It is here that he sees in the ‘street of religion’ those...

It is here that he sees in the ‘street of religion’ those martyrs who were dead and are alive, those killed by the sword like Husain, those murdered by poison like Hasan.(2) The tendency to see Husayn as the model of martyrdom and bravery continues, of course, in the poetry written after Sana’i by Persian and Turkish mystics, and of special interest is one line in the Divan of ‘Attar (nr.

‘Ali, becomes a model for the Sufi; he is the suffering lover, and in quite a number of Sufi poems his name appears alongside that of Husain: both were enamoured by God, both sacrificed themselves on the Path of divine love, both are therefore the ideal lovers of God whom the pious should strive to emulate.

Ghalib skillfully alludes to this combination in his tawhid qasida : God has kept the ecstatic lovers like Husain and Mansur in the place of gallows and rope, and cast the fighters for the faith, like Husain and ‘Ali, in the place of swords and spears: in being martyrs they find eternal life and happiness and become witnesses to God’s mysterious power. This tradition is particularly strong in the Turkish world, where the names of both Husains occur often in Sufi songs.

Turkish tradition, especially in the later Bektashi order, is deeply indebted to Shi’i Islam; but it seems that already in some of the earliest popular Sufi songs in Turkey, those composed by Yunus Emre in the late 13th or early 14th century, the Prophet’s grandsons played a special role. They are described, in a lovely song by Yunus, as the ‘fountain head of the martyrs’, the ‘tears of the saints’, and the ‘lambs of mother Fatima’.

Both of them, as the ‘kings of the eight paradises’, are seen as the helpers who stand at Kawthar and distribute water to the thirsting people, a beautiful inversion of Husain suffering in the waterless desert of Karbala’.(3) The well known legend according to which the Prophet saw Gabriel bring a red and a green garment for his two grandsons, and was informed that these garments pointed to their future deaths through the sword and poison respectively, is mentioned in early Turkish songs, as it also forms a central piece of the popular Sindhi manaqiba which are still sung in the Indus Valley.