[citation needed] According to the majority of narrations, Husayn was born on the 3rd of Sha'ban 4 AH (11 January 626 CE)[11] in Medina and was still a child when his grandfather, Muhammad, died.

[28][26][27] The verse "God wishes only to remove taint from you, people of the Household, and to make you utterly pure" is also attributed to this event,[c] during which Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn stood under Muhammad's cloak.

[12][13] Sentiments in favor of the rule of Ahl al-Bayt occasionally emerged in the form of small groups, mostly from Kufa, visiting Hasan and Husayn asking them to be their leaders – a request to which they declined to respond.

[18] Ibn 'Abbas pointed out that the Kufis had left both his father Ali and his brother Hasan alone, and suggested that Husayn go to Yemen instead of Kufa, or at least not take women and children with him if he were to go to Iraq.

In response to Husayn's question about the situation in Iraq, the poet Farzadaq explicitly told him that the hearts of the Iraqi people are with you, but their swords are in the service of the Umayyads.

He suggested to Husayn to neither go to Kufa nor to Medina, rather write a letter to Yazid or Ibn Ziyad and wait for their orders, hoping to avoid this difficult situation by receiving an answer.

[60] Ibn Ziyad then sent Shemr with orders to ask Husayn for his allegiance once more and to attack, kill and disfigure him if he was to refuse, as "a rebel, a seditious person, a brigand, an oppressor and he was to do no further harm after his death".

[74] No one was compassionate towards the women and Ali al-Sajjad,[71][75][76] One of his courtiers asked for the hand of a captive woman from Husayn's family in marriage, which resulted in heated altercation between Yazid and Zaynab.

To atone for what they perceived as their sin, they began a movement known as Tawwabin uprising, under Sulayman ibn Surad, a companion of Muhammad, to fight the Umayyads, and attracted large-scale support.

Yazid, Madelung argues, wanted to end Husayn's opposition, but as a caliph of Islam could not afford to be seen as publicly responsible and so diverted blame onto Ibn Ziyad by hypocritically cursing him.

[98] Abu Mikhnaf's original text seems to have been lost and the version extant today has been transmitted through secondary sources such as the History of Prophets and Kings by al-Tabari; and Ansab al-Ashraf by Baladhuri.

Information on the battle found in the works of Dinawari and Ya'qubi is also based on Abu Mikhnaf's Maqtal,[95] although they occasionally provide some extra notes and verses.

[129] According to Olmo Gölz, the Karbala Paradigm provide Shi'as with heroic norms and a martyr ethos, and represents an embodiment of the battle between good and evil, justice and injustice.

[31] According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, one of the moral characteristics of Husayn is Tolerance, humility, eloquence, and finally traits that can be deduced from his behavior, such as despising death, hatred of a shameful life, pride, and the like.

[31] Many Sunni and Shia'a commentators, such as Fakhr Razi and Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, in their interpretation of Surah Al-Insan, attribute its revelation to Ali and Fatima and the story of the illness of their child or children and a vow for their recovery.

[141][142] Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i in Tafsir al-Mizan said, the event of the mubahala tells the story of the confrontation between the Prophet of Islam and his family on the one hand and the Christians of Najran on the other.

[143] In the explanation and interpretation of verse 23 of Surah ash-Shura, Tabatabai in Al-Mizan, while reporting and criticizing the various sayings of the commentators, has said that the meaning of "nearness" is the love of the Ahl al-Bayt of Muhammad; That is, Ali is Fatima, Hassan and Husayn.

Hadiths on the subjects of jurisprudence, interpretation, beliefs, rulings and sermons, supplications, advice and poetry also remain from Husayn, which are scattered in Shiite and Sunni sources and have been compiled and published in the form of collections.

[153][154] According to historian Syed Akbar Hyder, Mahatma Gandhi attributed the historical progress of Islam, to the "sacrifices of Muslim saints like Husayn" rather than military force.

About the reason for Husayn's sacrifice in Shia sources Vaglieri write:[152]Husayn gave his person and his possessions as an offering to God to "revive the religion of his grandfather Muhammad", "to redeem it", and "save it from the destruction into which it had been thrown by the behaviour of Yazid"; furthermore, he wished to show that the conduct of the hypocrites was shameful and to teach the peoples the necessity of revolt against unjust and impious governments (fasiks), in short he offered himself as an example (uswa) to the Muslim community.

[48] Maria Dakake holds that Husayn considered the Umayyad rule oppressive and misguided, and revolted to reorient the Islamic community in the right direction.

Husayn, Jafri asserts, was from the start aiming for martyrdom in order to jolt the collective conscience of the Muslim community and reveal what he considers to be the oppressive and anti-Islamic nature of the Umayyad regime.

[186] In contrast to the traditional view of Shi'ism as a religion of suffering, mourning and political quietism, Shi'a Islam and Karbala were given a new interpretation in the period preceding the revolution by rationalist intellectuals and religious revisionists like Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, Ali Shariati and Nematollah Salehi Najafabadi.

[192][193] Shi'i beliefs and symbols were instrumental in orchestrating and sustaining widespread popular resistance with Husayn's story providing a framework for labeling as evil and reacting against the Pahlavi Shah.

[203] Urdu poet Ghalib compares Husayn's suffering with that of Mansur al-Hallaj, a tenth century Sufi, who was executed on a charge of claiming divinity.

[210] Husayn is claimed to have performed various miracles, including quenching his companions' thirst by putting his thumb in their mouths and satisfying their hunger by bringing down food from the heavens, and to have killed several thousand Umayyad attackers.

"[215] Various Persian authors wrote texts retelling romanticized and synthesized versions of the battle and events from it,[127][217] including Sa'id al-Din's Rawdat al-Islam (The Garden of Islam) and Al-Khawarazmi's Maqtal nur 'al-'a'emmah (The Site of the Murder of the Light of the Imams).

[217] Inspired by Rawdat al-Shuhada, the Azerbaijani poet Fuzûlî wrote an abridged and simplified version of it in Ottoman Turkish in his work Hadiqat al-Su'ada.

[221] Comparing Karl Marx with Husayn, Josh Malihabadi argues that Karbala is not a story of the past to be recounted by the religious clerics in majalis, but should be seen as a model for revolutionary struggle towards the goal of a classless society and economic justice.

[224] Jalal ud-Din Rumi describes Husayn's suffering at Karbala as a means to achieve union with the divine, and hence considers it to be a matter of jubilation rather than grief.