—I adjure you by Allah not to destroy yourself tomorrow through heedlessness. Do not go to Iraq; but if you are determined, then remain until the pilgrimage season is over, meet the people, learn the outcome of their affairs, and only then make up your mind. It is now the tenth of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah. Yet al-Ḥusayn refused to do anything but proceed to Iraq.
Ibn ʿAbbās said to him, “By Allah, (1) I think you will be killed tomorrow among your wives and daughters just as ʿUthmān was slain among his wives and daughters; by Allah, I fear that you will be the very man through whose death retribution will be taken for ʿUthmān. Truly, to Allah we belong and to Him we return.”
Al-Ḥusayn replied, “Abū al-ʿAbbās, you are an old shaykh now.”
Ibn ʿAbbās retorted, “Were it not that it would bring shame upon you and me, I would seize you by the head; and if I knew that by grappling with you (2) I could make you stay, I would do it, but I do not think that would restrain you.”
Al-Ḥusayn said, “To be killed at such-and-such a place is dearer to me than that Makkah be profaned on my account (3).”
Ibn ʿAbbās wept and said, “You have gladdened Ibn al-Zubayr’s eye with this, and that alone has consoled my soul concerning him.”
Ibn ʿAbbās then left, angry, while Ibn al-Zubayr was at the door. When he saw him he said, “O son of al-Zubayr, what you wished for has come to pass; may your eye be cooled. Here is Abū ʿAbd Allah departing, leaving you alone with the Hijaz.” Then he recited:
O little dove at Maʿmar,
the sky has cleared for you—so lay your eggs, turn yellow,
and peck as much as you wish to peck. (4)
Al-Ḥusayn sent word to Madinah for those of Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib who could travel lightly to come ahead of him—nineteen men together with women and children from among his brothers, his daughters, and his wives. Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah followed them and caught up with al-Ḥusayn in Makkah. He told him that setting out today was, in his view, unwise, but al-Ḥusayn refused to listen. Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah therefore kept back his own sons and sent none of them, until al-Ḥusayn took offense at Muḥammad (5) and said, “Will you spare your sons from the place where I am to be struck down?” Muḥammad replied, “Why should they be struck down together with you, when your calamity is already greater to us than theirs?”
They said: the people of Iraq sent messengers and letters inviting al-Ḥusayn to them, so he set out toward them with his family and sixty elders (6) from among the people of Kūfah (7). That was on Monday, the tenth of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah [in the year sixty] (8). Marwān then wrote to Ibn Ziyād: “To proceed: al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī has set out toward you. He is al-Ḥusayn, the son of Fāṭimah, and Fāṭimah…"