It is also reported: “ʿUmar ibn Saʿd then ordered that al-Ḥusayn be trampled beneath the hooves of horses, but this account is not reliable—Allah knows best. Eighty-eight men from among ʿUmar ibn Saʿd’s own forces were killed.” ⦗1⦘

Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyyah is said to have remarked: “Seventeen men were killed alongside al-Ḥusayn, all of them descendants of Fāṭimah.”

Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī stated: “Sixteen men of his Household fell with al-Ḥusayn; on that day there was nothing on the face of the earth to match their like.”

Others maintained that twenty-three of his sons, brothers, and close relatives were martyred with him. They were:
• From the sons of ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him): Jaʿfar, al-Ḥusayn, al-ʿAbbās, Muḥammad, ʿUthmān, and Abū Bakr.
• From the sons of al-Ḥusayn: ʿAlī al-Akbar and ʿAbd Allāh.
• From the sons of his brother al-Ḥasan: ʿAbd Allāh, al-Qāsim, and Abū Bakr—the three sons of al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
• From the sons of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar: ʿAwn and Muḥammad.
• From the sons of ʿAqīl: Jaʿfar, ʿAbd Allāh, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Muslim—who, as noted earlier, had been killed beforehand. These are four of his direct sons, to which are added two of his grandsons: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn ʿAqīl and Muḥammad ibn Abī Saʿīd ibn ʿAqīl, making six in all from the line of ʿAqīl. Concerning them the poet said ⦗2⦘:

Lament nine sprung from the loins of ʿAlī—
all cut down—and six of ʿAqīl;
The Prophet’s namesake lay among them—
struck down by a burnished blade.

Among those who died with al-Ḥusayn at Karbala was his foster-brother ʿAbd Allāh ibn Buqṭur. Some report, however, that he had been killed earlier when al-Ḥusayn sent him with a letter to the people of Kūfah; he was taken to Ibn Ziyād, who executed him.

From the Kufans fighting under ʿUmar ibn Saʿd, eighty-eight men were slain in addition to the wounded; ʿUmar ibn Saʿd performed the funeral prayer over them and buried them.

It is also said that ʿUmar ibn Saʿd ordered ten horsemen to trample al-Ḥusayn with their horses’ hooves until they pressed him into the ground on the day of the battle. He further commanded that al-Ḥusayn’s head be sent that same day to Ibn Ziyād with Khawli ibn Yazīd al-Aṣbaḥī. When Khawli reached the governor’s palace he found it closed, so he took the head back to his house and set it beneath a large basin ⦗3⦘. He then said to his wife, Nawar bint Mālik, “I have brought you the greatest honour of a lifetime.”

She asked, “What is it?”

He replied, “The head of al-Ḥusayn.”

She exclaimed, “People have come with gold and silver, and you bring the head of the grandson of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him?! By Allah, never will you and I share a bed again.” She left his couch, whereupon he summoned another of his wives, a woman from Banū Asad, and she lay with him.

That Asadite wife later said, “By Allah, I kept seeing a brilliant light …”