The Battle of Karbala took place within the crisis environment resulting from the succession of Yazid I.Immediately after succession, Yazid instructed the governor of Medina to compel Ḥusayn and a few other prominent figures to pledge their allegiance (Bay'ah).Ḥusayn, however, refrained from making such a pledge, believing that Yazid was openly going against the teachings of Islam and changing the sunnah of Muhammad. He, therefore, accompanied by his household, his sons, brothers, and the sons of Hasan left Medina to seek asylum in Mecca.
In Mecca, Ḥusayn learned assassins had been sent by Yazid to kill him in the holy city in the midst of Hajj. Ḥusayn, to preserve the sanctity of the city and specifically that of the Kaaba, abandoned his Hajj and encouraged others around him to follow him to Kufa without knowing the situation there had taken an adverse turn.
On the way, Ḥusayn found that his messenger, Muslim ibn Aqeel, had been killed in Kufa. Ḥusayn encountered the vanguard of the army of Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad along the route towards Kufa. Ḥusayn addressed the Kufan army, reminding them that they had invited him to come because they were without an Imam. He told them that he intended to proceed to Kufa with their support, but if they were now opposed to his coming, he would return to where he had come from. In response, the army urged him to proceed by another route. Thus, he turned to the left and reached Karbala, where the army forced him not to go further and stop at a location that had limited access to water.
Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad, the governor instructed Umar ibn Sa'ad, the head of the Kufan army, to offer Ḥusayn and his supporters the opportunity to swear allegiance to Yazid. He also ordered Umar ibn Sa'ad to cut off Ḥusayn and his followers from access to the water of the Euphrates. On the next morning, Umar ibn Sa'ad arranged the Kufan army in battle order.
The Battle of Karbala lasted from morning to sunset on 10 October 680 (Muharram 10, 61 AH). Husayn's small group of companions and family members (in total around 72 men and the women and children)fought against a large army under the command of Umar ibn Sa'ad and were killed near the river (Euphrates), from which they were not allowed to get water. The renowned historian Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī states:
… [T]hen fire was set to their camp and the bodies were trampled by the hoofs of the horses; nobody in the history of the human kind has seen such atrocities.
Once the Umayyad troops had murdered Ḥusayn and his male followers, they looted the tents, stripped the women of their jewelry, and took the skin upon which Zain al-Abidin was prostrate. Ḥusayn's sister Zaynab was taken along with the enslaved women to the caliph in Damascus when she was imprisoned and after a year eventually was allowed to return to Medina.
[E]ver since the black day of Karbala, the history of this family … has been a continuous series of sufferings and persecutions. These are narrated in poetry and prose, in a richly cultivated literature of martyrologies … 'More touching than the tears of the Shi'is' has even become an Arabic proverb
The first assembly (majlis) of the Commemoration of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī is said to have been held by Zaynab in prison. In Damascus, too, she is reported to have delivered a poignant oration. The prison sentence ended when Husayn's four-year-old daughter, Ruqayyah bint Husayn, died in captivity. She would often cry in prison to be allowed to see her father. She is believed to have died when she saw her father's mutilated head. Her death caused an uproar in the city, and Yazid, fearing a potential uprising, freed the captives.
Imam Zayn Al Abidin said the following:
It is said that for forty years whenever food was placed before him, he would weep. One day a servant said to him, 'O son of Allah's Messenger! Is it not time for your sorrow to come to an end?' He replied, 'Woe upon you! Jacob the prophet had twelve sons, and Allah made one of them disappear. His eyes turned white from constant weeping, his head turned grey out of sorrow, and his back became bent in gloom, though his son was alive in this world. But I watched while my father, my brother, my uncle, and seventeen members of my family were slaughtered all around me. How should my sorrow come to an end?'
Husayn's grave became a pilgrimage site among Shia Muslims only a few years after his death. A tradition quickly developed of pilgrimage to the Imam Husayn Shrine and the other Karbala martyrs, known as Ziarat ashura. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs tried to prevent construction of the shrines and discouraged pilgrimage to the sites. The tomb and its annexes were destroyed by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil in 850–851 and Shia pilgrimage was prohibited, but shrines in Karbala and Najaf were built by the Buwayhid emir 'Adud al-Daula in 979–80.
