Background · 40–60 AH

The shadow of the Umayyads

The road to Karbala began long before the desert. After Imam ‘Ali (a) was struck down in prayer and his son Imam al-Hasan (a) was poisoned, Mu‘awiya ruled the Muslim world unopposed — holding power, as the historians put it, by the might of the sword alone.

He built his strength on the public treasury and a web of informants, working to defame the family of the Prophet (s). In his final years he broke the peace treaty he had signed with Imam al-Hasan (a), introducing something Islam had never known: leadership passed by inheritance, from father to son.

That son was Yazid — and with his succession, a collision became inevitable.