The fortieth day
Arba'een is the twentieth of Safar, forty days after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn (a) on Ashura. Tradition records that on this day in 61 AH the released captives, returning from Damascus to Madinah, came to Karbala to mourn at the fresh graves, and that Jabir b. Abd Allah al-Ansari, the aged companion of the Prophet (s), arrived on the same day as the first pilgrim to the Imam's grave.
The visit
A hadith of Imam Hasan al-Askari (a) counts the ziyarah of Arba'een among the five marks of a believer, and the text of Ziyarat al-Arba'in has been recited at the grave for centuries. Forty days is the customary period of grief in the Islamic world, so the day closes the intense mourning of Muharram and Safar even as it renews it.
The walk
In the last decades the pilgrimage on foot to Karbala for Arba'een has become the largest annual gathering in the world: pilgrims set out from Najaf, Basra and beyond, hosted along the road by volunteers (mawakib) who feed and shelter them without charge. Numbers in recent years have been estimated at twenty million. Arba'een is a public holiday in Iraq and Iran.
Written for Shia Online Community. Dates and facts are checked against the references listed under Research & books; where the tradition records more than one date, all are given.
