Then he said...

Then he said, 'By God, Jafar, the angels closest to God are witness here and they hear your words; they have wept as we have, and more ... '[^3] At the end of the 'Abbasid period, the reciter in these commemorative sessions was still known as a na'ih, a lamenter, or mourner. [^4] These marathi, then, provided the germ for early gatherings of partisans of the House of the Prophet; they may also then be seen as the origin or earliest form of the ta'ziya as it is known today among Shi'i…