The Boy Who Watched His Father
My forefather al-Abbas was tall, my beloved.
The chronicles tell us that when he rode a horse, his feet touched the ground.He was beautiful.
The Shia tradition has called him, since the seventh century, Qamar Bani Hashim — the moon of the Banu Hashim.And the moon carries a light that is not its own.
But it is not his height we are walking with tonight, and it is not his face.
It is what he watched.
He was a child in the courtyard of his father, the Commander of the Faithful — peace and blessings be upon him.
He was a boy in the years his father was the Caliph, in the years of Siffin and Nahrawan, in the year forty when the cleaver fell in the niche of the mosque of Kufa and his father went home to his Lord.He was a young man in the long disappointment that came after — when his elder brother Imam Hasan, peace and blessings be upon him, made the treaty that the small minds called surrender and the patient eyes called the long way home.
He stood in the household when Mu’awiya broke every clause of the treaty, and when his elder brother was poisoned in his own house, by his own wife, Ja’da bint al-Ash’ath, whom Mu’awiya had bribed with the false promise of marriage to Yazid and made-a-queen.He watched.
He watched his elder brother poisoned, and the small minds celebrating, and the patient eyes weeping.
He watched my forefather Imam al-Husayn — peace and blessings be upon him — become, in the household, the place every prayer landed.
And he learned, in the years between the poisoning of his elder brother and the morning of Ashura, what his eldest brother needed.
What his eldest brother needed was a man whose right hand and left hand were given over.
Not a follower.
A carrier.
The Persian gnostic tradition you walked through tonight in the sermon, my beloved, has a word for what my forefather al-Abbas became in those years. Ma’rifat.
The discernment.
The knowing-with-the-heart.He knew, before anyone said it, what was coming.
And he had decided what his hands were for.
I was not there — but I remember.
IV. The Standard
When my forefather al-Husayn — peace and blessings be upon him — set out from Medina on the night of the twenty-eighth of Rajab in the year sixty, my forefather al-Abbas was at his side.
When my forefather entered Mecca on the third of Sha’ban, my forefather al-Abbas walked behind him through the gate.
When my forefather left Mecca on the eighth of Dhu al-Hijja — the day of al-tarwiyah, the day the pilgrims were preparing to drink before the climb to Arafat — my forefather al-Abbas was the one who carried the standard out of the city.The standard.
You should know what this was, my beloved.
It was not a flag.
It was not a banner.
It was not the colour of an army or the device of a tribe.
The standard of my forefather al-Husayn — peace and blessings be upon him — was a piece of wood, with a piece of cloth tied to it, that had been in the household of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) since the days of Badr.
It had been carried by my forefather Ja’far at-Tayyar at Mu’tah, peace and blessings be upon him — until his right hand was severed, and the standard transferred to his left hand, and his left hand was severed, and the standard he held with the stumps against his chest until he was killed and his soul was given two wings in paradise to fly with where his hands could no longer hold.That was the standard.
It was given, three generations later, to my forefather al-Abbas.
He knew where it had been.
He knew what it was for.
He knew that the wood was wood and the cloth was cloth and that the standard — the thing the wood and the cloth were carrying — was not in the wood and not in the cloth.
The standard, my beloved, is the cause whose proof is its own carrier.
That is what he carried out of Mecca.
That is what he carried into Karbala on the second of Muharram.
That is what he carried through the days of the encampment, the negotiations that failed, the night of the ninth, the morning of the tenth.
That is what he carried until both his hands were taken from him.
And that is what he carried after both his hands were taken from him.
I was not there — but I remember.
V. The Order from Kufa
The seventh of Muharram.
The year sixty-one.
You heard tonight in the sermon, my beloved, and you heard the chronicle from Tabari and Ibn Tawus and the Akhbar al-Tiwal.
The order had arrived in the camp of Umar ibn Sa’d from Ibn Ziyad in his palace at Kufa. Block al-Husayn and his companions from the water. Do not let them taste a drop of it.
Five hundred horsemen, under the command of Amr ibn al-Hajjaj al-Zubaydi, rode that day to the bank of the Furat.
The river was not large.
The river had a name and a mood and a course.
The river had been crossed by my forefathers and by their forefathers.
It had given water to the camels of the Banu Asad and to the hermits of the desert who lived on its banks before the Banu Asad had names.
The river had been there since my Lord, who had spoken to my forefather Adam, peace and blessings be upon him, in a garden the river is said to have flowed out of — had given the river to the world.The Lord of the river was not Ibn Ziyad.
But Ibn Ziyad had given the order anyway.
The water was cut.
For three days — through the seventh, the eighth, the ninth — the water did not reach the camp.
For three days the children of my forefathers tried to ask for water in voices that the thirst would not let through.
For three days the women of the household held the children with their hands and could not give them what their hands could not produce.
For three days the men of the household, including my forefather al-Abbas, peace and blessings be upon him, refused to put any water that arrived from any other source into their own mouths before the children had drunk first.
The chronicles preserve, my beloved, that on one of these three days, before the morning of Ashura — when the thirst had become more than the bodies of the children could carry — my forefather al-Husayn, peace and blessings be upon him, called for his brother and sent him with thirty horsemen and twenty foot-soldiers to the river.
Each of the foot-soldiers carried a waterskin.
The chronicles tell us — Tabari narrates this from Humayd ibn Muslim al-Azdi, and al-Akhbar al-Tiwal preserves it likewise — that my forefather al-Abbas led that company to the river, that they engaged the blockade of Amr ibn al-Hajjaj, that they drove the enemy from the river, that the foot-soldiers entered the river and filled the twenty waterskins, and that my forefather al-Abbas held a steady position protecting them from the enemy until the water came back to the camp.It was that day, my beloved, that the Shia tradition gave him his title.
Saqqa.
The water-bearer.
The water-carrier.
He had brought water back once.
He would try, on the morning of the tenth, to bring it back again.
I was not there — but I remember.
VI. The Brothers Fall First
The morning of Ashura.
The tenth of Muharram.
The year sixty-one of the Hijra.The companions had gone out, my beloved, before the sun was high.
You have walked with them in the sermons of these nights — the seventy-two faces, the chain of refusals at Husayn’s invitation to leave on the night of the ninth, the going out one by one and two by two and the falling.When the companions had gone out, the household began to go.
You walked last night with my forefather Qasim — peace and blessings be upon him — the boy who told his uncle that death was sweeter than honey.
You walked with my forefather Ali al-Akbar — peace and blessings be upon him — the eighteen-year-old whose face was the face of the Prophet of God.
And you walked with my forefathers Aun and Muhammad — peace and blessings be upon them both — the sons of my aunt Sayyedah Zaynab and of my forefather Abdullah ibn Ja'far at-Tayyar: Aun, who rode out that morning reciting the chapters and verses of the Qur'an; and Muhammad, his brother, half a step behind him, who stepped between his fallen brother and the closing line of the enemy.
You walked with the small ones, my beloved — the small ones whose names will be on your lips again tomorrow night and the night after, until we have buried all of them in our hearts the way the field would not bury them in its sand.
And then it was the turn of my mother Umm al-Banin’s sons.
Abd Allah ibn Ali went first.
Twenty-five years old.
His brother al-Abbas told him before he went out — stand in front of me, that I may look at you, and may hope for God’s reward through you. Hani ibn Thabit al-Khazrami killed him in the field, by an arrow first and a blow after.Ja’far ibn Ali went next.
Nineteen years old.
He was killed by Khuli, or by Hani — the chronicles offer both — and his soul was lifted from his body in the same hour as his elder brother’s.Uthman ibn Ali went third.
Twenty-one years old. Khuli’s arrow brought him down, and a man from Banu Aban ibn Daram came forward and severed his head and sent it as a gift to Umar ibn Sa’d, asking for a reward.Umar, in the famous reply preserved by Abu Mikhnaf, said to him:
”Take it to your governor, and ask him for the reward.”Three sons of Umm al-Banin, my beloved.
In one morning.
In one field.
Before the fourth one rose.
When my forefather al-Husayn arrived at the bodies of the three, he knelt at each of them and named them and wept.
When he stood up, my forefather al-Abbas — peace and blessings be upon him — was waiting.
I was not there — but I remember.
VII. The Last Crossing
He asked his brother for permission, my beloved.
The chronicles do not preserve the exact words.
The Shia tradition has carried, across the centuries, that he said something like this — that he asked for permission to ride to the river one final time, for the children whose voices had stopped being able to ask, and that his brother — peace and blessings be upon him — looked at him with the look a man gives a man he is about to lose, and gave him the permission, and said something we have all heard in the lamentation tradition without being sure we know its first source —“O brother — you are the gathering of my back. You are the standard of my caravan. If I lose you, I have lost my back.”
My forefather al-Abbas mounted his horse.
He took the standard in his right hand.
He took the empty waterskin in his left hand.
He rode out of the camp of the women and children.
He rode past the bodies of his three brothers.
He rode toward the bank of the Furat.The chronicles tell us, my beloved, that he reached the river.
That he reached it through the blockade — the same five hundred horsemen who had been there for three days, with the same orders.
That he reached the bank.
That his horse waded into the water.
I was not there — but I remember.
VIII. The Hand Cupped at the River
He was at the river, my beloved.
He had been thirsty for three days, the way every man and every woman and every child in the camp had been thirsty for three days.
He cupped his hand into the water.
He raised the water to his face.
He saw, in the small pool of water in his palm, a small reflection of his own face.
And he heard, my beloved — and the lamentation tradition carries this for us, from Bihar al-Anwar and from the tongues of every reciter who has ever recited Karbala in any language — he heard, in the water, the voice of the children he had left behind in the camp.
The children were not at the river.
The children were too far from the river to be at the river.
But the children were in the water that was in his hand.
He looked at his face in the water.
He spoke to himself the line that the Shia tradition has carried, in lamentation, since the night the camp first wept for him —
“O my soul, after Husayn — you are nothing. And these children, these children who are waiting for the water, are more thirsty than you.”
He poured the water back.
He let it fall from his hand into the river.
He filled the waterskin instead.
He turned the horse away from the river and toward the camp.
He had to get the water back to the children.
He had to.
The whole reason he had ridden was to get the water back to the children.
I was not there — but I remember.
IX. The Right Hand and the Left Hand
The horsemen had let him through to the water, my beloved, because they had not thought he could fight as he had fought.
They did not let him through on the way back.
The chronicles preserve, in al-Irshad of al-Mufid and in the Ziyarat al-Nahiya al-Muqaddasah, the names of the men who came forward — the distance of God’s mercy upon them, the long, eternal, unappealable distance.
There was a man called Zayd ibn Warqa’ al-Hanafi.
There was a man called Hakim ibn al-Tufayl al-Sinbisi.
The Ziyarat al-Nahiya names two men in the same role, with slightly different vowels — Yazid ibn al-Ruqad and Hakim ibn al-Tufayl al-Ta’i — and the distance of God’s mercy is upon both pairs, because both pairs are the same hands at the same hour.
The chronicles tell us — al-Mufid in al-Irshad, Ibn Tawus in al-Luhuf — that Zayd or Yazid came at my forefather al-Abbas from behind.
The blade fell on his right arm.
The right arm — the arm with which he had carried the standard since the night they left Mecca, the arm with which he had cradled his three brothers’ heads as they went down, the arm in which the waterskin had been filled — the right arm was severed at the place where the chronicles do not exactly say but where every Shia mother who has ever told the story has placed her own hand on her own child’s arm and shown them what the place was.
He did not let the standard fall.
He moved the standard to his left hand.
And the chronicles, my beloved — and listen to this, listen to what the chronicles preserve and what the lamentation tradition has been carrying for fourteen centuries — the chronicles preserve that he composed lines of poetry in that moment.
In the moment of the right hand.
He said —
“By God, if you sever my right hand, I will not stop defending my faith — and the Imam, the truthful son of the trustworthy Prophet.”
That was the right hand.
He turned the horse, with the standard now in his left hand and the waterskin still tied to him, back toward the camp.
The blade fell on his left arm.
The left arm — the arm that had received the standard from the right arm not a minute earlier, the arm into which the standard had transferred the way a witness transfers across a generation, the arm that was the only arm he had left — the left arm was severed.
The standard, my beloved, did not fall.
The lamentation tradition has carried for fourteen centuries that my forefather caught the standard between his teeth.
That he held it with his teeth — the way my forefather Ja’far at-Tayyar had held it with his stumps against his chest at Mu’tah — and turned the horse one more time toward the camp.
And on this same morning, my beloved, the blood of Ja’far at-Tayyar was answering itself across the centuries — the grandfather’s stumps at Mu’tah; the grandsons, my forefathers Aun and Muhammad — peace and blessings be upon them both — fallen side by side a few hours earlier on this same field; and now, my brother al-Abbas, holding with his teeth what his hands no longer could.
His mouth was full of standard.
His arms were no longer there.
The waterskin was still on his side.
His blood was on the standard, on the horse, on the waterskin, on the sand of the river-bank.
He was still trying to get the water back to the children.
He was still trying.
I was not there — but I remember.
X. The Mace
The man with the mace, my beloved, was the third one.
The chronicles do not always agree on his name.
The lamentation tradition has carried the act, across centuries, in the same shape regardless of the name.He came at my forefather al-Abbas as the horse turned for the camp the third time.
He swung an iron mace.
The blow fell on my forefather’s head.
The skull, the brave skull that had carried the ma’rifat of thirty-four years and the love of his elder brother and the discernment of the cause, opened.
My forefather went down.
The horse — the horse that the lamentation tradition has called al-Murtajaz, that had carried him from the camp to the river and from the river toward the camp — went its own way back, with no rider, with the standard now lost.
And in the moment of the falling, the chronicles preserve, an arrow came — and pierced the waterskin.
A small arrow.
Small enough to make a small hole.
Small enough that you would not notice the hole if you were not looking for it.The water came out of the waterskin onto the sand.
It made a small dark stain on the sand of the river-bank.
The dark stain did not last.
The sand drank what the children would have drunk.
I was not there — but I remember.
XI. The Cry of the Brother, the Benediction, the Distance, and the Living Caravan
My forefather al-Husayn, peace and blessings be upon him, had been waiting in the camp.
He had heard, from the direction of the river, a sound that no man hears twice and stays a man.
The sound was the sound of his brother’s voice, calling for him.
O brother. O Aba Abdillah. Come to your brother.
My forefather rode out from the camp toward the river.
When he came to the place where my forefather al-Abbas had fallen, he dismounted.
He knelt in the sand.
He gathered into his arms what could be gathered — and the lamentation tradition has carried, from Bihar al-Anwar and from the tongues of every reciter, that what could be gathered was less than a man can be expected to gather and remain a man.
He placed his cheek on the cheek of his brother.
He spoke the words that the chronicles, in the form preserved in Reyshahri’s Chronicles and in the al-Irshad of al-Mufid, peace and blessings be upon him, have given to us.
Now my back is broken.
And my options have grown few.
— Imam al-Husayn ibn Ali, peace and blessings be upon him, lament over the body of his brother al-Abbas; preserved in Reyshahri, Chronicles of the Martyrdom of Imam Husayn, p. 540, citing al-Mufid’s al-Irshad
Now my back is broken.
He did not say I have lost a soldier.
He did not say I have lost a brother.
He said my back is broken.
The standard-bearer, the moon of the Banu Hashim, the water-carrier, the man whose two arms had carried what could not be put down — was the back of the household.
The back was broken now.
The household stood, my beloved, on the broken back of my forefather al-Abbas, until the dawn of the eleventh, when the household no longer stood at all.
Now hear the benediction.
Peace be upon Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, son of the Commander of the Faithful, peace and blessings be upon them both — who gave his life in defence of his brother, who took the provision for the hereafter from this world, who was loyal and protective over him, who tried hard to bring water to him, and whose two arms were severed.
Peace be upon his right hand, with which he carried the standard from Mecca to Karbala.
Peace be upon his left hand, with which he carried the standard for the moments between the right hand and the mouth.
Peace be upon his teeth, into which the standard was caught for the seconds between the left hand and the falling.
Peace be upon the empty waterskin, with the small dark hole, that his blood had run down before his blood ran into the sand.
Peace be upon his three brothers, who fell before him, that he might fall last — Abd Allah, Ja’far, and Uthman, sons of my forefather Ali ibn Abi Talib, peace and blessings be upon them all.
Peace be upon his mother, Sayyedah Umm al-Banin, who waited at the well in Medina for the news that the chronicles tell us reached her through Bashir ibn Hadhlam, peace and blessings be upon him — who kept the name the mother of the sons until the day my Lord called her home.
Peace be upon his elder brother who knelt in the sand, and who said now my back is broken, and who carried the broken back through the rest of the morning, and through the falling of his own son the perfect-resemblance, and through the falling of the small infant in his own arms, and through the final ride toward the enemy, and through the falling of his own body — and who is, peace and blessings be upon him, my forefather and the Master of the Witnesses.
And the distance of God’s mercy — the long, eternal, unappealable distance —
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Ibn Ziyad in his palace at Kufa, who gave the order that the children should not drink.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Umar ibn Sa’d, who carried the order to the field and would not lift it.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Amr ibn al-Hajjaj and the five hundred horsemen who held the bank of a river that was not theirs.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon Zayd ibn Warqa’ al-Hanafi and Hakim ibn al-Tufayl al-Sinbisi, who came at my forefather from behind and severed both his arms.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every empire, in every century, that has cut a people from the water and called it a strategy.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every regime, in every age, that has signed the laws of war and broken them.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every commander who has ordered the bombing of a school, and every captain who has obeyed the order, and every clerk who has recorded the bombing as a precision strike.
The distance of God’s mercy be upon every preacher, in every tongue, who has been paid in coin to forget whose grandsons walked the earth.
And peace, my beloved —
Peace upon those who, in our own century, have walked toward water for the children of someone else’s tents.
Peace upon Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, may God rest his pure soul — the standard-bearer of the south of Lebanon, who told us he did not want Karbala to remain in history, and whose name was the same as my forefather al-Abbas’s name, and whose convoy was struck on the road back from Shaykh Ragheb Harb’s commemoration eight years to the day after Shaykh Ragheb’s own martyrdom — and may my forefather Husayn place his hand on the shoulder of Sayyed Abbas’s mother the way it was placed on the shoulder of my own mother Sayyedah Umm al-Banin.
Peace upon Shaykh Ragheb Harb, may God rest his pure soul, who refused the handshake of the occupier and lit the path for everyone who would refuse it after him.
Peace upon Hajj Qasem Soleimani, may God rest his pure soul — the standard-bearer of our own century, the man whose ma’rifat carried what could not be put down, and who wrote a letter to a Sunni family in Boukamal apologising, in writing, for the use of their kitchen, in a voice that knew the worship of the One God is the worship in every house where the One God is named.
Peace upon Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, may God rest his pure soul, in this Muharram, the second since his own martyrdom on my forefather’s road. And may my forefather receive him.
Peace upon Hajj Imad Mughniyeh, may God rest his pure soul, who began in one cause and turned, and whose turning lit the way for everyone who turned with him.
Peace upon our beloved Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, may God rest his pure soul — the leader who, eleven days before his shahada on the eighth of Ramadan in this very year, repeated to the nation of Iran the principle Sayyed Abbas had repeated forty years earlier from his pulpit in the Bekaa, and who has now been received by my forefathers into the company they keep.
Peace upon the children of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab — boys and girls, one hundred and sixty-three of them — who fell on the same morning their leader fell, in their own school in Hormozgan, by a Tomahawk that came from a country that signed the laws of war and broke them. And may my forefather al-Abbas, peace and blessings be upon him, who knew what it is for a Tomahawk-equivalent of his own century to come at the children, place his severed hand on the shoulder of every mother of the one hundred and sixty-three.
Peace upon every young man of the Resistance who took his father’s place in the south of Lebanon, and in Gaza, and in Iraq, and in Syria, and in Yemen.
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 medic in Gaza who would not stop, and whose hands have been the hands of my forefather al-Abbas in our own century.
Peace upon every fighter on every Resistance front of our generation who returned to his mother with his sleeve folded under, and would not let her weep at the sleeve.
Peace upon every Sunni family in every city like Boukamal, whose home has been the place where the worship of the same God is performed in different rooms.
Peace upon every young woman in every household of the Resistance who has waited at a doorway for a man of her family who would not return.
And we ask You, O God, in the closing of this night —
Preserve for us our beloved Imam Sayyed Mujtaba Khamenei, may God protect him — the new Wali al-Faqih, the son who has taken his father’s place at the head of the worship. Strengthen him. Guide him. Make him the leader his father trained him to be, and the leader You have appointed him to be, until the appointed time of the appointed Imam, may our souls be his ransom and may You hasten his return.
XII. 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 standard is not a flag.
The standard is not a banner.
The standard is the cause whose proof is its own carrier.
If your sons grow up, and the world tells them their hands are for nothing — teach them to look at my forefather al-Abbas, who used both his hands for what could not be put down, and lost both his hands for what could not be put down, and held what could not be put down with what was left of his mouth.
If your daughters grow up, and the world tells them their waiting at the doorway is a small thing — teach them to look at my mother Umm al-Banin, who waited at a well in Medina for four sons and was given the answer that her four sons had been given to my Lord, and who kept the name the sons had given her until the day she joined them.
If your young people grow up, and the world tells them that the cause of one nation is the same as the cause of every nation — teach them that the cause is the worship of the One God, and that the worship of the One God has a face, and that the face is the face of my forefather Husayn and the back of my forefather Husayn is the back of my forefather Abbas, and the brother is the back of the brother, and that is the difference between every cause and the cause that is worth carrying with both hands.
The standard is the cause whose proof is its own carrier.
That is what makes a man’s body a witness.
Tomorrow night I come to you for the lamps that would not flicker — for the seventy-two companions of my forefather, peace and blessings be upon him and upon them, who were given permission on the night before Ashura to leave, and stayed; and for the test he administered, and the answer that, by the morning, the seventy-two had given.
You will hear of an army of lamps that no wind of any state-manufactured aesthetic could put out.Until then —
Where is your brother?
About this Maqtal
This maqtal is the seventh 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 sources:
Primary Sources
Reyshahri, Chronicles of the Martyrdom of Imam Husayn — Sections 1/11 (water cut on 7 Muharram, citing al-Tabari and al-Akhbar al-Tiwal); 1/12 (the earlier successful water mission with thirty horsemen and twenty foot-soldiers); 4/4 and 4/5 (the brothers of Umm al-Banin and the martyrdom of al-Abbas, peace and blessings be upon them all). Husayn’s lament “Now my back is broken and my options have grown few” preserved at p. 540, citing al-Mufid’s al-Irshad.
Ibn Tawus, al-Luhuf fi Qatla al-Tufuf — the separation of al-Abbas from al-Husayn, peace and blessings be upon them, the surrounding, and the killing.
Qummi, Nafas al-Mahmum.
Abu Mikhnaf, Maqtal al-Husayn.
al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk (via Humayd ibn Muslim al-Azdi) — the order from Ibn Ziyad to cut the water “three days before the martyrdom.”
al-Mufid, Kitab al-Irshad — names of the killers (Zayd ibn Warqa’ al-Hanafi and Hakim ibn al-Tufayl al-Sinbisi); right-hand-then-left-hand sequence; Husayn’s lament.
al-Khwarizmi, Maqtal al-Husayn.
Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, Maqatil al-Talibiyyin — the four sons of Umm al-Banin (Abd Allah 25, Ja’far 19, Uthman 21, Abbas 34).
Ziyarat al-Nahiya al-Muqaddasah (al-Iqbal, vol. 3, p. 73) — “Peace be on Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas… who tried hard to bring water to him, and whose two arms were severed.” Names: Yazid ibn al-Ruqad and Hakim ibn al-Tufayl al-Ta’i.
Husayniyya / lamentation tradition (preserved across centuries in Bihar al-Anwar and the Shia recitation tradition):
The hand cupped at the river, the children’s voices in the water, the refusal to drink, the pouring back of the water — preserved in Bihar al-Anwar and across the lamentation literature; not in the earliest sources (Tabari, al-Mufid, al-Akhbar al-Tiwal) but firmly part of what the Shia tradition has carried since the early centuries.
The standard caught between the teeth after both arms were severed — same provenance.
Al-Abbas’s farewell line to his elder brother and the elder brother’s reply — preserved in the lamentation tradition.
On Imam Ali’s instruction to Aqil to find a wife from the warriors of the Arabs, and Aqil’s recommendation of Fatima bint al-Hizam al-Kilabiyyah — preserved in ’Umdat al-Talib and across the genealogical literature.
Imam al-Sadiq’s testimony to Mufaddal ibn ’Umar — “Our uncle, al-Abbas, was a man of penetrating insight and unwavering faith” — preserved in Sharh al-Akhbar, vol. 3, p. 191, cited in Reyshahri, p. 539.
