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Karbala and the Imam Husayn in Persian
and Indo-Muslim literature
by the late Professor Annemarie Schimmel
Harvard University
Al-Serat, Vol XII (1986)
I still remember the deep impression which the first Persian
poem I ever read in connection with the tragic events of
Karbala' left on me. It was Qaani's elegy which begins with the
words:
What is raining? Blood.
Who? The eyes.
How? Day and night.
Why? From grief.
Grief for whom?
Grief for the king of Karbala'
This poem, in its marvellous style of question and answer,
conveys much of the dramatic events and of the feelings a pious
Muslim experiences when thinking of the martyrdom of the
Prophet's beloved grandson at the hands of the Umayyad troops.
The theme of suffering and martyrdom occupies a central role in
the history of religion from the earliest time. Already, in the
myths of the ancient Near East, we hear of the hero who is slain
but whose death, then, guarantees the revival of life: the names
of Attis and Osiris from the Babylonian and Egyptian traditions
respectively are the best examples for the insight of ancient
people that without death there can be no continuation of life,
and that the blood shed for a sacred cause is more precious than
anything else. Sacrifices are a means for reaching higher and
loftier stages of life; to give away parts of one's fortune, or
to sacrifice members of one's family enhances one's religious
standing; the Biblical and Qur'anic story of Abraham who so
deeply trusted in God that he, without questioning, was willing
to sacrifice his only son, points to the importance of such
sacrifice. Iqbal was certainly right when he combined, in a well
known poem in Bal-i Jibril (1936), the sacrifice of
Ismail and the martyrdom of Husayn, both of which make up the
beginning and the end of the story of the Ka'ba.
Taking into account the importance of sacrifice and suffering
for the development of man, it is not surprising that Islamic
history has given a central place to the death on the
battlefield of the Prophet's beloved grandson Husayn, and has
often combined with that event the death by poison of his elder
brother Hasan. In popular literature we frequently find both
Hasan and Husayn represented as participating in the battle of
Karbala', which is historically wrong, but psychologically
correct.
It is not the place here to discuss the development of the whole
genre of marthiya and taziya poetry in the Persian
and Indo-Persian world, or in the popular Turkish tradition. But
it is interesting to cast a glance at some verses in the Eastern
Islamic tradition which express predominantly the Sunni poets'
concern with the fate of Husayn, and echo, at the same time, the
tendency of the Sufis to see in him a model of the suffering
which is so central for the growth of the soul.
The name of Husayn appears several times in the work of the
first great Sufi poet of Iran, Sana'i (d. 1131). Here, the name
of the martyred hero can be found now and then in connection
with bravery and selflessness, and Sana'i sees him as the
prototype of the shahid, higher and more important than
all the other shahids who are and have been in the world:
Your religion is your Husayn, greed and wish are your pigs and
dogs
You kill the one, thirsty, and nourish the other two. [Divan,
p. 655]
This means that man has sunk to such a lowly state that he
thinks only of his selfish purposes and wishes and does
everything to fondle the material aspects of his life, while his
religion, the spiritual side of his life, is left without
nourishment, withering away, just like Husayn and the martyrs of
Karbala' were killed after nobody had cared to give them water
in the desert. This powerful idea is echoed in other verses,
both in the Divan and in the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa;
but one has to be careful in one's assessment of the long praise
of Husayn and the description of Karbala' as found in the
Hadiqa, as they are apparently absent from the oldest
manuscripts of the work, and may have been inserted at some
later point. This, however, does not concern us here. For the
name of the hero, Husayn, is found in one of the central poems
of Sana'is Divan, in which the poet describes in grand
images the development of man and the long periods of suffering
which are required for the growth of everything that aspires to
perfection. It is here that he sees in the 'street of religion'
those martyrs who were dead and are alive, those killed by the
sword like Husayn, those murdered by poison like Hasan (Divan
485).
The tendency to see Husayn as the model of martyrdom and bravery
continues, of course, in the poetry written after Sana'i by
Persian and Turkish mystics, and of special interest is one line
in the Divan of 'Attar (nr. 376) in which he calls the
novice on the path to proceed and go towards the goal,
addressing him:
Be either a Husayn or a Mansur.
That is, Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, the arch-martyr of mystical
Islam, who was cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922. He, like his
namesake Husayn b. 'Ali, becomes a model for the Sufi; he is the
suffering lover, and in quite a number of Sufi poems his name
appears alongside that of Husayn: both were enamoured by God,
both sacrificed themselves on the Path of divine love, both are
therefore the ideal lovers of God whom the pious should strive
to emulate. Ghalib skillfully alludes to this combination in his
tawhid qasida:
God has kept the ecstatic lovers like Husayn and Mansur in the
place of gallows and rope, and cast the fighters for the faith,
like Husayn and 'Ali, in the place of swords and spears: in
being martyrs they find eternal life and happiness and become
witnesses to God's mysterious power.
This tradition is particularly strong in the Turkish world,
where the names of both Husayns occur often in Sufi songs.
Turkish tradition, especially in the later Bektashi order, is
deeply indebted to Shi'i Islam; but it seems that already in
some of the earliest popular Sufi songs in Turkey, those
composed by Yunus Emre in the late 13th or early 14th
century, the Prophet's grandsons played a special role. They are
described, in a lovely song by Yunus, as the 'fountain head of
the martyrs', the 'tears of the saints', and the 'lambs of
mother Fatima'. Both of them, as the 'kings of the eight
paradises', are seen as the helpers who stand at Kawthar and
distribute water to the thirsting people, a beautiful inversion
of Husayn suffering in the waterless desert of Karbala'. (Yunus
Emre Divani, p. 569.)
The well known legend according to which the Prophet saw Gabriel
bring a red and a green garment for his two grandsons, and was
informed that these garments pointed to their future deaths
through the sword and poison respectively, is mentioned in early
Turkish songs, as it also forms a central piece of the popular
Sindhi manaqiba which are still sung in the Indus Valley.
And similar in both traditions are the stories of how the boys
climbed on their grandfather Prophet's back, and how he fondled
them. Thus, Hasan and Husayn appear, in early Turkish songs, in
various, and generally well known images, but to emphasize their
very special role, Yunus Emre calls them 'the two earrings of
the divine Throne'. (Divan, p. 569)
The imagery becomes even more colourful in the following
centuries when the Shi'i character of the Bektashi order
increased and made itself felt in ritual and poetical
expression. Husayn b. 'Ali is 'the secret of God', the 'light of
the eyes of Mustafa' (thus Seher Abdal, 16th cent.),
and his contemporary, Hayreti, calls him, in a beautiful
marthiya, 'the sacrifice of the festival of the greater jihad'.
Has not his neck, which the Prophet used to kiss, become the
place where the dagger fell?
The inhabitants of heaven and earth shed black tears today.
And have become confused like your hair, O Husayn.
Dawn sheds its blood out of sadness for Husayn, and the red
tulips wallow in blood and carry the brandmarks of his grief on
their hearts ... (Ergun, Bektasi sairleri, p. 95).
The Turkish tradition and that in the regional languages of the
Indian subcontinent are very similar. Let us have a look at the
development of the marthiya, not in the major literary
languages, but rather in the more remote parts of the
subcontinent, for the development of the Urdu marthiya
from its beginnings in the late 16th century to its
culmination in the works of Sauda and particularly Anis and
Dabir is well known. In the province of Sind, which had a
considerable percentage of Shi'i inhabitants, Persian
marthiyas were composed, as far as we can see, from around
1700 onwards. A certain'Allama (1682-1782), and Muhammad Mu'in
T'haro are among the first marthiya-gus mentioned by the
historians, but it is particularly Muhammad Muhsin, who lived in
the old, glorious capital of lower Sind, Thatta, with whose name
the Persian marthiya in Sind is connected. During his short life
(1709-1750), he composed a great number of tarji'band and
particularly salam, in which beautiful, strong imagery can be
perceived:
The boat of Mustafa's family has been drowned in blood;
The black cloud of infidelity has waylaid the sun;
The candle of the Prophet was extinguished by the breeze of the
Kufans.
But much more interesting than the Persian tradition is the
development of the marthiya in Sindhi and Siraiki proper.
As Christopher Shackle has devoted a long and very informative
article on the Multani marthiya, I will speak here only
on some aspects of the marthiya in Sindhi. As in many
other fields of Sindhi poetry, Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif of Bhit
(1689-1752) is the first to express ideas which were later taken
up by other poets. He devoted Sur Kedaro in his Hindi
Risalo to the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet, and
saw the event of Karbala' as embedded in the whole mystical
tradition of Islam. As is his custom, he begins in media res,
bringing his listeners to the moment when no news was heard from
the heroes:
The moon of Muharram was seen, anxiety about the princes
occurred.
What has happened?
Muharram has come back, but the Imams have not come.
O princes of Medina, may the Lord bring us together
He meditates about the reason for their silence and senses the
tragedy:
The Mirs have gone out from Medina, they have not come back.
But then he realizes that there is basically no reason for
sadness or mourning, for:
The hardship of martyrdom, listen, is the day of joy.
Yazid has not got an atom of this love.
Death is rain for the children of 'Ali.
For rain is seen by the Oriental poets in general, and by Shah
'Abdul Latif in particular, as the sign of divine mercy, of
rahmat, and in a country that is so much dependant on rain,
this imagery acquires its full meaning.
The hardship of martyrdom is all joyful rainy season.
Yazid has not got the traces of this love.
The decision to be killed was with the Imams from the very
beginning.
This means that, already in pre-eternity, Hasan and Husayn had
decided to sacrifice their lives for their ideals: when
answering the divine address Am I not you Lord? (7:171),
they answered 'Bala' (=Yes)', and took upon themselves
all the affliction (bala) which was to come upon them.
Their intention to become a model for those who gain eternal
life by suffering and sacrifice was made, as Shah'Abdu'I-Latif
reminds his listeners, at the very day of the primordial
covenant. Then, in the following chapter, our Sindhi poet goes
into more concrete details.
The perfect ones, the lion-like sayyids, have come to Karbala';
Having cut with Egyptian swords, they made heaps of carcasses;
Heroes became confused, seeing Mir Husayn's attack.
But he soon turns to the eternal meaning of this battle and
continues in good Sufi spirit:
The hardship of martyrdom is all coquetry (naz).
The intoxicated understand the secret of the case of Karbala'.
In having his beloved suffer, the divine Beloved seems to show
his coquetry, trying and examining their faith and love, and
thus even the most cruel manifestations of the battle in which
the 'youthful heroes', as Shah Latif calls them, are enmeshed,
are signs of divine love.
The earth trembles, shakes; the skies are in uproar;
This is not a war, this is the manifestation of Love.
The poet knows that affliction is a special gift for the friends
of God, Those who are afflicted most are the prophets, then the
saints, then the others in degrees', and so he continues:
The Friend kills the darlings, the lovers are slain,
For the elect friends He prepares difficulties.
God, the Eternal, without need what He wants, He does.
Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif devotes two chapters to the actual battle,
and to Hurr's joining the fighters 'like a moth joins the
candle', e.g., ready to immolate himself in the battle. But
towards the end of the poem the mystical aspect becomes once
more prominent; those who 'fight in the way of God' reach
Paradise, and the houris bind rose chains for them, as befits
true bridegrooms. But even more:
Paradise is their place, overpowering they have gone to
Paradise,
They have become annihilated in God, with Him they have become
He ...
The heroes, who have never thought of themselves, but only of
love of God which makes them face all difficulties, have finally
reached the goal: the fana fi Allah, annihilation in God
and remaining in Him. Shah 'Abdu'l-Latif has transformed the
life of the Imams, and of the Imam Husayn in particular, into a
model for all those Sufis who strive, either in the jihad-i
asghar or in the jihad-i akbar, to reach the final
annihilation in God, the union which the Sufis so often express
in the imagery of love and loving union. And it is certainly no
accident that our Sindhi poet has applied the tune Husayni,
which was originally meant for the dirges for Husayn, to the
story of his favourite heroine, Sassui, who annihilated herself
in her constant, brave search for her beloved, and is finally
transformed into him.
Shah'Abdu'l-Latif's interpretation of the fate of the Imam
Husayn as a model of suffering love, and thus as a model of the
mystical path, is a deeply impressive piece of literature. It
was never surpassed, although in his succession a number of
poets among the Shi'i of Sindh composed elegies on Karbala' .
The most famous of them is Thabit 'Ali Shah (1740-1810), whose
speciality was the genre of suwari, the poem addressed to
the rider Husayn, who once had ridden on the Prophet's back, and
then was riding bravely into the battlefield. This genre, as
well as the more common forms, persists in Sindhi throughout the
whole of the 18th and 19th centuries, and
even into our own times (Sachal Sarmast, Bedil Rohriwaro, Mir
Hasan, Shah Naser, Mirza Baddhal Beg, Mirza Qalich Beg, to
mention only a few, some of whom were Sunni Sufis). The suwari
theme was lovingly elaborated by Sangi, that is the Talpur
prince 'Abdu'l-Husayn, to whom Sindhi owes some very fine and
touching songs in honour of the prince of martyrs, and who
strongly emphasizes the mystical aspects of the event of
Karbala', Husayn is here put in relation with the Prophet.
The Prince has made his miraj on the ground of Karbala',
The Shah's horse has gained the rank of Buraq.
Death brings the Imam Husayn, who was riding his Dhu'l janah,
into the divine presence as much as the winged Buraq brought the
Prophet into the immediate divine presence during his night
journey and ascent into heaven.
Sangi knows also, as ever so many Shi'i authors before him, that
weeping for the sake of the Imam Husayn will be recompensed by
laughing in the next world, and that the true meditation of the
secret of sacrifice in love can lead the seeker to the divine
presence, where, finally, as he says
Duality becomes distant, and then one reaches unity.
The theme of Husayn as the mystical model for all those who want
to pursue the path of love looms large in the poetry of the
Indus Valley and in the popular poetry of the Indian Muslims,
whose thought was permeated by the teaching of the Suf'is, and
for whom, as for the Turkish Suf'is and for 'Attar (and
innumerable others), the suffering of the Imam Husayn, and that
of Hasan b. Mansur, formed a paradigm of the mystic's life. But
there was also another way to understand the role of Husayn in
the history of the Islamic people, and importantly, the way was
shown by Muham-mad Iqbal, who was certainly a Sunni poet and
philosopher. We mentioned at the beginning that it was he who
saw the history of the Ka'ba defined by the two sacrifices, that
of Ismail at the beginning, and that of Husayn b. 'Ali in the
end (Bal-i Jibril, p. 92). But almost two decades before
he wrote those lines, he had devoted a long chapter to Husayn in
his Rumuz-i bekhudi (p. 126ff). Here, Husayn is praised,
again in the mystical vocabulary, as the imam of the lovers, the
son of the virgin, the cypresso of freedom in the Prophet's
garden. While his father, Hazrat 'Ali, was, in mystical
interpretation, the b of the bismi'llah, the son
became identified with the 'mighty slaughtering', a beautiful
mixture of the mystical and Qur'anic interpretations. But Iqbal,
like his predecessors, would also allude to the fact that Husayn,
the prince of the best nation, used the back of the last prophet
as his riding camel, and most beautiful is Iqbal's description
of the jealous love that became honoured through his blood,
which, through its imagery, again goes back to the account of
the martyrdom of Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj, who rubbed the
bleeding stumps of his hands over his blackened face in order to
remain surkh ru, red-faced and honoured, in spite of his
suffering.
For Iqbal, the position of Husayn in the Muslim community is as
central as the position of the surat al-ikhlas in the
Holy Book.
Then he turns to his favourite topic, the constant tension
between the positive and negative forces, between the prophet
and saint on the one hand, and the oppressor and unbeliever on
the other. Husayn and Yazid stand in the same line as Moses and
Pharaoh. Iqbal then goes on to show how the khilafat was
separated from the Qur'anic injunctions and became a worldly
kingdom with the appearance of the Umayyads, and it was here
that Husayn appeared like a raincloud, again the image of the
blessing rain which always contrasts so impressively with the
thirst and dryness of the actual scene of Karbala'. It was
Husayn's blood that rained upon the desert of Karbala' and left
the red tulips there.
The connection between the tulips in their red garments and the
bloodstained garments of the martyrs has been a favourite image
of Persian poetry since at least the 15th century,
and when one thinks of the central place which the tulip
occupies in Iqbal's thought and poetry as the flower of the
manifestation of the divine fire, as the symbol of the Burning
Bush on Mount Sinai, and as the flower that symbolizes the
independent growth of man's khudi (=self) under the most
difficult circumstances, when one takes all these aspects of the
tulip together, one understands why the poet has the Imam Husayn
'plant tulips in the desert of Karbala". Perhaps the similarity
of the sound of la ilah and lala (=tulip), as well
as the fact that lala has the same numerical value as the
word Allah, e.g., 66, may have enhanced Iqbal's use of
the image in connection with the Imam Husayn, whose blood
'created the meadow', and who constructed a building of 'there
is no deity but God.'
But whereas earlier mystical poets used to emphasize the person
of Husayn as model for the mystic who through self-sacrifice,
finally reaches union with God, Iqbal, understandably, stresses
another point: 'To lift the sword is the work of those who fight
for the glory of religion, and to preserve the God-given order.'
'Husayn blood, as it were, wrote the commentary on these words,
and thus awakened a sleeping nation.'
Again, the parallel with Husayn b. Mansur is evident (at least
with Husayn b. Mansur in the way Iqbal interprets him: he too
claims, in the Falak-i mushtari in the Javidnama,
that he had come to bring resurrection to the spiritually dead,
and had therefore to suffer). But when Husayn b. 'Ali drew the
sword, the sword of Allah, he shed the blood of those who are
occupied with, and interested in, things other than God;
graphically, the word la, the beginning of the shahada,
resembles the form of a sword (preferably a two-edged sword,
like Dhu'l-fiqar), and this sword does away with everything that
is an object of worship besides God. It is the prophetic 'No' to
anything that might be seen beside the Lord. By using the sword
of 'No', Husayn, by his martyrdom, wrote the letters 'but God' (illa
Allah) in the desert, and thus wrote the title of the script
by which the Muslims find salvation.
It is from Husayn, says Iqbal, that we have learned the
mysteries of the Qur'an, and when the glory of Syria and Baghdad
and the marvels of Granada may be forgotten, yet, the strings of
the instrument of the Muslims still resound with Husayn's
melody, and faith remains fresh thanks to his call to prayer.
Husayn thus incorporates all the ideals which a true Muslim
should possess, as Iqbal draws his picture: bravery and
manliness, and, more than anything else, the dedication to the
acknowledgement of God's absolute Unity; not in the sense of
becoming united with Him in fana as the Sufi poets had
sung, but, rather, as the herald who by his shahada, by
his martyrdom, is not only a shahid, a martyr, but at the
same time a witness, a shahid, for the unity of God, and thus
the model for all generations of Muslims.
It is true, as Iqbal states, that the strings of the Muslims'
instruments still resound with his name, and we may close with
the last verse of the chapter devoted to him in the Rumuz-i
bekhudi:
O zephir, O messenger of those who are far away
Bring our tears to his pure dust.
Source:http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/karbala-schimmel.htm
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