Hishām ibn al-Kalbī said:
One of our companions related to me, from ʿAmr ibn Abī al-Miqdām (1), who said: ʿAmr ibn ʿAkrimah told me, “On the morning after al-Ḥusayn was slain we awoke in Madīnah and a maidservant of ours was saying: ‘Last night I heard a herald calling aloud:
O you who have wrongfully slain Ḥusayn,
rejoice in torment and retribution!
All who inhabit the heavens invoke curses upon you—
every prophet, Mālik, and every angelic host.
You have been cursed by the tongues of the son of David,
of Moses, and of the bearer of the Gospel.’ (2)”

Hishām (3) added: ʿAmr ibn Ḥayzūm al-Kalbī told me, on the authority of his mother, that she too heard this voice. Al-Layth and Abū Nuʿaym said it occurred on a Saturday.

Among the verses cited by al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Naysābūrī and others of the early scholars about the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn are the following:
They came with your head, O grandson of Muhammad,
wrapped again and again in your own blood.
It is as though, through you, O grandson of Muhammad,
they openly and deliberately slew the Messenger himself.
They killed you parched with thirst, never reflecting
on what the Quran and its revelation said about your murder.
They shouted “Allāhu akbar” because you were slain—yet by your slaying
they slew the very takbīr and proclamation of God’s oneness.

[Section]
Al-Ḥusayn—may Allah be pleased with him—was martyred on Friday, the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ in Muḥarram, in the year 61 AH.

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī said it was in 62 AH, and the same was held by ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī.

Ibn Lahīʿah said it was in 62 or 63 AH.

Another authority said it was in 60 AH.

The soundest view is the first: his killing took place at al-Ṭaff, at a site called Karbalāʾ in the land of Iraq. He was fifty-eight years old, or thereabouts. Abū Nuʿaym erred when he claimed that he was killed at the age of sixty-five or sixty-six.

Imām Aḥmad (4) said: ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Ḥassān narrated to us, saying, “ʿUmārah—meaning Ibn Zādhān—narrated to us from Thābit, from …”