Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān (1) said: Abū Bakr al-Ḥumaydī narrated to us, Sufyān narrated to us, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sharīk narrated to us, from Bishr ibn Ghālib, who said:

Ibn al-Zubayr said to al-Ḥusayn, “Where are you going—back to a people who killed your father and stabbed your brother?!”
Al-Ḥusayn replied, “To be killed in such-and-such a place is dearer to me than that the inviolability of Mecca be violated on my account.”

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said: My uncle Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to me; he was informed by someone who heard Hishām ibn Yūsuf say, on the authority of Maʿmar:

I heard a man relate from al-Ḥusayn that he said to ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, “Forty thousand have pledged allegiance to me, swearing by divorce and manumission that they are with me.”
Ibn al-Zubayr replied, “Will you set out to a people who killed your father and drove out your brother?!”
Hishām said, “I asked Maʿmar about the man, and he answered, ‘He is reliable.’”
Al-Zubayr added, “My uncle also said that some people claimed it was Ibn ʿAbbās who made this remark.” (2)

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (3)—the scribe of al-Wāqidī—has presented an extensive and well-ordered account. He said: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad narrated to us, from Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Abī al-Muhājir, from his father; and from Lūṭ ibn Yaḥyā al-Ghāmidī (4), from Muḥammad ibn Bashīr al-Hamdānī and others; and from Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥajjāj, from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr; and from Hārūn ibn ʿĪsā, from Yūnus ibn Abī Isḥāq, from his father; and from Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, from Mujālid, from al-Shaʿbī.

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd said, “Others besides these have also narrated parts of this report to me, and I have set down an abridged version of their accounts regarding the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn (may Allah be pleased with him and grant him His good pleasure).”

They said: When the people pledged allegiance to Muʿāwiyah for Yazīd, al-Ḥusayn was among those who withheld their pledge. During Muʿāwiyah’s caliphate the people of Kūfah kept writing to him, inviting him to come out to them, but he consistently refused. Some of them then came to Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah, asking him to lead them; he declined. He went to al-Ḥusayn and conveyed their request.

Al-Ḥusayn said to him, “These people only want to live off us, make use of our name, and shed the blood of the people—and our blood as well.”
Al-Ḥusayn remained torn with anxieties, at times resolved to set out to them and at times determined to stay away.

Then Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī came to him and said, “O Abā ʿAbd Allāh! I am a sincere well-wisher, full of compassion for you. It has reached me that a group of your partisans in Kūfah have written to you, urging you to go to them. Do not go to them, for I heard your father say in Kūfah: ‘By Allah, I have grown weary of them…’”