40 Fun Facts About Muharram

Ashura, sharing a root with the Hebrew word asor, is an Aramaic word meaning what?

Tenth is all the name says: Ashura is simply the tenth day, and the same Semitic root gives Hebrew its word for ten. The date, not the event, names the day for Sunni and Shia alike.

Muharram means 'forbidden'; what has been banned during this month since before Islam?

Warfare is the thing forbidden, and the ban predates Islam: pre-Islamic Arabs already treated Muharram as a truce month. It is one of four such sacred months in the year.

Refusing allegiance to Yazid in 680, Husayn ibn Ali left Medina for which city, where he stayed until September?

Mecca was where Husayn waited for four months while letters from Iraq urged him to come and lead them. He left the sanctuary city in September with about fifty men.

The Arba'in pilgrimage, the largest annual gathering on earth, brings millions to Karbala how many days after Ashura?

Forty days after Ashura is the Arba'in, and up to 40 million people reach Karbala for it, most of them on foot. Commemorating the dead on the fortieth day is an old Islamic custom.

On the last day of Trinidad's Hosay, what happens to the tadjah model tombs paraded through St James to tassa drumming?

Thrown into the sea at sunset is how the tadjahs end the observance, which indentured labourers brought to Trinidad in the nineteenth century. The paper-and-tinsel tombs are rebuilt from scratch every year.

Aşure, a grain-and-fruit pudding cooked in Turkey during Muharram, is nicknamed after which prophet?

Noah's pudding is the nickname, from a tale that his family cooked the last grains, dried fruit and nuts aboard the Ark once it came to rest. In Turkey and the Balkans the pot is shared with neighbours of any faith.

Which month follows Muharram in the Islamic calendar, with the Arba'in falling on its twentieth day?

Safar is month two of the year, and Shia mourning rituals run on through it to the Arba'in on its twentieth. Like most Islamic months, its name comes from ancient Arabian weather lore.

Muharram is one of the four sacred months in which fighting is forbidden; which month is NOT one of them?

Ramadan, for all its holiness, is not a sacred month in this sense: the four are Rajab on its own plus Dhu al-Qa'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram around the pilgrimage season.

In Morocco and the wider Maghreb, Sunni Ashura customs include almsgiving, special dishes and jumping over what?

Bonfires are leapt over and carnivals fill the streets: Maghrebi Ashura is a festive day, far from the mourning kept on the same date in Karbala. Many families also honour their dead then.

Iranian ta'ziyeh plays staged on Tasu'a, the eve of Ashura, are often dedicated to which half-brother of Husayn ibn Ali?

Abbas ibn Ali is the figure of Tasu'a in Iran: the Umayyad side offered him and his full brothers safe passage before the battle, which they refused. The play tradition peaked under the Qajar shahs.

In Sunni practice, what status does the Ashura fast hold, having been obligatory for about a year in Medina?

Voluntary is its status now: the Ashura fast ceased to be an obligation after roughly a year as relations with Medina's Jews soured, yet Sunni jurists still strongly encourage it, usually with the day before.

By Shia tradition, the earliest mourning gathering for Karbala was held by bereaved women captive in which city?

Damascus, the Umayyad capital, is where the captives recounted the tragedy and wept together, the model for every later majlis. Such gatherings now fill dedicated halls for the first ten days of Muharram.

Black-clad mourners marched on Ashura 963 in the first public Karbala processions; which Shia dynasty ruled then?

The Buyids, Shia rulers of Iraq and Iran after the caliphate's decline, sponsored those processions under Mu'izz al-Dawla. Dedicated buildings for Karbala gatherings date from the same period.

The word husayniyya, for a hall built to host Muharram mourning gatherings, was coined under which Iranian dynasty?

The Safavids held annual majalis in husayniyyas through the first ten days of Muharram, and the term for the buildings dates from their era. In Qazvin, a Safavid capital, the halls also hosted poetry gatherings and debates.

A husayniyya is an imambara in South Asia and a takyeh in Iran; what is it called in Bahrain and the Gulf?

Ma'tam is the Gulf word, used in Bahrain, the UAE and neighbouring states for the same mourning hall. Iraqi Shia only began building husayniyyas in numbers in the later nineteenth century.

Ta'ziyeh, the Iranian passion play staged during Muharram, takes its name from an Arabic word meaning what?

Condolence is the root sense, from the Arabic verb to console, and in Iran the word came to mean the staged re-enactment itself. In South Asia and the Caribbean the same word names a model tomb instead.

Tehran's Takyeh Dowlat, the Qajar court's permanent ta'ziyeh theatre, was torn down in 1947 and replaced by what?

A bank took its place after the theatre fell out of use, barely 79 years after Naser al-Din Shah built it. Ordinary takyehs were temporary, put up for Muharram and demolished when the month ended.

In Yazd, a huge cypress-shaped wooden frame is carried on Ashura in the nakhl-gardani ritual; what does it represent?

A coffin is what the nakhl stands for, Husayn's bier, and the largest in Yazd needs several hundred men to lift. The name means date palm, after a tradition that his body was carried on palm branches.

Which Iraqi president banned the Arba'in walk to Karbala, a pilgrimage 20 million strong a decade after his fall?

Saddam Hussein suppressed the walk along with the other Karbala rituals, and its first year back drew about two million. Pilgrims now come from nearly 60 countries, most of them on foot.

Which son of Husayn ibn Ali survived Karbala because he was too ill to fight, later becoming the fourth Shia Imam?

Ali al-Sajjad, also called Zayn al-Abidin, was spared after the battle, and his supplications are still read as al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. His aunt is said to have shielded him from execution in Kufa.

The Tawwabin, Kufan supporters of Husayn who rose against the Umayyads in 685, bore a name meaning what?

The Penitents, led by the companion Sulayman ibn Surad, were defeated at Ayn al-Warda in January 685, but their remorse set the tone for Shia memory of Karbala. Their rising came before Mukhtar's in Kufa.

Which Umayyad governor of Kufa sent Umar ibn Sa'd's army to Karbala and ordered the Euphrates closed to Husayn's camp?

Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad ran Kufa for Yazid and had already crushed the city's pro-Husayn movement before the caravan arrived. Umar ibn Sa'd took the field only after the governor threatened his governorship.

Al-Hurr ibn Yazid, whose thousand riders had intercepted Husayn's caravan near Kufa, did what on the morning of Ashura?

Hurr changed sides at dawn after reconsidering his stance, and is counted among the first of Husayn's companions to die that day. Days earlier he had refused to let the caravan turn back to Medina.

In 680, Husayn ibn Ali's caravan reached Karbala and pitched camp on which day of Muharram?

The second of Muharram, 2 October 680, is when the camp went up on a desert plain some 70 kilometres from Kufa, and an army of 4,000 arrived the next day. Husayn's own force was a few dozen by most accounts.

Denied the Euphrates at Karbala, Husayn's camp went how many days without water before a sally reached the river?

Three days without water preceded the sally, which managed to fill only twenty water-skins for the whole camp. The order to block the river had come from the governor in Kufa.

Husayn's head, by Fatimid tradition, was carried in 1153 from Ashkelon to which city, ahead of the advancing Crusaders?

Cairo's al-Hussein Mosque, beside the city's great bazaar, still holds the shrine where the head is said to rest. Ashkelon had kept it for roughly 250 years.

Which companion is credited with proposing, when the Hijri era was fixed in 17 AH, that the year open with Muharram?

Uthman, by tradition, made the successful proposal, keeping the order of months Muhammad had already used, even though the Hijra itself fell two months later in the year. A complaint from Abu Musa al-Ash'ari had prompted the reform.

Because the Hijri year is purely lunar, Muharram returns to the same solar season roughly every how many years?

33 solar years is about the period over which the lunar months regress through the seasons, so a Muharram in midsummer will fall in midwinter some 16 years later. No leap month exists to hold it in place.

The Quranic ban on nasi', the pre-Islamic shuffling of sacred months, was proclaimed by Muhammad on which occasion?

The Farewell Sermon, given on Mount Arafat on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah 10 AH, declared the postponing of months an increase in disbelief, ending a practice that could shift a truce month to suit a campaign.

Alevis in Turkey keep a Muharram mourning fast that is broken with a pot of aşure; how many days does it last?

Twelve days of fasting end with a pot of aşure that itself often holds twelve ingredients, shared with family and friends. Alevis call the fast Muharrem Mâtemi, the mourning of Muharram.

Which cousin did Husayn ibn Ali send ahead to Kufa to test the city's promised support before his own journey?

Muslim ibn Aqil's following melted away under the new governor's crackdown, and he was forced to declare the revolt early; it failed before Husayn arrived. Husayn still set out, bound by the letters he had received.

The Dawoodi Bohra Ashara Mubaraka, ten days of Muharram sermons, set a zero-waste world record in 2018 in which city?

Indore hosted 150,000 Bohras for the sermons of the 53rd Da'i al-Mutlaq, Mufaddal Saifuddin, and the Golden Book of World Records logged the largest zero-waste religious event. Colombo adopted the same policy the next year.

Lucknow's Bara Imambara, a Muharram hall of 1784, was commissioned by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula partly to provide what?

Famine relief work was the point: construction began in 1780, a year of devastating famine, and kept people employed for almost a decade. The winning design came from a Delhi architect, Kifayatullah, who is buried in its hall.

Hussaini Dalan, a Twelver imambara first built under 17th-century Mughal rule, is the main husayniyya of which city?

Dhaka's Hussaini Dalan is said to follow a vision in which Mir Murad saw the Imam raising a house of mourning, and for the first ten days of Muharram the old city gathers there. Its custodians from 1843 to 1975 were the Dhaka Nawabs.

Hyderabad's Badshahi Ashurkhana, a Qutb Shahi Muharram hall near the Charminar, was put to what use by Aurangzeb?

A horse stable for the Mughal cavalry is what Aurangzeb made of it after the Mughal conquest of Hyderabad, and part of the building was destroyed in the process. In South Asia such halls are also called imambaras.

Hyderabad's Bibi-Ka-Alam, a standard named for Fatima and paraded on Ashura, holds a relic said to be a piece of what?

A plank is the relic: a piece of the board on which Fatima's body was washed before burial, sealed inside the alam and kept in a strong room for the rest of the year. The procession runs from Dabirpura to Chaderghat.

Which 19th-century Lucknow poet, champion of the Urdu marsiya elegy for Karbala, stretched the form past 150 stanzas?

Mir Anis drew on Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Awadhi vocabulary, and his elegies remain a fixture of Muharram for Urdu speakers. A 1907 study by Shibli Nomani weighed him against his rival Dabeer.

South Asian tazias, paraded in Muharram as painted representations of Husayn's shrine, are built from paper and what?

Bamboo and paper make the mausoleum, a creative representation rather than a replica of the shrine, and under British rule Hindus took part in the processions alongside Muslims. The same word gives Trinidad its tadjah.

Pariaman in West Sumatra has held its tabuik ritual every Ashura since 1831, brought by Twelver Shia troops from where?

India supplied the Twelver sepoys who were stationed in the region under the British and later settled there. Today most of Pariaman keeps the festival, non-Muslims included, and Bengkulu calls its version tabot.

The Hosay massacre of 1884, after colonial authorities banned Muharram processions, took place in which Trinidad town?

San Fernando's processions went ahead in defiance of an 1884 ordinance keeping them out of the towns, and the day is also remembered as the Jahaji massacre. Estimates of the dead run from nine to 22.