Thus it says...

Thus it says: `All the Imam al-Husayn's followers were killed, among whom were more than the young men from his family. An arrow came and struck his son, who he had with him, on his lap. He began to wipe the blood from him saying, "O God, judge between us and a people who asked us to come so that they might help us and then killed us." He called for a striped cloak, tore it and then put it on. He took out his sword and fought until he was killed.

A man of the tribe of Madhhij killed him and cut off his head[^29]. This is supposed to be a vivid account of the death of the Imam al-Husayn, as told by the Imam al-Baqir to a Shi’i adherent, `Ammar. It is clearly unacceptable. He does not know the exact number of the members of the Imam al-Husayn's family who were killed. We have reports from Jabir b.

Yazid in which the Imam al-Baqir names killers of individual members of the Imam al-Husayn's family; yet, according to Ammar, he does not even identify the killer of the Imam. I have already mentioned an account from Jabir which describes vividly one attack on the Imam al-Husayn. Ibn al-Kalbi also gives a similar report on the authority of the Imam al-Baqir of the killing of the child with a slightly different prayer[^30], but this in no way confirms that `Ammar's report is from the Imam.

Rather it lends credence to it by including one report well known to non-Shi’is from the Imam. Furthermore Abu Mikhnaf tells us that the sixth Imam reported that Imam al-Husayn had received thirty-three spear thrusts and thirty-four sword blows on his body by the time he was killed[^31]. Yet `Ammar gives us one brief sentence describing how the Imam died. Ammar's account must be suspect.

[^28] J. Wellhausen, The Religio-Political Factions in Early Islam, tr. Walzer and Ostle (Amsterdam, 1975). [^29] Al-Tabari, op. cit., II, 282. [^30] Ibid., p. 360. [^31] Ibid., p. 366. Previous…