except that Allah grants him a reward equal to that which he received on the very day the calamity first befell him.” Reported by Imam Ahmad and Ibn Majah (1).
As for al-Ḥusayn’s grave—may Allah be pleased with him—it has become well known among many later authorities that it lies at the Mashhad of ʿAlī, in a part of al-Ṭaff beside the river of Karbalāʾ. They maintain that the shrine was built over his grave; Allah knows best.
Ibn Jarīr and others have mentioned that the spot where he was killed was obliterated until no one could locate it with certainty. Abū Nuʿaym—al-Faḍl ibn Dukayn—used to censure anyone who claimed to know al-Ḥusayn’s burial place.
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī related that when water was diverted over al-Ḥusayn’s grave to erase all trace of it, the water dried up after forty days. A Bedouin from Banū Asad then came, took up the soil by handfuls, smelling each one until he reached al-Ḥusayn’s grave. He wept and said, “May my father and mother be your ransom! How fragrant you are, and how fragrant is the earth around you!” Then he recited:
They strove to conceal his grave from the hostile throng,
Yet the sweetness of its earth revealed it all along. (2)
As for al-Ḥusayn’s head—may Allah be pleased with him—the view most widely accepted among the historians and biographers is that Ibn Ziyād sent it to Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah; some people, however, reject this. To me, the first report is the better known; Allah knows best.
They then differed over the place in which the head was buried. Muḥammad ibn Saʿd narrated that Yazīd sent al-Ḥusayn’s head to ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd, the governor of Madinah, who buried it beside his mother in al-Baqīʿ.
Ibn Abī al-Dunyā reported—through ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān from Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Ṣāliḥ, both of whom are weak—that the head remained in Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah’s treasury until his death; it was then removed, shrouded, and buried just inside the Bāb al-Farādīs gate of Damascus.
I say: the place is known as Masjid al-Raʾs (“the Mosque of the Head”) inside the second Bāb al-Farādīs gate.