Muslim b. Aqil b. Abi Talib: Difference between revisions

Al-Hussain was at Zubala (or Thaʿlabiyya, or Zarud, or Sharaf) when he received news of the tragedy. Shi’i authors maintain that al-Hussain gave his entourage the option of withdrawing and that members of Muslim’s family were among those who chose to stay with him to the end. The lists of those killed at Karbala do indeed include Muslim’s brothers Abd Allah, Abd al-Rahman and Jaʿfar; some say that in all five brothers died on the battlefield.<ref>Ibn Maʿsum al-Shirazi, al-Darajat al-rafiʿa , Najaf 1382/1962, 165.</ref> Abd Allah, a son of Muslim from his marriage to Ali’s daughter [[Ruqayya]], was also reportedly killed in the battle; some sources refer to two sons who perished there.<ref>e.g. al-Safadi, al-Wafi , xii, ed. Ramadan ʿAbd al-Tawwab, Wiesbaden 1399/1979, 426.</ref> Two other sons (sometimes identified as Muhammad and Ibrahim) are said to have escaped from Obayd Allah’s camp a year after Karbala only to be brutally murdered by a Kufan who expected to be rewarded by Obayd Allah (but who was beheaded instead).<ref>Ibn Babawayh, Amali , Najaf 1389/1970, 73-9.</ref> Their story, like that of their father, is re-enacted in the annual [[taʿziya]] plays.<ref>Pelly, The Miracle play, i, 190-206.</ref> In some versions of these plays, the two sons are said to have been decapitated at the same time as their father<ref>e.g. Metin And, The Muharram observances in Anatolian Turkey , in [[Peter J. Chelkowski|P.J. Chelkowski]] (ed.), Taʿziyeh : ritual and drama in Iran , New York 1979, 251.</ref>; and the text accompanying several pictorial renderings of this event identifies their executioner as al- Harith b. Badr.<ref>R. Milstein, Miniature painting, 101, 102, 104.</ref>