to you which I have expropriated? Or to avenge some wound which I have inflicted upon you?"

The people's answer to that question was the onslaught by which they blackened the face of history and which drew them on to strike the neck of al-Husayn and the necks of his sons and helpers with their swords. That day did not end until seventy-two corpses had fallen. Their heads were cut off and their bodies trampled by horses. Then a shout arose: "Burn down the tents of the wrongdoers". Then fire began to devour the tents of al-Husayn and his followers. The women and children fled in terror, not knowing with whom they might seek refuge and with whom they might find a shelter. The bereft family of al-Husayn was led away captive. They were marched around the towns and villages. The head of al-Husayn and the heads of his sons and followers were held aloft on spears in the sight of the captives of the family of the Apostle of God.

When they brought the head of al-Husayn before Yazid b. Mu'awiya in Syria, they put it on a tray. Yazid began to poke at the teeth in it with a cane and he recited:

We have cut off heads of men who were dear to us but they were too refractory and wrong.

Who is there who could see these sights or hear of such a massacre, of such maltreatment, of such an appalling act against the family of Ali and not be seized with fear and dismay? Then how could the name of 'Ali continue to shine forth while this was some of what was waged against him and what was waged against his descendants with those murderous weapons unless Ali was unique and unless he was the only model among men in the world?

Muslim b. Uqba, one of the protégés of Yazid b. Mu'awiya: (and he who was created with a venomous nature, a man in snakeskin, to use the definition of the Egyptian writer al-Aqqad) this man reached the .ultimate in persecution of the followers of Ali and the followers of al-Husayn. He was, in the description of the historian, one-eyed and ruddy-faced with an agitated head. When he walked, it was as if he was pulling his legs out of mud.

He attained such a degree of voracity for evil that even when he was a very old and sick    man,   he    allowed    Medina,    the

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