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chapter three The Saddest Story Ever Told TRANSLATING KARBALA THROUGH FEMININE VOICES & EMOTIONS INTO A DECCANI SHIʿI IDIOM Learn from the Hindu how to die of love— It is not easy to enter the fire while alive. —Amir Khusrau Beginning in the 1860s, Sayyid ʿAbbas Sahib moved from Madras (Chennai ) to the princely state of Hyderabad, the capital of the Sunni Asaf Jahi dynasty. He was a renowned writer of marṡiya poems commemorating the Battle of Karbala. ʿAbbas Sahib came to Hyderabad seeking the patronage of the fifth Asaf Jahi Nizam, Afzal al-Dawlah Bahadur (r. 1857–69 C.E.).The observance of Muharram has flourished in Hyderabad since the establishment of the Shiʿi Qutb Shahi dynasty in 1512 C.E. The mehndī mourning assembly has been celebrated with much enthusiasm in Hyderabad since the reign of ʿAbdullah Qutb Shah (r. 1626–72 C.E.), who commissioned the construction of the Alava-ye Qasem shrine in Yaqutpura, a neighborhood in the Shiʿi section of the Old City. As he did in his former home city of Madras, ʿAbbas Sahib discovered a reverence for Qasem and the mehndī ritual among the Shiʿa of Hyderabad. ʿAbbas Sahib’s house, ʿAbbas Manzil, was initially located at the present site of the ʿAzakhane-ye Zahra ʿāshūrkhāna in the Old City neighborhood of Darulshifa. The ʿAzakhane-ye Zahra was commissioned in 1941 by the seventh Nizam, Osman ʿAli Khan (r. 1911–48), in memory of his mother, Amtul Zahra Begum.1 In this large house sitting on the banks of the Musi River, ʿAbbas Sahib hosted an annual majlis mourning assembly on 7 Muharram in which trays of henna and an ʿalam dedicated to Qasem were brought out in procession ( julūs).2 The “ʿAbbas Sahib mehndī kī majlis” quickly became Hyderabad’s most popular 7 Muharram mourning assembly. 86 | THE SADDEST STORY EVER TOLD Following ʿAbbas Sahib’s death, the tradition of hosting the mehndī mourning assembly was continued, even when the family home shifted to a large plot of land in Yaqutpura, just a few hundred meters from the Alava-ye Qasem shrine. ʿAbbas Sahib’s great-grandson, M. M. Taqui Khan, and his family continue to host one of Hyderabad’s largest and most important mehndī mourning assemblies.3 Each year, several thousand men gather on the busy road outside the house, and more crowd into the spacious courtyard that connects Khan’s house with the family ʿāshūrkhāna. Leading up to the beginning of the men’s majlis, devotees crowd before the Qāsem kā ʿalam (the metal standard bearing Qasem’s name) and wait for one of Khan’s daughters or sons-in-law to tie a red string around the devotee ’s right wrist.This mourning assembly is truly a family affair. Khan’s wife oversees the preparation of the consecrated food (tabarruk) that will later be served to the mourning assembly participants; his daughter, Kulsum, assembles the tray of mehndī; and another daughter visiting from the United States ensures the comfort of the female majlis participants. Because of the practice of purdah, the women and girls remain in the house and watch the men’s majlis through the living room windows. Hearing the majlis is never a problem, as it is broadcast over loudspeakers at deafening levels. As the men and boys arrive and take their places in the courtyard, the anticipation of an encounter with the ḥusaini ethic of these imitable saints creates a palpable energy. For the first six days of Muharram in Hyderabad, the ritual activity builds. On the seventh day, the remembrance of Karbala becomes energized. As Maulana Reza Agha, a high-ranking Shiʿi religious scholar (ʿālim) and popular ẕākir, declared at the beginning of his discourse (khuṭbah), “There are many, many martyrs in this world, but there are two figures whose martyrdom is observed in the majlis more than any others . . . Sakinah Bibi and the orphan [yatīm] of Hasan.”4 Sakinah was the three- or four-year-old daughter of Imam Husain who, the Shiʿa assert, died from her grief in Damascus following the Battle of Karbala. Qasem is the orphan whose father, the second Imam, Hasan, was allegedly poisoned by one of his wives in 669 C.E. On 7 Muharram, the members of Imam Husain’s party found their access to the waters of the Euphrates River cut off, yet the wedding “procession of the thirsty groom and thirsty...

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