HASAN and Husain, two sons of All by his wife Fatima, daughter of Mahomed. After Ali's death, Hasan and Husain went to reside at Medina. Hasan was poisoned there, A.D. 659, by an emissary of the khalif. The poison was placed in Hasan's way by his wife Zainab. And several years afterwards, on the 10th of the Maharram, A.H. 46, Husain was slain at Kirbala, his eldest son, Zain-ul-Abidin, alone escaping. These events are commemorated in India by the ceremonies of the first ten days of the Maharram. Annually, as this season of mourning returns, the Shiah Mahomedans recite the melancholy story of the deaths of these martyrs.
The deaths of this family, with the assassination of the khalif Omar in the mosque at Jerusalem, caused the great division into the Sunni and the Shiah sects, which continues amongst Mahomedans to the present day throughout all the Mahomedan world. After the death of the third successor of Mahomet, Ali ascended the throne ; but after a short reign of six years, during which he had to encounter a serious rebellion headed by Ayesha, he was at last assassinated. For this reason Ali is regarded as a martyr, and the first of the twelve Imams. Of the Shiahs Hasan and Husain, the two sons of Ali and Fatima were grandsons of Mahomet ; as boys they had been his darlings, and as men they received much of that warm personal devotion which had been bestowed on the great founder of Islam. Hasan succeeded his father on the throne for a short time, but yielded to the pretensions of a Sunnite khalif. He was afterwards carried off by poison, and was thus in his turn regarded as a martyr, and the second of the twelve Imams.
Husain and his followers rose in arms to assert his right to the throne of the khalifs. Near
the banks of the Euphrates the enemy pressed against him in overpowering numbers. Nearly all his followers were slain, and his child was killed in his arms. He himself was fainting from thirst and fatigue ; but when the hour of prayer arrived, he performed his religious duties in the face of the enemy ; for there were few, even in that hostile host, who were prepared, under such circumstances; to draw the sword upon the grandson of the prophet. At last, exhausted by thirst, he bent his steps towards the Euphrates ; his adversaries now rushed forward to intercept him. Husain, however, had already thrown him self on his breast over the stream, and was beginning to taste the refreshing water, when an arrow pierced his mouth. A confused crowd of warriors now closed around him, and began to assail him with their swords. A long and desperate struggle followed, but he was at last overpowered, and his head was carried away as trophy. Husain was thus regarded as, if the greatest martyr of the three ; and not only is he reverenced as the third Imam, but his repre sentatives of the nine succeeding generations are reverenced as the nine Imams who make up the number to twelve. His death, or martyrdom, was followed by a cry of grief wherever men had embraced the faith of Islam ; and even in the present day the Shiah Mahomedans are afflicted with the profoundest sorrow throughout the days of the Maharram, and shed tears for their beloved and martyred Imams ; it is a melancholy sight.