FestivalIslamic
Muharram / Ashura
No rule yet
Nobody has written a rule for this observance yet, so the calendar does not put it on a day. A name with a made-up date beside it would be worse than a name on its own.
Its picture waits on review by the tradition's own authority, so it is not shown yet.
In short
Ashura falls on the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, and carries more than one important layer of meaning.
The story
Ashura falls on the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, and carries more than one important layer of meaning. For Shia Muslims it is above all a day of mourning for Imam Husayn, grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who was killed with members of his small group at Karbala in 680 CE after refusing to submit to a political authority he regarded as unjust. His stand became a lasting symbol of moral courage, sacrifice and resistance to oppression. Majlis gatherings, elegies and processions remember Karbala, and practices differ across communities. In Sunni tradition Ashura is also associated with a voluntary fast, linked in hadith to gratitude for the deliverance of Prophet Musa and the Israelites from Pharaoh. Because these traditions developed with different emphases, Ashura can be both a solemn commemoration of Karbala and a day of fasting and remembrance. Its shared moral themes include faith, justice, endurance and accountability before God.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Why it matters
Muharram / Ashura is significant to the community that observes it and helps preserve religious, family and cultural continuity.
What people do
Majlis are held through the first ten nights and the events are recounted. Processions carry the alam and the taziya - a model of the tomb - and matam is performed. Water and sherbet are given away in the street, because the killing at Karbala was preceded by the cutting off of the water.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Told differently elsewhere
The two observances are not variants of one another: one is a funeral, the other a fast. In Lucknow, Hyderabad, Karachi and the Gulf the Shia processions are public and enormous; in Indonesia and much of North Africa the day passes as a fast and little else.
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