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 rive...