Never did onlookers see men nobler than they—
at the very edge of death they were chieftains, bright-blossoming champions.
Do you slay them in injustice and still hope for our affection?
Such a course is one we can in no way approve.
By my life, their killing has forced enmity upon us;
how many an avenger, man and woman alike, now bears a grudge against you.
Time and again I resolve to march with a great host
against a faction that has veered from the truth in sheer tyranny.
So, O son of Ziyad, prepare yourself for our war
and for a constricting stand whose blow will break backs. (1)
Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said:
Sulaymān ibn Qatta (2) composed this elegy for al-Ḥusayn—may Allah be pleased with him:
Indeed, the man slain at al-Ṭaff from the House of Hāshim
bowed proud necks in Quraysh, and they were humbled.
If you pursue him—he who sought refuge in the Sacred House—you will awaken
like the tribe of ʿĀd, which willfully turned from guidance and went astray.
I passed by the dwellings of the family of Muḥammad
and found them desolate, wherever their lot had settled.
They had once been our spoil, but they turned into catastrophe;
how great and momentous those calamities have become!
May Allah not banish the homes and those who dwelt in them,
even though, to my grief, they now stand abandoned.
When the tribe of Qays grows poor, we mend their poverty,
yet Qays kills us whenever the sandal slips.
With Yazid still lies a single drop of our blood;
one day we shall requite them for it, wherever the reckoning is met.
Do you not see that the earth has fallen ill
and the lands have shuddered because al-Ḥusayn was slain?
[Among the events that occurred in this year—namely, the year 61 AH—after the martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn:]
That year Yazid ibn Muʿāwiyah appointed Salm ibn Ziyād governor of Sijistān and Khurāsān when Salm came before him; Salm was twenty-four years old. Yazid removed his two brothers, ʿAbbād and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, from those posts. Salm proceeded to his new province, selecting the leading men and expert horsemen and urging the people to engage in jihād. He then marched at the head of a great army to raid the lands of the Turks, accompanied by his wife Umm Muḥammad bint ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ—she was the first Arab woman ever to cross that river.