From India Profile:
Every year the Shia Muslims commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. For ten days the people mourn the death of the Imam, his family and followers. They wear black, attend meetings and carry out processions to express their grief.
It was in Karbala where Hussein fought his last battle and died. “Put your trust in God and know that man is born to die, and that the heavens shall not remain, everything shall pass away, except the presence of God.” Those were Hussein’s passing words to his old weeping sister before he washed, anointed himself with musk and rode his horse into the face of thousands of soldiers. The place where the water of Euphrates was cut off to Hussein and his family came to be known as Kerbala (Kerb meaning anguish and bela vexation. Hussein refused to bow to the forces of evil choosing a bloody death. His spirit rose like a phoenix and flew across lands away from the desert of his home. Evoking the strength and humility of Hussein wrote Anees, the poet, master of elegy: “Yeh to na keh sakey kay Shah-e-zulmanain hoon, Maula ne sur jhuka ke kaha main Hussein hoon` (He never could say he was master of earth and sky. He merely bent low his head and said ‘I am Hussein’).
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