Soul that art at rest! Return to your Lord, well-pleased (with him), well-pleasing (Him)
Reconstruction the Episode of Kerbala
TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD
The first historian to systematically collect the reports dealing with the events of of Kerbala was named Abu Mikhnaf [Lut b. Yahya b. Sa’id b. Mikhnaf b. Salim al-Azdi al-Ghamaidi al-Kufi] (d. 157 A.H.) in a work titled Kitab Maqtal al- Husayn. His father was a compannion of Imam ‘Ali (a). Abu Mikhnaf was a trusted and reliable historian whose tradition-reports were relied upon by many historians — Shi’ah and Sunni—including Mumhammad b. ‘Amr Waqidi (d. 207 A.H.) Tabari (d. 310 A.H.), Ibn Qutabah (d. 322 A.H.), Mas’udi (d. 345 A.H.), Mufid (d. 413 A.H.), Shahrastani (d. 548 A.H.), Khatib Khwarazmi (d. 568 A.H.), Ibn Athir (d. 630 A.H.), Sibt b.Jawzi (d. 654 A.H.), and otherSayyid
Abu Mikhnaf’s original work on Imam Husayn (a) seems to have been lost and that which has reached us has been transmitted through his student, Hisham b. al-Kalbi (d. 204 A.H.) who preserved most of his teacher’s work and provides a detailed version of Abu Mikhnaf’s account . The present translation work relies on his reports to reconstruct Abu Mikhnaf’s original work titled Kitab Maqtal al-Husayn.