By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

O’ father, who cut off your head, why is your beard and cheeks blood-stained, who killed you, why are we being held as captives?
These wails of a little girl, as she clasped the severed head of her father to her bosom and incessantly kissed it, not just shook the walls of the dilapidated place and increased the lamentation of her aggrieved family members, but reverberated throughout the area, disturbing the sleep of the perpetrator of the heartrending tragedy of Karbala.
Damascus had drastically changed over the past few days since the entry on the 1st of Safar of the seemingly humiliated progeny of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) paraded through the bedecked streets to the palace of the tyrant Yazid, whose elation at the killing of Imam Husain (AS) proved to be short-lived.
The sermons of Hazrat Zainab (SA) and Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) – the sister and son of his victim – threw cold water on his plans as the conscience of many Syrians was awakened on learning of the identity of the martyrs and the captives.
The Omayyad infidel, in an act of sadistic desperation sent the head of Imam Husain (AS) to the captives on the assumption of at least calming four-year old Ruqa’iyya (SA) whose relentless wails had not just deprived him of any sleep but turned many of those near to him against him, including one of his wives named Hind who was a devotee of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt.
To his utter horror, Safar 5 made all his equations go awry, as little Ruqa’iyya (SA) suddenly felt silent. Some thought she had gone to sleep but this was not the case. She had gone into permanent sleep with lips attached to her father’s severed head. Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) on checking her pulse found that her soul had flown to the ethereal heavens, and she had finally achieved martyrdom.
She was laid to rest in the same place, which is now a grand mausoleum visited by pilgrims from all over the world, who beseech God Almighty on her behalf, and find their prayers answered.
It was peace at last for Ruqa’iyya (SA), who had lost her mother on entering the world and was thus deeply attached to her father, on whose chest she used to sleep. Although, she graced the mortal world for only four years, she has left an indelible impression on history and the minds and hearts of believers.
On 10th Muharram, the epic day of Ashura, she had given the goatskin water-carrier to her uncle Hazrat Abbas (AS) to fetch water for the thirsty encampment. When her valiant uncle departed for the besieged river bank, the children gathered around her with their earthenware cups, eager for tasting the elixir of life after three days of thirst. Alas, Hazrat Abbas (AS) never came back. While bringing water he was surrounded by the cowardly enemies, who riddled the goatskin water-carrier with arrows and eventually martyred him after cutting both his arms as he bravely defended himself.
On that fateful day, before Imam Husain (AS) marched out to the battlefield, she had requested him one last time to allow her to lie down on his chest as was her habit of sleeping. When her father’s horse, Zu’l-Jenah returned riderless to the encampment and released a sorrowful neigh, she knew Imam Husain (AS) was also martyred.
Her agony, however, was unending as the heartless enemies burst on the now undefended camp to loot and burn. She huddled around her aunts, but Shemr, the dastardly assassin of her father, snatched away her earrings that caused her great pain as blood flowed from her earlobes. Despite her tender age, she was tied with ropes along with the rest of the noble members of the household and taken to Kufa and thence to Damascus, the capital of Yazid, where she saw the horrible sight of the head of her father placed before the tyrant in a tray.
She used to cry silently and quickly wipe away her tears for fear of the scolding and whiplashing by her tormentors, who did not show the least mercy to the great granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).
Yet, despite her tender years and the sorrows she suffered, she was a picture of virtue, faith, piety, prudence, forbearance, and patience in the face of acute oppression, to the extent that even the elderly women held her in high esteem.
During imprisonment in Damascus she would stare at the flock of birds flying to their nests at sunset and once innocently ask her aunt, Hazrat Zainab (SA): Will we ever go home? Alas she was not destined to.
The sad and sorrowful, but fast paced events in the Syrian capital and the now defeated Yazid’s decision to release the noble captives after some ten or a dozen days in Damascus, make us better understand the reason Imam Husain had travelled with all his family members, including ladies and children.
It means, if the ladies and children had not been there, Yazid’s men would have narrated their own version of the events of Karbala, and Omayyad propagandists would have twisted the accounts of the battle to absolve the Omayyad regime.
These ladies and children were indeed the shield of Islam, and this was the reason Imam Husain (AS) had brought them from Medina, as living proof of his message and martyrdom at the hands of an ungodly ruler and his oppressive regime.
These ladies were entrusted with a crucial mission, and without them the lives of the men would have been lost in vain if the Muslim Ummah at large did not wake up. When the conscientious amongst the Syrians saw the mistreatment of the Ahl al-Bayt they realized the truth that Yazid had committed a most sacrilegious crime in martyring the Prophet’s grandson Imam Husain (AS), and was now trying to humiliate the Prophet’s progeny.
Yazid thus felt danger to his rule and immediately allowed the noble captives to return to Medina. The first thing Hazrat Zainab (SA) did was to hold a mourning ceremony for the martyrs of Karbala in Damascus – the first ever such gathering which she institutionalized, and which subsequently has become internationalized and universalized in the months of Muharram and Safar, with little Ruqa’iyya also playing a major part.