Ibn Lahīʿah transmitted—from Abū Qabīl al-Maʿāfirī—that on that day the sun was eclipsed until the stars were visible at noon; that when al-Ḥusayn’s head was brought into the governor’s palace the very walls ran with blood; that the earth was shrouded in darkness for three days; that any saffron or wars (dyer’s madder) that touched something that day was scorched by mere contact; that no stone in Jerusalem was lifted without fresh blood appearing beneath it ⦗1⦘; and that the camels hamstrung from al-Ḥusayn’s herd, when their meat was cooked, turned as bitter as al-ʿalqam. Such fabrications and forged ḥadīths are countless, and not a single one of them is authentic.
As for the reports about the trials that befell his killers, most of these are sound. Hardly anyone who took part in his murder escaped some calamity or bodily affliction in this life: none of them left the world without first being stricken by illness, and the majority of them fell into madness.
With regard to the descriptions of al-Ḥusayn’s last moments, there is also a great deal of lying and false narration. What we have already cited is sufficient, and some of what we have quoted is itself open to scrutiny. Had it not been mentioned by Ibn Jarīr and other ḥuffāẓ and imams, I would not have related it at all. The bulk of it comes from Abū Mikhnaf Lūṭ ibn Yaḥyā—a Shīʿī deemed weak in ḥadīth by the imams ⦗2⦘—yet he was an akhbārī with a prodigious memory and possessed material that others did not, which is why many later authors in this field rely heavily upon him. Allah knows best.
During the Buyid period—around 400 AH—the Rāfiḍah carried their practices to excess. On the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ drums ⦗3⦘ were beaten in Baghdad and elsewhere; ashes and straw were scattered in the streets and marketplaces; sackcloth ⦗4⦘ was hung over the shopfronts; people displayed grief and wept, and many refused to drink water that night in sympathy with al-Ḥusayn, for he had been killed while thirsty. Women would then go out unveiled, wailing, striking their faces and chests, and walking barefoot through the markets… and so on, with other reprehensible innovations, odious whims, and invented disgraces. Their sole aim in this and similar acts was to vilify the Umayyad state, because al-Ḥusayn had been killed under its rule.
[In opposition to the Rāfiḍah and Shīʿah on ʿĀshūrāʾ, the Nawāṣib of al-Shām did the very opposite: on that day they would cook grains, bathe, perfume themselves, don their finest clothes, celebrate it as a festival, prepare various dishes, and display joy and happiness, doing so only out of stubbornness toward the Rāfiḍah and to counter them] ⦗5⦘.
Those who slew al-Ḥusayn justified their deed by claiming that he had come to shatter the unity of the Muslims after it had been consolidated and to depose the ruler whom the people had pledged allegiance to and gathered around. In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim there is a ḥadīth forbidding such conduct, warning against it, and threatening severe punishment.