A Father’s Last Instruction

Mulla Kamal ad-Din Husayn ibn ‘Ali al-Wa’izh al-Kashifi as-Sabzawari was the fifteenth-century Naqshbandi shaykh, scholar, and author of the Rawdhat ash-Shuhada’ (the Garden of Martyrs), one of the most celebrated Persian accounts of Karbala’.  He recorded in his Futuwwat Namah-yi Sultani, a Persian treatise on spiritual chivalry, that Imam Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Husayn Zayn al-‘Abidin cursed the murderers of his father, Sayyidina al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali, every time he drank water.

When asked why, he said: “My father asked me to remember his thirst and curse his murderers every time I drank.”

The Context of the Thirst

The army of Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah blocked the Euphrates three days before the 10^th of Muharram, 61 AH.  The camp of Sayyidina al-Husayn) — his family, his companions, the women, the children, the infants — had no access to water for three days.

It was a deliberate military decision.  The commander, ‘Amr ibn al-Hajjaj az-Zubaydi, was placed in charge of the riverbank with a force specifically tasked with preventing the camp from reaching the water.  Sayyidina al-‘Abbas ibn ‘Ali, the brother of Sayyidina al-Husayn, known as Qamar Bani Hashim, the Moon of the Banu Hashim, attempted to breach the blockade to bring water for the children.  He reached the river.  He filled his waterskin.  He was intercepted on the return.  His arms were severed.  He carried the waterskin in his teeth.  The waterskin was struck, and the water spilled on the ground before it reached the camp.  He died by the riverbank.

On the morning of ‘Ashura’, Sayyidina al-Husayn held his infant son, Sayyidina ‘Ali al-Asghar — thirsty, crying — and walked toward the enemy lines.  He held the infant up.  He asked for water for the child.  An arrow struck the child’s throat.  Sayyidina al-Husayn was killed thirsty.  His companions were killed thirsty.  The children in the camp were thirsty when the camp was burned.

His last instruction to his surviving son — the instruction that Imam Zayn al-‘Abidin honoured at every drink of water for the rest of his life — was to remember this every time water touched his lips.

The Curse and Its Theological Standing

The Wahhabi-influenced reader will reach, at this point, for an objection.  Is it permissible to curse?  Is la’nah, the invocation of Divine Exclusion from mercy, directed at specific individuals a legitimate Islamic act?  The answer, in the classical Sunni tradition, is that la’nah upon those who commit specific categories of oppression and injustice is documented in the Qur’an and the sunnah.  Surah al-Baqarah (2:159) states that those who conceal what Allah has Revealed, after it has been made clear, are Cursed by Allah, by His angels, and by all who curse.  The Qur’anic Curse is not a peripheral phenomenon.  It is a documented Divine Response to specific categories of transgression.

The killing of Sayyidina al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, the son of Sayyidina ‘Ali and Sayyidatina Fathimah bint Muhammad az-Zahrah, the man the Prophet described as the Master of the Youth of Paradise, was not an ordinary act of killing.  The classical Sunni scholarly tradition is unambiguous: what happened at Karbala’ was oppression of the most grievous kind.  Imam Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal, Imam Shihab ad-Din Abu al-Fadhl Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani, Imam Shams ad-Din Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ahmad adz-Dzahabi, and virtually every major Sunni scholar who addressed the question condemned the killing of Sayyidina al-Husayn and those responsible for it.

The la’nah that Imam Zayn al-‘Abidin directed at the murderers of his father was not a sectarian act.  It was a moral and theological response to a documented oppression, a response consistent with the Qur’anic framework for la’nah upon oppressors, directed at people whose guilt the entire classical scholarly tradition acknowledges.

The Instruction as Spiritual Practice

What Mulla al-Kashifi records is not merely a personal habit of grief.  It is a spiritual practice of remembrance — dzikr in an extended sense — that his father had deliberately established for him.  Sayyidina al-Husayn knew he was going to Karbala’ to die.  He had been warned.  He had turned back caravans of pilgrims who wished to accompany him, telling them he was going to his death and they should return.  He had buried provisions along the route.  He had made his farewell.

His instruction to his son — remember my thirst, curse my murderers, every time you drink — was therefore not a spontaneous expression of dying grief.  It was a deliberate pedagogical decision.  He was instilling in his son a practice that would ensure the memory of Karbala’ was not ceremonial but structural, embedded in the most ordinary act of daily life, repeated dozens of times every day, for decades.  The glass of water that every human being drinks without a second thought became, for Imam Zayn al-‘Abidin, a moment of theological reckoning.  The physical comfort of drinking, the most basic relief the human body experiences, was permanently linked to the memory of those for whom that comfort was denied at the moment of their greatest need.

The Futuwwah Tradition

Mulla al-Kashifi recorded this in a treatise on futuwwah, spiritual chivalry.  The futuwwah tradition in Islamic spirituality is a code of ethical conduct for the spiritual path: generosity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, the defence of the weak against the strong, the maintenance of principle under pressure.  Its connection to the Karbala’ narrative is not incidental.  Sayyidina al-Husayn is, in the futuwwah tradition, the supreme exemplar of the fata, the spiritual knight who sacrifices everything for principle without hope of worldly gain.  He knew the military outcome before he arrived.  He chose to go anyway.  He chose to stay when he could have left.  He chose to die standing rather than live compromised.

His instruction to his son to curse the murderers at every drink of water is, within the futuwwah framework, an instruction to maintain the witness against oppression permanently — not as an emotional indulgence but as a moral obligation.  The curse is not revenge.  It is testimony.  It is the survivor’s refusal to allow the memory of the crime to be normalised, domesticated, or forgotten.  Imam Zayn al-‘Abidin honoured that obligation every time he drank water for the rest of his life.  Thirty-four years.  Thousands of glasses of water.  Thousands of moments of remembrance.  Thousands of invocations of divine justice upon those who had chosen to murder the Prophet’s grandson in a state of thirst.