Leaving Karbala
The family of the Prophet (s) spent the night after Ashura in what was left of the camp. On the afternoon of the eleventh, after Umar b. Sa'd's army had buried its own dead — and left the martyrs where they lay — the survivors were gathered and led out towards Kufa. The soldiers deliberately took them past the bodies on the field. It was there that Zaynab (a) cried out to her grandfather, the Prophet (s): this was Husayn, lying in the open, and these were his daughters, taken captive.
On the road
The captives were mounted on bare camels and horses, the heads of the martyrs carried ahead on spears. Imam Zayn al-Abidin (a), still ill, was chained. When the caravan entered Kufa the townspeople — many of whom had written the letters inviting the Imam — came out weeping, and it was to them that Zaynab (a) and the Imam delivered the sermons that turned the Umayyad victory into a public shame.
Why the day is marked
The eleventh of Muharram, "Sham-e Ghariban" in the Persian and Urdu tradition, is the night of the strangers: the majalis on this night are quiet, without the drums of Ashura, and dwell on the orphaned children and the burned tents.
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.
