As for the accounts related by those who have neither the sense to discern what they are saying nor any familiarity with transmitted reports—that the Prophet’s household were reviled, that they were carried on Bactrian camels, and that these camels grew two humps from that time onward—these are blatant lies that disgrace those who tell them. Bactrian camels had two humps from the day Allah created them, long before those events, just as other kinds of animals had their characteristic forms. Nor do Bactrian camels conceal a woman. No one took the Prophet’s household captive, nor was any member of it taken captive.

Rather, this is like their claim that al-Hajjāj killed them. All scholars of transmitted reports know that al-Hajjāj did not kill anyone from Banū Hāshim, in accordance with the instructions of his caliph, ʿAbd al-Malik. When he married the daughter of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar, this distressed the Umayyads and others of Quraysh, who considered him an unsuitable match for her. They kept pressing the matter until they separated him from her. Indeed, the Marwānids never killed anyone from Banū Hāshim, whether from the family of ʿAlī or the family of al-ʿAbbās, except Zayd ibn ʿAlī, who was crucified at Kunāsat al-Kūfa, and his son Yahyā.

The fourth point: Even supposing that his head had been taken to Yazīd, what purpose would they have had in burying it in Ascalon, which was then a frontier town where men were stationed to guard the border? If their purpose was to conceal its whereabouts, a place like Ascalon would have made them known, because so many people visited it for frontier service.

And if their concern was the blessedness of the site, how could such an aim be entertained by someone said to have been his enemy, who considered it lawful to shed his blood and sought to kill him?