In popular literature we frequently find both Hasan and...

In popular literature we frequently find both Hasan and Husain represented as participating in the battle of Karbala’, which is historically wrong, but psychologically correct. It is not the place here to discuss the development of the whole genre of marthiya and taziya poetry in the Persian and Indo-Persian world, or in the popular Turkish tradition.

But it is interesting to cast a glance at some verses in the Eastern Islamic tradition which express predominantly the Sunni poets’ concern with the fate of Husain, and echo, at the same time, the tendency of the Sufis to see in him a model of the suffering which is so central for the growth of the soul. The name of Husain appears several times in the work of the first great Sufi poet of Iran, Sana’i (d. 1131).

Here, the name of the martyred hero can be found now and then in connection with bravery and selflessness, and Sana’i sees him as the prototype of the shahid , higher and more important than all the other shahids who are and have been in the world: Your religion is your Husain, greed and wish are your pigs and dogs.

You kill the one, thirsty, and nourish the other two.(1) This means that man has sunk to such a lowly state that he thinks only of his selfish purposes and wishes and does everything to fondle the material aspects of his life, while his religion, the spiritual side of his life, is left without nourishment, withering away, just like Husain and the martyrs of Karbala’ were killed after nobody had cared to give them water in the desert.

This powerful idea is echoed in other verses, both in the Divan and in the Hadiqat al-Haqiqa ; but one has to be careful in one’s assessment of the long praise of Husain and the description of Karbala’ as found in the Hadiqa , as they are apparently absent from the oldest manuscripts of the work, and may have been inserted at some later point. This, however, does not concern us here.

For the name of the hero, Husain, is found in one of the central poems of Sana’is Divan , in which the poet describes in grand images the development of man and the long periods of suffering which are required for the growth of everything that aspires to perfection.