Then al-Ḥusayn’s companions kept fighting in front of him until they were wiped out, and none was left but Suwayd ibn ʿAmr ibn Abī al-Muṭāʿ al-Khathʿamī.
The first man from al-Ḥusayn’s household of the Banū Abī Ṭālib to be killed was ʿAlī al-Akbar, son of al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī. His mother was Laylā bint Abī Murrah ibn ʿUrwah ibn Masʿūd al-Thaqafī. Murrah ibn Munqidh ibn al-Nuʿmān al-ʿAbdī stabbed and killed him, for he had been shielding his father while Murrah kept trying to reach his father. ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn recited:
I am ʿAlī, son of al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlī;
By the House of Allah, we are the ones most entitled to the Prophet.
By Allah, the baseborn’s son shall never rule over us;
Behold today how I defend my father.
When Murrah struck him, the men closed in on him and cut him to pieces with their swords. Al-Ḥusayn cried, ‘May Allah destroy the people who killed you, my son! How brazen they are before Allah and in violating His sacred limits! After you, let the world be nothing but dust.’
A girl radiant as the sun in beauty came out, crying, ‘O my brother! O son of my brother!’ She was Zaynab, daughter of ʿAlī and Fāṭimah, and she threw herself upon him where he lay slain. Al-Ḥusayn took her by the hand, led her back into the tent, and ordered that the body be moved to a spot before his own tent (1).
ʿAbd Allah ibn Muslim ibn ʿAqīl was then killed, followed by ʿAwn and Muḥammad, the sons of ʿAbd Allah ibn Jaʿfar; then ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and Jaʿfar, the sons of ʿAqīl ibn Abī Ṭālib; and finally al-Qāsim ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
[Abū Mikhnaf said:
Fudayl ibn Khadīj al-Kindī related to me that Yazīd ibn Ziyād—an expert archer, better known as Abū al-Shaʿthāʾ al-Kinānī of the Banū Bahdala—knelt before al-Ḥusayn and loosed one hundred arrows, of which fewer than five missed the mark.
When he had finished he declared:
It is plain to me I have slain five men.
I am Yazīd, I am al-Muhājir,
Braver than a powerful, charging lion.
O Lord, (2) I stand with al-Ḥusayn as a helper,
From Ibn Saʿd I turn away and depart. ] (3)
They said: Al-Ḥusayn remained alone for a long stretch of the day; whenever anyone approached him he would turn back, for none wished to be the one to kill him—until