عاشوراء Day of Ashura

We were walking through the greater souq the other day when we arrived at a neighborhood with decorations, and I realized that this was a Shi’i neighborhood commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn on the occasion of Ashura.

The concise version of events:

Mohammad = Prophet of Islam

Abu Bakr is the first of the "rightly guided" caliphs, the companions of the Prophet that lead the Muslim community following Mohammad's death.

Umar follows. Uthman follows. Ali follows. Ali is the Prophet's cousin, and shi'i muslims believe that he should have originally followed Mohammad as the first caliph because Ali is ahl albayt, or of Mohammad's family.

When Ali is murdered, the question is, who should rule? The followers of Ali immediately throw support behind Ali's son Hassan who becomes the Second Imam of the shia tradition. But a contender for power is clearly Muawiyah I who had previously been governor to Syria and now has power in the Levant and Egypt. It is Muawiyah's line that is to produce the second caliphate in Islam (following the Rashidun, or the rightly guided caliphs), the Umayyad dynasty.

Husayn outlives his brother Hassan and meets in the Battle of Karbala Yazid, son of Muawiyah. The death of the Third Imam Husayn (again, in the eyes of shi'a) and all his men at Karbala, as they were heavily outnumbered, represents the greatest 'sacrifice of self' in trying to preserve the true Islam.

Have I pieced together my Islamic history correctly? I hope so.

You will read that Oman is an Ibadhi-majority country, but I have heard that there are actually many more Sunnis in Oman than people will tell you. I was surprised however, to walk into this open display of shi'a faith. I shouldn't have been; I had realized that shia around the world were commemorating the anniversary of the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbala, as they do annually on the tenth day of the first month of the Islamic calendar. Posters, banners, and flags portraying the greatness of Husayn filled this block in Muscat.