Four months in Makkah
Imam Husayn (a) reached Makkah in Sha'ban 60 AH and stayed through the months of pilgrimage. Letters came from Kufa by the thousand — the Imam sent his cousin Muslim b. Aqil ahead to test them, and Muslim wrote back that the city was ready — while reports reached him that Yazid had sent men to kill him in the sanctuary itself, even under the covering of the Ka'ba.
Leaving on the Day of Tarwiya
Rather than let the Ka'ba's sanctity be violated by his blood, the Imam exchanged the Hajj for the lesser pilgrimage and left Makkah on 8 Dhu l-Hijja, the Day of Tarwiya, as the pilgrims were streaming out to Mina in the opposite direction. He was warned by many — Ibn Abbas, Ibn Umar, his brother Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya — and answered that he was going to a fate already written. On the road he learned that Muslim b. Aqil had been abandoned and killed; he went on.
Why the day is marked
The eighth of Dhu l-Hijja is the start of the journey that ended at Karbala, and the day is remembered with the Imam's speech in Makkah: death is written on the children of Adam as the necklace on a girl's neck. The next day, Arafah, Muslim died in Kufa.
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.
