Tragedy of Karbala and Other Poems

In the year 680 CE, 61 years after the Great Migration, Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and his family were making a migration of their own to Kufa. An ambush had been carefully set in motion by the very caliph whose despotic regime they were fleeing from. The family was ensnared on their way to Kufa and taken to a place known as Karbala. There the family was denied provision and water from the nearby Euphrates, tortured in the heat as armies of the caliph amassed, then viciously slaughtered on the 10th day of Muharram, known as Ashura. Children and infants were not spared the brutality. The heads of those slain were decapitated and placed on spears. The survivors were stripped of their possessions, chained, and marched to Kufa, then from Kufa to the caliph's court in Damascus.

The Muslim followers of these traditions are committed to never forgetting the tragic events at Karbala. Therefore, a culture of commemoration, lamentation, and elegy has been locally adopted by adherents in numerous languages and dialects throughout the world. However, for English, the culture is only now developing.

For the past 25 years, Kalyan Ali Balaven has traveled the world as a rare and popular English elegist for the tragic events of Karbala. As a historian, educator, and poet, his original pieces draw from the collective history of Karbala and help retell the tragic story in skillful poetic succession as they would be traditionally recited over the first 10 nights of Muharram.