Hussain ibn Ali: Difference between revisions

Hussain’s first marriage was with Rabab, daughter of Emraʾ-al-Qays b. Adi, a chief of the Banu Kalb. Her father came to Medina early during the caliphate of Omar and was appointed by him amir over all tribesmen of Qozaʿa who would convert to Islam. Ali proposed to him to establish marriage ties, and he agreed to give three of his daughter to Ali, Hasan, and Hussain in marriage. Hasan and Hussain, and no doubt the daughters of Emraʾ-al-Qays, were too young for the wedding to take place immediately, and Hasan may never actually have married the girl chosen for him. Hussain later married Rabab, and in the later years of Ali’s caliphate, Emraʾ-al-Qays and his kin were referred to as his in-laws.<ref>ashar; Thaqafi, p. 426</ref> Rabab remained Hussain’s favorite wife, even though she was childless for many years. Probably after Ali’s death, she bore him a daughter Amena (Amina, Omayma), commonly known as [[Sokayna]]. Later Rabab bore him his son Abd-Allah, who was still a child when he was killed at Karbala. He presumably had saved his own patronymic (konya), Abu Abd-Allah, for a son by her. In some late Shiʿite sources Abd-Allah is called [[ʿAli Asqar|Ali Asqar]] (q.v.), but this is without historical foundation. After Hussain’s death, Rabab is said to have spent a year in grief at his grave and to have refused to remarry. No details are known about Hussain’s marriage to Solafa, a woman of the tribe Bali of Qozaʿa. She bore him a son named Jaʿfar, who died during Hussain’s lifetime.

Of Hussain’s two sons named Ali, the one who survived him, known as [[ʿAli b. al-Hussain|Zayn al-Abedin]], the fourth Imam of the Shiʿites, was the elder and probably his first-born son. He was twenty-three at the time of the battle of Karbala and thus was born during the caliphate of Ali. His mother was a slave woman, probably from Sind. She was later married to a client of Hussain and had a son with him, ʿAbd-Allah b. Zobayd, who was thus a maternal brother of Ali Zayn al-Abedin. The descendants of Abd-Allah b. Zobayd later lived in Yanboʿ.<ref>Ibn Saʿd, p. 17</ref> Whereas Zayn al-Abedin is called Ali al-Asqar in the early Sunnite sources, Muhammad Mofid <ref>pp. 236-37</ref> and other Shiʿite authors are probably correct in calling him ʿAli Akbar. The second Ali, called Ali Akbar in the Sunnite sources but Ali Asqar by Shaikh Mofid, was nineteen when he was killed at Karbala. His mother was Layla, daughter of Morra b. Orwa Ṯaqafi and Maymuna bt. Abi Sofyan, sister of the caliph Muawiya. The marriage must have taken place soon after Hasan’s surrender to Mu’awiya, as it would not have been possible during the lifetime of Ali. Hussain evidently named his son by Layla also Ali since he, because of his aristocratic Arab mother, had precedence over his elder son by a non-Arab slave woman to become his primary heir. Mu’awiya is even quoted as observing that Ali b. Hussain was the one most suited for the caliphate, since he combined the bravery of the Banu Hashem, the munificence of the Banu Umayya, and the pride of Thaqif.<ref>Abu’l-Faraj Esfahani, Maqatel, p. 80</ref>