page_title: Husayn ibn Ali
section_title: Husayn's head in Isma'ilism
hierarchical_section_title: Husayn ibn Ali / Burial / Husayn's head in Isma'ilism
caption_attribution_description: English: Umayyad Mosque - The place where Imam Husayn's head was kept
context_page_description: Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib was a grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a son of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muhammad's daughter Fatimah. He is an important figure in Islam as he was a member of the Household of Muhammad and the People of the Cloak, as well as the third Shia Imam.
  Prior to his death, the Umayyad ruler Mu'awiya appointed his son Yazid as his successor, contrary to the Hasan-Muawiya treaty. When Muawiya died in 680, Yazid demanded that Husayn pledge allegiance to him. Husayn refused to pledge allegiance to Yazid, even though it meant sacrificing his life. As a consequence, he left Medina, his hometown, to take refuge in Mecca in AH 60. There, the people of Kufa sent letters to him, asking his help and pledging their allegiance to him. So he traveled towards Kufa, after getting some favorable indications along with a small caravan of his relatives and followers but near Karbala his caravan was intercepted by Yazid's army. He was killed and beheaded in the Battle of Karbala on 10 October 680 by Yazid, along with most of his family and companions, including Husayn's six-month old son, Ali al-Asghar, with the women and children taken as prisoners.
context_section_description: After the battle of Karbala, the forces of Yazid I raised the head of Husayn on a lance. They took it to Kufa, then to Damascus to be presented to Yazid. The head was then buried in a niche of one of the internal walls of the Umayyad Mosque for about two hundred twenty years.
  When the Abbasids took over from the Umayyads, they also confiscated the head of Husayn. The Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir (d. 295/908) attempted many times to stop the pilgrimage to the head but in vain. Ultimately, he secretly transferred the head to Ashkelon. The Fatimid caliph al-Aziz Billah traced the site through his contemporary in Baghdad, in 985.
  According to an Arabic inscription on the Fatimid minbar of Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, the Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamali conquered Palestine under Caliph al-Mustansir Billah and discovered the head of Husayn in AH 448. He constructed the minbar, a mosque and the mashhad at the place of burial. The shrine was described as the most magnificent building in Ashkelon. During the British Mandate it was a "large maqam on top of a hill" with no tomb but a fragment of a pillar showing the place where the head had been buried. Israeli Defense Forces under Moshe Dayan blew up Mashhad Nabi Husayn in July 1950 as part of a broader operation. Around the year 2000, Isma'ilis from India built a marble platform there, on the grounds of the Barzilai Medical Center. The head remained buried in Ashkelon until 1153 (for about 250 years) only. Fearing the crusaders, Ahkelon's ruler Sayf al-Mamlaka Tamim brought the head to Cairo on 31 August 1153 (8 Jumada al-Thani, AH 548).
caption: Niche for Husayn's head at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus
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