Every year, millions of pilgrims walk from the deserts of southern Iraq to the holy city of Karbala for Arbaeen, one of the world's largest annual pilgrimages. This year, pilgrims will converge on Karbala on August 5.
Arbaeen falls 40 days after Ashura, which commemorates the killing of Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 C.E. It marks the end of the mourning period that begins during the Islamic month of Muharram.
As a scholar of religion and politics who studies Shiite communities across the Indian Ocean world, I find that few rituals reveal as much about Shiite Islam as Arbaeen: its theology of sacrifice, its focus on injustice, and the way it brings millions of people together.
To understand Arbaeen, one has to return to the plains of Karbala in the year 680. After the death of Ali – Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law – and then Ali’s elder son Hasan, the caliphate passed to the Umayyad ruler Yazid. The Umayyads were the first hereditary Muslim empire that ruled after the death of Muhammad in 632.
Husayn, the prophet’s grandson, refused to recognise Yazid’s legitimacy because he believed Yazid was not morally fit to lead the community of believers.
In 680, Husayn set out with a small band of family and followers and was surrounded by a far larger army near Karbala and killed alongside some 70 companions. The women and children of his household were taken captive and marched to the Umayyad capital in Damascus, in present-day Syria.
For Shiite Muslims, this was not merely a political defeat but a sacrifice to preserve the true faith. In confronting the army of the second Umayyad ruler of the dynasty, Husayn opposed a rule viewed as unjust and un-Islamic.
The remembrance of Husayn’s martyrdom reminds Shiites about the teachings of the Prophet and his family. To them, it symbolises the enduring struggle between good and evil and serves as a reminder to uphold a moral code despite what the powerful say and do.
Following the battle of Karbala, the survivors, who had been held captive in Damascus, stopped at Husayn’s grave. They were joined by a disciple of the Prophet, Jabir ibn Abdullah al-Ansari, believed to be the first pilgrim to visit the grave. Arbaeen commemorates that visit and marks the end of mourning. Symbolically, the death of Husayn represents the shattering of the world, and Arbaeen restores it.
Today, the best-known route runs 78 km from Najaf, where Ali is buried, to Husayn’s shrine in Karbala, a walk of three days. The road is lined with “mawakib”: tents and stations where volunteers offer pilgrims free food, tea, medical care and a place to sleep.
For most Shiites, Husayn’s martyrdom is more than a historical tragedy, a model for resisting oppression, known as the Karbala paradigm. A concrete example of its political use came during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini portrayed the shah as the tyrannical Yazid and himself as a Husayn-like figure returning from exile to save the Iranian people from injustice.