The envoy
When the letters of Kufa reached Makkah, Imam Husayn (a) sent his cousin Muslim b. Aqil to the city to see whether its people meant what they wrote. Muslim, a veteran of Siffin, lodged with Hani b. Urwa; some eighteen thousand Kufans pledged allegiance to the Imam through him, and he wrote to the Imam that the city was ready.
The turn
Yazid replaced the mild governor of Kufa with Ubayd Allah b. Ziyad, who entered the city disguised, arrested Hani, and terrified the notables with threats and bribes. Muslim raised the men who had pledged and surrounded the palace, but by nightfall they had melted away, their mothers and chiefs calling them home, until he was alone in the streets. Sheltered for a night by a woman named Taw'a, he was betrayed, fought the governor's men from her house, and was taken.
Martyrdom
On the Day of Arafah, 9 Dhu l-Hijja 60 AH, Ibn Ziyad had him thrown from the palace roof and beheaded; Hani was killed after him. His last request was that word be sent to the Imam not to come, but the Imam was already on the road. His shrine beside the mosque of Kufa is visited on the way to Karbala, and his loneliness in the city that had called him is the theme of the majlis of Arafah and of the first night of Muharram.
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.
