al-Zubayr, and they said, “It is Yazīd as we know him; by Allah, no determination or manly virtue has ever stirred in him.”

Al-Walīd had spoken roughly to al-Ḥusayn, so al-Ḥusayn reviled him, seized his turban, and pulled it from his head. Al-Walīd said, “If we provoke Abū ʿAbd Allāh we shall only have roused a lion.”⦗1⦘ Marwān—-or one of those sitting with him—-said to Al-Walīd, “Kill him.” He replied, “That is a blood that is jealously guarded, inviolate among the sons of ʿAbd Manāf.”⦗2⦘

They relate that al-Ḥusayn and Ibn al-Zubayr left that very night for Mecca. At daybreak the people assembled to swear allegiance to Yazīd, but al-Ḥusayn and Ibn al-Zubayr were sought and not found. Al-Miswar ibn Makhramah remarked, “Al-Ḥusayn hastened off, while Ibn al-Zubayr kept distracting him and coaxing him so that he might be left alone in Mecca.”

When they reached Mecca, al-Ḥusayn lodged in the house of al-ʿAbbās, whereas Ibn al-Zubayr stayed beside the Ḥijr, donned a maʿfarī cloak⦗3⦘, and began stirring the people against the Umayyads. He would come and go to al-Ḥusayn, urging him to set out for Iraq, saying, “They are your partisans and the partisans of your father.” Ibn ʿAbbās, however, kept dissuading him from that.

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muṭīʿ said to al-Ḥusayn, “May I, my father and my mother be your ransom! Let us enjoy your presence and do not travel to Iraq, for by Allah, if those people kill you they will turn us into servants and menials.”

They also report that ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAyyāsh ibn Abī Rabīʿah⦗4⦘ met the two of them at al-Abwāʾ⦗5⦘ on their way back from ʿumrah. Ibn ʿUmar said to them, “I remind you by Allah: turn back and enter the same reconciliation into which the people are entering. Wait and see: if the people unite around a man, do not separate yourselves; but if they divide over him, then pursue what you wish.”

He also said to al-Ḥusayn, “Do not set out. Allah offered the Messenger of Allah ﷺ the choice between this world and the Hereafter, and he chose the Hereafter. You are a part of him, and you will not obtain it—meaning this world.” Then he embraced him, wept, and bade him farewell.

Ibn ʿUmar would later say, “Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī outstripped us by going forth. By my life, he had a lesson before him in his father and his brother: he had witnessed the turmoil and the people’s abandonment of them. It would have been proper for him, for as long as he lived, not to move but to enter into the reconciliation the people had entered, for unity is better.”

Ibn ʿAbbās said to him, “And where are you heading, O son of Fāṭimah?”

He replied, “To Iraq and to my followers.”

Ibn ʿAbbās said, “I dislike this course of yours. You are going to a people who killed your father and stabbed your brother until he left them in anger and weariness! I remind you by Allah not to risk your life.”