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Newsletter for December 2010
Karbala and the Imam Husain 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 marvelous 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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