The Echo of Karbala

In 1788, Edward Gibbon published the fifth volume of his monumental six-part History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Much of that volume is devoted not to the Roman Senate or the emperors of old, but to the rise of a new civilization: the Islamic polity. Gibbon understood what many of his contemporaries probably did not—that the fate of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the transformation of the Mediterranean world, could not be grasped without confronting the profound changes wrought by Islam.

One episode in particular stirred Gibbon’s imagination with unexpected pathos: the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s beloved grandson, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. Drawing on the Annals of the early Islamic historian al-Tabari, Gibbon distilled the episode with a literary power that still startles:

"On the morning of the fatal day, he mounted on horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran in the other... Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent. As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in the mouth with a dart... he lifted his hands to heaven; they were full of blood; and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead... The grandson of Mahomet was slain with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords."

It is a passage of tragic grandeur. Though written by an 18th-century Englishman, it echoes the sorrow of a far older world. And when I reached the last paragraph—not for the first time, and having read al-Tabari’s fuller and even more harrowing account—I found my eyes burning with tears.

Today, the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Shi’a Muslims around the world will relive this ancient sorrow. In cities and towns stretching across the Shi’ite crescent—from Lebanon through Iraq, Bahrain, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India—processions will fill the streets. Recitations will mourn Husayn and his companions. Passion plays will re-enact the day of Ashura. In some places, particularly in Iran, acts of self-flagellation or symbolic self-immolation will attempt to share in the pain of Karbala.

These public rituals, often misunderstood from the outside, are not only cultural expressions of grief—they are acts of moral remembrance. For many Shi’a, the suffering of Husayn is not a closed historical chapter but a living paradigm of resistance against tyranny. This ethos is captured in a phrase heard frequently during Ashura: “Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala.” In this framing, Husayn’s sacrifice is not only to be mourned but to be emulated, wherever injustice reigns. In our time, that moral symbolism has fused with modern politics. For Iran, especially, Ashura has become a day to renew defiance against the Zionist dispossession of the Palestinians and the global status quo they see as unjust.

Even here in Nigeria, in cities like Zaria and Kano, the Ashura processions unfold. Though not always welcomed by the state, these gatherings attest to the deep transnational ties of Shi’a devotion.

But Ashura is not the preserve of the Shi’a alone.

Among Sunni Muslims, who form the majority across the Muslim world, the day holds a different but no less sacred significance. It's an older significance that goes right back to the Prophet. Sunnis too are appalled by the horror of Karbala, and many honour Husayn’s memory as part of the Prophet’s family. Yet the primary religious observance for most Sunnis on Ashura is a fast—from dawn to dusk—following the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who fasted in solidarity with Moses and the Israelites’ deliverance from Pharaoh. For Sunnis, the day is associated with divine mercy and spiritual purification.

This divergence in ritual, however, does not erase the shared reverence for Husayn or the universal resonance of his martyrdom. As Gibbon wrote, “In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene... will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.” In our own fractured world, that statement still holds true.

There is something hauntingly modern about Karbala: a small band of principled resisters encircled by power, standing for conscience over compromise. It is an eternal scene—one that recurs in different forms across centuries and continents. That Gibbon, an Enlightenment skeptic, could be moved by it should give us pause. The fate of empires may rise and fall, but the moral force of sacrifice endures.