of al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, together with eighteen members of his household and sixty of his supporters. We advanced against them, calling on them either to surrender and submit to the judgement of the governor ʿUbayd Allah ibn Ziyād, or else to fight. They chose to fight. At sunrise we fell upon them, surrounding them on every side until the swords struck the tops of their heads. They scattered in flight—yet there was no escape and no refuge—clinging to the hillocks and the pits just as pigeons cling to shelter from a falcon. By Allah, they were no more than the portions of a slaughtered camel, or the brief slumber of one who naps at noon, until we had finished off the last of them. Their naked bodies now lie there, their garments cast aside, their cheeks smeared with dust. The sun scorches them, the wind casts sand over them, and the eagles and vultures have already gathered. (1)

Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah’s eyes welled with tears and he said, “Your obedience would have contented me without the killing of al-Ḥusayn. May Allah curse Ibn Sumayyah! By Allah, had I been the one facing him I would have pardoned him. May Allah have mercy on al-Ḥusayn.” He gave no reward to the man who had brought the head.

When al-Ḥusayn’s head was placed before him Yazīd said, “By Allah, had I been in your place I would not have killed you.” He then recited these lines of the poet al-Ḥuṣayn ibn al-Ḥumām al-Murrī:
We split the heads of men—men honored in our sight—
Yet they proved the more disobedient and unjust. (2)

Abū Mikhnaf said: Abū Jaʿfar al-ʿAbsī [from Abū ʿAmārah al-ʿAbsī] (3) told me that Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥakam, the brother of Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, then rose and said:
A head that lies by al-Ṭaff is nearer of kin
Than that of Ibn Ziyād, the base-born of lowly stock.
Sumayyah’s progeny today are countless as the pebbles,
While the family of the Chosen One has no offspring.

Yazīd struck Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥakam on the chest and said to him, “Silence!” (4)

Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd al-Rāzī—who was Shīʿī—reported: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Aḥmarī told us, Layth told us, from Mujāhid, who said: When al-Ḥusayn’s head was brought and placed before Yazīd, he recited these verses:
Would that my forefathers at Badr had witnessed
The panic of the Khazraj beneath the thrust of the spears!
They would have shouted with joy and elation,
Then said to me, “Well done! Do not relent.”