“What will you answer when the Prophet says to you:
‘What have you done—you, the last of nations—
With my kin, my household, once I was gone?
Some of them are captives, others lie slain,
Their bodies drenched, their blood still flowing.’(1)

‘Was this the thanks I earned for counselling you,
That you should treat the people of my lineage with such evil?’

We shall give this incident its full treatment in its proper place, if Allah wills; in Him we place our trust and upon Him we rely.

Many elegies were composed for al-Ḥusayn. Among the finest is the poem cited by al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Nīsābūrī, though it carries a tinge of Shiʿite sentiment:

‘They brought your head, O grandson of Muhammad,
Wrapped tight in the shroud of its own blood.
It was as though, O grandson of Muhammad,
By killing you openly and deliberately they slew the Messenger himself.
They slew you thirsty, heedless and unmindful
Of the Revelation and its true import concerning you.
They cried “Allāhu akbar!” because you were killed, yet in truth
By killing you they slew the very takbīr and tahlīl.’(2)

Report of the Battle of al-Ḥarrah that also occurred during the reign of Yazīd

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān said:
Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mundhir related to us; Ibn Fulayḥ related to us, from his father, from Ayyūb ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from Ayyūb ibn Bashīr al-Muʿāfirī, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ set out on one of his journeys. When he passed by Ḥarrat Zuhrah he halted, said, ‘We belong to Allah and to Him we return,’ and those with him were alarmed, thinking it boded ill for their journey. ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb asked, ‘O Messenger of Allah, what did you see?’ The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied,

‘It does not pertain to this journey of yours.’

They asked, ‘Then what is it, O Messenger of Allah?’ He said,

‘In this lava plain the best of my community after my Companions will be killed.’(3)

This is a mursal report.

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān also said:
Wahb ibn Jarīr reported; Juwayriyyah said: Thawr ibn Zayd narrated to me, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: ‘The fulfilment of this verse occurred at the turn of sixty years:
“And had the city been stormed from all sides and they had then been exhorted to sedition, they would have perpetrated it.” (al-Aḥzāb 33:14)
—that is, when Banū Ḥārithah admitted the Syrians into Madinah.’(4)

This chain is sound up to Ibn ʿAbbās, and the explanation of a Companion is treated as marfūʿ by many scholars.

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād said in his book Al-Fitn wa’l-Malāḥim: Abū ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿAmmi narrated to us; Abū ʿImrān al-Jawni narrated to us, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṣāmit, from Abū Dharr, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to me, ‘O Abū Dharr, what would you do if …’