Battle of Karbala
Husayn ibn Ali is killed at the Battle of Karbala
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The officer who had blocked Husayn's road with a thousand horsemen crossed to his side on the morning of the battle and died fighting his former comrades.
10 Muharram on the plain of Karbala
On 10 Muharram 61 AH — conventionally converted as 10 October 680 — Umar ibn Sa'd formed the Kufan army against Husayn ibn Ali's small party on the plain of Karbala in Iraq.
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, the governor of Kufa, had rejected a settlement that would let Husayn depart without submitting. His final order required Umar ibn Sa'd to compel submission or attack, and the confrontation was postponed from the evening of 9 Muharram to the next morning.
Some modern reference works give 9 October instead, since historical calendar conversions can differ by a day.
Morning until near sunset
Al-Hurr ibn Yazid, who had earlier intercepted Husayn with 1,000 mounted men, defected to Husayn that morning and was killed fighting his former comrades.
Umar ibn Sa'd had brought 4,000 men to Karbala, with 500 posted to block access to the Euphrates. The fighting ran from morning until near sunset.
Husayn and almost all his able-bodied male relatives and supporters were killed; the traditional count of the dead on his side is 70 or 72.
The camp looted, the family taken
Husayn was beheaded, and his body was ordered trampled by horses. The victors looted his camp.
The surviving women and children and his sick son Ali were taken captive — first to Kufa, then to Yazid's court in Damascus. Husayn's sister Zaynab bint Ali was among them.
Yazid had demanded the allegiance and appointed Ubayd Allah to deal with Husayn, but he was not personally present at Karbala.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Traditional date
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The Islamic date, 10 Muharram 61 AH, is firm in the tradition. Conversion to the Julian calendar is usually given as 10 October 680, although some modern reference works give 9 October because historical calendar conversions can differ by a day.
- Detailed narratives survive through later transmitters and disagree about individual speeches, wounds, negotiations and the exact number of combatants.
- The commonly reported 70 or 72 deaths on Husayn's side is a traditional count, not a modern battlefield census.