(Conversation) – Every year, Shia Muslims mark the death of the prophet Muhammad Hussain’s grandson in a mourning that lasts a total of 50 days.
Ashura, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, commemorates the day of Hussain’s death.
For millions of Shiites, this age of mourning ends with a pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq. This pilgrimage has become, in recent years, the greatest gathering of others in the world for devout reasons. This year, Ashura observed August 30 and the Pilgrimage, 40 days later, will end on October 9, 2020.
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The pilgrimage and the city of Karbala have undergone many adjustments over a history dating back more than 1000 years. This year, the pilgrimage and the holy city face a new challenge: COVID-19.
Karbala is the position where the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, was killed in what is known as the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. According to the Shiites, Hussain and his men were martyred in this war on Ashura Day.
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, there was a dispute over who would be his rightful heir. The Sunnis, who make up the majority of Muslims, that Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s friend and stepfather, rightly succeeded Muhammad in 632 AD. Shiites that Muhammad’s cousin and father-in-law, Ali, deserve to have been Muhammad’s successor.
After years of civil war, such as wars of expansion, the U. S. Arab dynasty established its dominance over the region from the Middle East to North Africa from 661 AD. until 750 AD, but some denounced the domination of the U. S.
Hussain had been invited through the town of Kufa, who had a garrison in the town near Nayaf, to come and lead them in a revolt opposed to the U. S. caliph in Damascus. U. S. forces first ended the riots in Kufa, then gathered and killed Hussain and his men in the desert plains of Karbala.
For Shia Muslims, Hussain is their third imam, a worldly, non-secular leader whose direct relationship with Muhammad gave him special prestige and authority.
After Hussain’s death, a tomb was soon built that attracted devotees and benefactors. Najaf is where Hussain’s father, Ali, is buried.
Over the years, the Hussain Shrine has been destroyed, rebuilt, renovated and expanded.
Muharram’s bereavement rituals, whether in Karbala or elsewhere, have been used for political purposes. Muharram’s practices were sometimes sponsored by leaders to win public support. At other times, rituals became demonstrations against the government. For fear of civil unrest, some leaders forbade or limited the pilgrimage to Karbala.
For example, Mutawakkil, a caliph of the Abbasi dynasty, who in a vast Islamic empire from the 8th to the 13th century feared that rituals would inflame fervor against the regime, destroyed the tomb in 850 AD. and forbade the pilgrimage to Karbala.
Karbala and Najaf gained importance in the 16th century with the status quo of a Shiite state in Persia, now Iran, under Shah Ismail I. Since then, Iraqi shrine cities have attracted a growing number of pilgrims.
Many pilgrims brought the bodies of deceased relatives because they believed that being buried near Ali or Hussain ensures that when the deceased appears before God on the day of the final judgment, Ali or Hussain will invoke God’s mercy to allow the user’s soul. to enter heaven.
This led “Wadi al-Salam”, in Arabic for “Valley of Peace”, to Nayaf to one of the largest cemeteries in the world, containing up to five million bodies.
The sending and burial of the corpses provided work to a giant segment of the town of Najaf and Karbala. Higher rates were charged to those looking to be closer to Ali or Hussain at the burial site.
Blaming the trafficking of corpses as one of the reasons for several cholera epidemics in 19th-century Persia and Ottoman Iraq, the Ottoman government, which ruled Iraq from the 16th to the early 20th century, tried to limit and the number of corpses that were brought in.
However, even under these restrictions, about 20,000 bodies were taken to Najaf a year in the early 20th century. Today, about 100,000 more people are buried in Nadjaf a year.
Under the authoritarian regime of the Iraqi Baath, from the early 1970s to 2003, the Shiite pilgrimage was heavily monitored and limited.
Like many previous leaders, Saddam Hussein feared that the rituals would be used to incite an uprising opposed to his regime, that the pilgrimage would become protest, but once Saddam was overthrown by U. S. -led forces in 2003, the pilgrimage failed again.
In 2004, more than 2 million pilgrims marched to Karbala, and the maximum non-unusual direction was from Najaf to Karbala. Since then, the pilgrimage to Karbala has even eclipsed the hajj, which attracts between 2 and 3 million of them annually. Another 17 million people reportedly finished the march to Karbala. In 2016, the number of pilgrims increased to 22 million.
This year, concern for COVID-19 has severely limited many pilgrimages, adding the Hajj. Only a limited number of Muslims who are already in Saudi Arabia have been allowed to attend.
As a precautionary measure, the great Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an important Iraqi Shia leader, encouraged his followers to cry at home and then move on to Karbala.
For Ashura this year, the Shiites accumulated in Nadjaf and Karbala, but on a much smaller scale. There’s a social estinement, but not everywhere. Not all pilgrims wore masks; without strict measures, the number of contagions in Iraq has already increased; it remains to be known whether the government will respond with stricter policies for hajj in early October.
(Edith Szanto is an assistant professor of devoted studies at the University of Alabama. This article has been republished from The Conversation with a Creative Commons license. The perspectives expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service).