more firmly established and clearer—reports relating that when news of al-Husayn’s killing reached Yazīd, he expressed grief and said:

“May Allah curse the people of Iraq! I would have been content with their obedience without their doing this.”

He said of Ibn Ziyād:

“Indeed, had there been any kinship between him and al-Husayn, he would not have killed him.”

They also relate that lamentation arose in his household over al-Husayn’s killing; that when al-Husayn’s family came to him and the women met, they wept together; and that he gave al-Husayn’s son ʿAlī the choice between staying with him and travelling to Medina. He chose to travel to Medina, so Yazīd provided him well for the journey.

These and similar accounts, transmitted through chains more authentic and firmly established than that unknown, disconnected chain, show that Yazīd did not express approval of al-Husayn’s killing, but expressed grief over it. Allah knows best what was in his heart. It is known that he did not initially order his killing. Nevertheless, he neither exacted retribution from his killers nor punished them for what they had done, since they had killed him to preserve Yazīd’s rule, which he feared al-Husayn and the Prophet’s household might threaten. May Allah be pleased with them all.

The point here is that there is no basis for the claim that al-Husayn’s head was taken to Syria in Yazīd’s time. How much less, then, for its being taken there after Yazīd’s time?

What is established is that it was taken from Karbala to the governor of Iraq, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād, in Kufa. The scholars have stated that it was buried in Medina.