Q 01/05

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

A) Sacred

B) Tenth

C) Fasting

D) Mourning

Answer · why

B) Tenth

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 th...

Q 02/05

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

A) Trade

B) Travel

C) Warfare

D) Marriage

Answer · why

C) Warfare

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...

Q 03/05

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

A) Kufa

B) Ta'if

C) Basra

D) Mecca

Answer · why

D) Mecca

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 ab...

Q 04/05

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

A) Seven

B) Forty

C) Thirty

D) Ten

Answer · why

B) Forty

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...

Q 05/05

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

A) Buried in a field

B) Thrown into the sea

C) Burned at dawn

D) Stored for next year

Answer · why

B) Thrown into the sea

Thrown into the sea at sunset is how the tadjahs end the observance, which indentured labourers brought to Trinidad in the nineteenth century. The pap...