Karbala

Karbala is a modern city located in central Iraq. However, Karbala as a legendary space is best known as the site of a historic conflict that took place on the plains there in 680 CE. Husayn, the third Imam by Shi'i Muslim accounts, revolted against the Umayyad caliph Yazid. Yazid's much larger force brutally crushed Husayn's contingent and proceeded to round up the noncombatants and parade them in defeat around the capital at Damascus. Husayn's death at Karbala and subsequent events are viewed as a defining moment in collective Shi'i memory. In more recent years, the battle of Karbala has been largely reinterpreted as strictly an occasion for mourning. Modern retellings of the battle have transformed the traditional emotionally charged mourning of the battle into sermons of resistance; the martyrdom of Husayn is often used as a rallying cry to sacrifice in order to resist any disenfranchisement of the Shi'i, as symbolized in Yazid and his army. Husayn and Karbala have to a degree become the symbols of a modern Pan-Shi'i identity, which transcend national borders. Karbala has even extended beyond just Shi'i discourse and has been adapted by Sufi and Sunnī Muslims as well.

The religious experience of Karbala is intimately connected with Ashura, the festival commemorating the incident, during the month of Muharram (the 1st month in the Islamic calendar). The Ashura festival has traditionally been observed as a mourning process where the Shi'i take part in reenactments and retell particularly graphic accounts of the battle. In more recent years, there has been a shift toward viewing Ashura not merely as a lamenting of Husayn's fate but also as a visible and vicarious affiliation with Husayn in his sacrificial resistance to oppression. In urban and more “modernized” Shi'i communities, many of the perceived less “civilized” elements of Ashura, such as self-flagellation, have been abandoned or reinterpreted.

These more recent reinterpretations of the events of Karbala begin largely in the 20th century among numerous Shi'i revivalist/activist clerics, particularly those educated in the schools in Najaf, Iraq. Influential clerics such as Khomeini, Musa al-Sadr, and Ali Shariati were some of the first to insist that Karbala was not only a historical occurrence to be mourned but further a transcendent symbol of the necessity of martyrdom as a means of resistance to oppression. In this transfiguration of meaning, Karbala moved beyond a merely religious observance to an occasion uniting Shi'i across social and economic classes. This is not to say that Karbala has not retained a religious meaning, just that belief and social responsibility have become linked through the retellings of Husayn at Karbala.

The events at Karbala have not been confined just to the Shi'i. For instance, Muhammad Iqbal, a 20th-century Sunnī reformer, drew on references to the events at Karbala in his attempts toward a Pan-Islamic ideology that bridged sectarian divisions. The meaning of Karbala has often been signified in universal terms as a call to resistance and hope in the midst of despair and oppression, and in this way, it has been incorporated in both Shi'a and non-Shi'a circles for various purposes.

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