When their camel knelt at Qubāʾ (1)
and slaughter raged among ʿAbd al-Ashhal, (2)
we slew twice the number of your nobles
and have righted the tilt of Badr—so now it stands even. (3)

Mujāhid remarked, “By Allah, he acted hypocritically in this; not a man remained in his army but abandoned him,” meaning that he denounced and reproached him.

The scholars later differed over al-Ḥusayn’s head: did Ibn Ziyād send it on to Syria to Yazīd or not? There are two opinions. The more evident of them is that he did send it, and many reports attest to that—Allah knows best.

Abū Mikhnaf narrated—through Abū Ḥamzah al-Thumālī, from ʿAbd Allah al-Thumālī, from al-Qāsim ibn Bukhayt—that when al-Ḥusayn’s head was placed before Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, Yazīd began tapping his teeth with a cane that was in his hand and said, “This man and we are as al-Ḥuṣayn ibn al-Ḥumām al-Murrī said:

We smash the skulls of men we honor—and yet
they proved the more disobedient and more unjust.”

Abū Barzah al-Aslamī exclaimed, “By Allah, your cane has taken too great a liberty! I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kissing these very lips.” He then said, “Indeed, this man will come on the Day of Resurrection and his intercessor will be Muhammad, while you will come and your intercessor will be Ibn Ziyād.” He then rose and left. (4)

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā likewise related—from Abū al-Walīd, from Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Asad, from ʿAmmār al-Duhnī, from Jaʿfar—that when al-Ḥusayn’s head was set before Yazīd and Abū Barzah was present, Yazīd began prodding it with a cane. Abū Barzah said to him, “Remove your cane, for I have seen the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kissing it.”

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā also told me: Salamah (5) ibn Shabīb—through al-Ḥumaydī, from Sufyān—reported that he heard Sālim ibn Abī Ḥafṣah say: al-Ḥasan said, “When al-Ḥusayn’s head was brought, Yazīd kept jabbing it with the cane.” Sufyān added, “I was informed that al-Ḥasan (6) would recite in response:

Sumayyah’s descendants today outnumber the pebbles,
while the daughter of Allah’s Messenger has no offspring.”

As for the rest of his family—the womenfolk and the household—ʿUmar ibn Saʿd appointed guards to watch over them. They were then mounted on camels in curtained litters; and when they passed the battlefield and saw al-Ḥusayn and his companions lying there, the women wept