On 10 Muharram in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar, a date that Julius Wellhausen, William Muir and Henri Lammens each give as 10 October 680, a Kufan army sent by Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, the Umayyad governor of Kufa, overwhelmed the small party of al-Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at Karbala near the Euphrates. The early Arabic histories count the dead differently: al-Tabari's account has 72 of Husayn's men killed, al-Masudi's 87. The women and children of his household were taken captive. Muir (1891) describes Ashura, the day of his death, as commemorated yearly. Contemporary writers also date to 10 October, in 1911, the Wuchang mutiny that began the Chinese revolution.
Battle of Karbala
10 October 680 · 1346 years ago
An invitation from Kufa
When the caliph Muawiya died, his son Yazid had the governor of Medina demand the oath of allegiance from Husayn, who escaped to Mecca. Wellhausen dates the escape to the end of Rajab 60, which he gives as the beginning of May 680. Kufans wrote begging Husayn to come and receive their homage, and he sent his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil ahead.1
Yazid then gave Kufa to Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad. A rising in Muslim's favor collapsed and Muslim was put to death. Wellhausen, following the early historian Abu Mikhnaf, and al-Masudi both put Husayn's departure from Mecca on 8 Dhu al-Hijja 60, the day Muslim rose in Kufa; al-Masudi adds a version giving the 9th. His closest kin went with him, women and children among them. On the road the news of Muslim's death reached him; he thought of turning back, but Muslim's brothers wanted revenge.2
Cut off from the river
Kufan horsemen under Hurr ibn Yazid barred his way and would not let him turn back, so Husayn took a road away from Kufa. Wellhausen writes that Ubayd Allah's orders kept Husayn from camping by a fortress or water, and that he stopped at a waterless spot near the Euphrates, in the plain of Karbala, on 2 Muharram 61, which Wellhausen gives as 2 October 680. The next morning, he writes, Umar ibn Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas arrived with 4,000 Kufans, an army raised to fight the Daylam, and obeyed reluctantly. Muir gives 4,000 horse, calling the commander "Amr son of Sad", and Lammens counts 4,000 men at Karbala.3
The camp was then cut off from the river; Muir writes that Ubayd Allah hoped thirst would force a surrender. In Abu Mikhnaf's account as preserved by al-Tabari, Amr ibn al-Hajjaj held the watering place with 500 horsemen, and Husayn's brother al-Abbas went down at night with thirty horsemen and twenty foot and brought back filled water skins.4
Husayn, in Wellhausen's account, asked leave to go back, since the Kufans who had called him had changed their minds. Muir has him offer to return, to go to the caliph, or to fight on the frontier; Wellhausen cites this from another report, but notes that according to Abu Mikhnaf it was never made. Ubayd Allah demanded the oath to Yazid and surrender; if Umar refused, he was to hand the command to Shamir ibn Dhi al-Jawshan.5
On the evening of 9 Muharram, Wellhausen writes, Umar made ready to attack. Husayn urged his followers to leave, but none did. In Abu Mikhnaf's account his men filled a ditch behind the tents with wood and reeds, to be set alight so that they could be attacked from one side only; Wellhausen also describes measures against an attack from the rear, and Muir barricades of wood and reeds.6
The tenth of Muharram
Wellhausen, Muir and Lammens give the date of the battle as 10 Muharram 61, 10 October 680; al-Masudi gives 10 Muharram 61, and al-Tabari calls it the day of Ashura.7
Counts of Husayn's men differ. In Abu Mikhnaf's account Husayn drew up thirty-two horsemen and forty foot; Wellhausen reads it as some 70 men, his 18 cousins included, with 32 horses. Al-Tabari also gives another report of forty-five horsemen and a hundred foot, and an onlooker's estimate of close to a hundred men. Al-Masudi gives Husayn 500 horsemen and about a hundred foot.8
In the reports preserved by al-Tabari, which Wellhausen follows, Hurr ibn Yazid crossed over to Husayn and died with him. Husayn spoke to the enemy from his camel; Wellhausen writes that an arrow ended the speech, and Muir that an arrow from the Kufan side began the fight. "His faithful followers bade Husayn farewell till they should meet again in Paradise, before they went one after another into the last fight," Wellhausen writes (our translation). One onlooker, Sa'd ibn Ubayda, told how elders of Kufa stood on a hill weeping and saying "O God, send down Your help!", and how he answered: "O enemies of God, will you not come down and help him?" (our translation). Al-Masudi has Husayn cry: "Seigneur, juge entre nous et ceux qui, après nous avoir appelés et promis de nous défendre, combattent contre nous", "Lord, judge between us and those who called us and promised to defend us, and now fight against us" (our translation of Barbier de Meynard's French).9
Wellhausen writes that no one dared to approach the Prophet's grandson until Shamir cut him off from the tent of the women and children; Muir also has Shamir lead the attack. Wellhausen and al-Masudi both count 33 thrusts and 34 sword blows. Al-Masudi names Sinan ibn Anas al-Nakhai as the man who pierced him with a lance and cut off his head, having earlier called the killer an Arab of the Banu Madhhij; Muir has him struck by an arrow; Wellhausen writes that several men fell on him, and that afterwards no one, or everyone, wanted to be the killer. Al-Tabari and al-Masudi write that horsemen rode over his body on Umar's order, and Muir that the cavalry trampled it. The camp was plundered.10
Counting the dead
Al-Tabari's account has 72 of Husayn's companions killed, and 72 heads carried to Ubayd Allah by Shamir and three other leaders. Al-Masudi writes that 87 died with Husayn, among them his eldest son Ali and his brother al-Abbas; Muir speaks of seventy heads. Wellhausen writes that all 18 cousins were killed.11
On the Kufan side, al-Tabari gives 88 men killed "besides the wounded". Al-Masudi also gives 88, and his editor notes that one manuscript has 38. People of the Banu Asad buried Husayn and his companions a day later, al-Tabari and al-Masudi write.12
Qurra ibn Qays al-Tamimi, quoted by al-Tabari, watched the women of Husayn's household pass the dead and heard his sister Zaynab cry: "O Muhammad, O Muhammad! May the angels of heaven bless you. Here is Husayn in the open, soaked in blood, his limbs cut off. O Muhammad, your daughters are captives and your offspring are slain, with the east wind blowing dust over them" (our translation).13
Captives and Damascus
The women and children, with Husayn's son Ali, who was ill, were taken to Kufa, and Husayn's head was sent on to Yazid in Damascus. Wellhausen and Muir write that Yazid treated the women and children kindly and sent them home to Medina; Muir adds that the caliph, "whether sincerely, or to escape the execrations" heaped on those involved, disowned responsibility.14
Ashura
Muir, writing in 1891, describes the 10th of the first month as commemorated every year with grief, and a passion play, performed yearly especially by Shia Muslims, that ends with Karbala. In Weir's translation, Wellhausen judged that the attempt at revolution "flickered miserably out, but the martyrdom of Husain had a great ideal significance and a deep after-effect upon the Shia".15
Battle of Brunkeberg, 1471: Sten Sture holds Stockholm
10 October 1471 · 555 years ago
On the Brunkeberg ridge by Stockholm, Swedish regent Sten Sture the Elder fought the forces of the Danish king Christian I, who wanted to unseat him. Sture won decisively, weakening the Kalmar Union and securing his rule over Sweden for most of his life.
Read the full story of Battle of Brunkeberg, 1471: Sten Sture holds Stockholm ›Also on this day
1911: at Wuchang on the Yangtze the army mutinied and began the Chinese revolution. Edwin Dingle and, in one chapter, George Lanning date the outbreak to 10 October 1911; Lanning's appendix gives 11 October. Lanning's appendix puts the bomb explosion in Hankow's Russian Concession that alerted the authorities on the day before its 11 October outbreak; the revolutionary Liu King, in an interview Dingle reprints, dates it to the night of 9 October. In Liu's account the sappers and miners began at half-past seven, before the ten o'clock set for the rising.16
On 11 October the American legation in Peking telegraphed, in words the State Department printed as a paraphrase: "Mutineers in possession of Wuchang"; on 12 October it reported that the whole new army at Wuchang, about 15,000 men, had joined the revolution. Dingle writes that Colonel Li Yuan Hung was made leader under threat of the sword; on 14 October the legation reported a communication from "Commander-in-chief Li of the Hupeh army".17
