The Heroine of Karbala

Date: 15 January 2025 - 22:08

News ID: ۱۳۵۸۸۶

By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

“The end of all the tyrants is terrible and God knows the misguided and wrongdoers amongst you.”
The above phrase is an apt description of the fate of all oppressors, whether of the past, the present or the future, including Nimrod, Pharaoh, Hitler, Saddam, Ariel Sharon, and Insha-Allah (God-Willing) of Netanyahu and the Zionist usurpers of Palestine, and of course, of the super terrorist US regime.
These words not directly addressed to any of these public enemies of humanity, but to perhaps the chief of all these and countless other hellish thugs since the dawn of history.
The addressee is the accursed Yazid, the perpetrator of the heartrending tragedy of Karbala. The important point to note is that the despicable tyrant is being addressed in his face by a seemingly helpless lady standing in his pompous court beside the severed heads of her martyred brother(s), sons, nephews, and other kinsmen.
It is obvious that we are referring to Hazrat Zainab (SA), the indomitable daughter of Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA) and Imam Ali (AS).
The reason we remember the Heroine of Karbala today is the 15th of the sacred month of Rajab, the day the Lady whose electrifying sermons institutionalized, universalized and immortalized the life-inspiring mourning ceremonies for Imam Husain (AS), was herself martyred.
She achieved this immortal honour in the path of God in Damascus in the year 65 AH, when hit with a pickaxe on her blessed head by an enemy of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, while weeping under the tree at which the severed head of her brother had hung four years earlier.
The selfless endeavours of the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAWA) to Islam and humanity will always remain indebted.
A millennium and almost four centuries have passed since her martyrdom, but her sermons continue to inspire the seekers of truth.
For a proper cognition of the peerless personality of Hazrat Zainab (SA), as a hadith says: “If it is impossible to comprehend everything it is also not possible to leave all.”
It is beyond the power of ordinary mortals to pen the merits and virtues of a lady, whose praise requires a tongue as eloquent as the Holy Qur’an or as fluently expressive as of the Prophet and his Infallible Progeny.
I do not think I am capable of shedding full light and that too in a brief newspaper column, on the life and times of the lady whose merits have earned her the title of “Sani-e Zahra” or second only to the Greatest Lady of all times, her own impeccable mother, the Prophet’s daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA).
Accounts are usually written of those whose life is bare and bereft of any God-given virtuosity, but in the case of such a holy figure, the human mind is clearly wonderstruck and incapable of penning down the exact merits.
The immortal saga of Karbala would have remained incomplete if not for the endeavours of Hazrat Zainab (SA).
She was the sister who refused to let the mission of her martyred brother confined to the epic Day of Ashura as the cowardly enemies of humanity had planned. Imprisonment did not dampen her spirits.
She not just carried the message of Imam Husain (AS) to Kufa to make the Iraqis rue their betrayal of the Prophet’s Grandson she also did not allow the dungeon of Damascus and the jam-packed court of the tyrant Yazid to drown the eloquence of her sermons that eventually apprised the Syrians of the treason of the Omayyuds against Islam.
On return home to Medina she was not content to merely lighten the burden of her bleeding heart at the outpouring of grief of the people of Hejaz shocked by the tragedy that befell the Prophet’s Household.
She brought about a revolution transcending continents, climes and eras by ripping the mask of hypocrisy off the ungodly face of Yazid. In front of the court filled with foreign dignitaries including the Byzantine envoy, she called him “yabna at-tulaqa” (son of freed slaves) – a reference to the Prophet’s magnanimity in sparing the life of Yazid’s father Mu’awiyya and his equally evil grandparents Abu Sufyan and Hind.
In fact, Hazrat Zainab (SA), along with her nephew Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), who would call her “The Unschooled Scholar and Sage by Connation”, publicized the tragedy of Karbala – as was the goal of her brother.
She infused eternality in it for the salvation of humanity, so that people in every age, era and geographical place could sift truth from falsehood by reflecting on the uprising of Imam Husain (AS).
Thus, when any conscientious mind turns to the Epic of Ashura and the traumatic aftermath of history’s greatest tragedy, it has to admit that Islam and all humanitarian values, without the least doubt, are also indebted forever to the Lady whose indefatigable role earned her the title of “Sharikat al-Husain” or partner in the mission of Imam Husain (AS).
In this manner, Hazrat Zainab (SA) succeeded in safeguarding the teachings of the Holy Qur’an as revealed by God to her grandfather Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), as expounded to the faithful by her father Imam Ali (AS), and as preserved for posterity by her brother Imam Husain (AS) with his lifeblood.