The Demand · 60 AH

Yazid demands allegiance

When Mu‘awiya died, the thirty-year-old Yazid seized the caliphate and, like his father, used bribery, pressure, and threats to extract oaths of loyalty. Most gave in. The household of the Prophet (s) did not.

Yazid's governor in Medina was ordered to take Imam al-Husayn's (a) allegiance — or his head. For the Imam, this was no real choice: to lend his name to a man who openly trampled the values of Islam would be to endanger Islam itself.

He refused.