Nouri Sardar
11th September 2018
Invasions, Occupations, and Recoveries
On the 4th May 1801 (it was on either Eid Al-Ghadir or Ashura day), Wahabis, led by Abd al-Aziz Saud, attacked Karbala, ransacking and looting the shrine, damaging the dharih and the building. They had originally tried to attack Najaf and laid it to siege, but failed to penetrate its famous walls. The Ottoman soldiers protecting the city fled, leaving between 2,000 and 5,000 Karbala inhabitants to be killed. Karbala lacked any kind of tribal army. The slaughter took about 8 hours. An eye-witness account describe the barbarity of the attack, saying,
“12,000 Wahhabis suddenly attacked the mosque of Imam Husayn; after seizing more spoils than they had ever seized after their greatest victories, they put everything to fire and sword…The elderly, women, and children—everybody died by the barbarians’ sword. Besides, it is said that whenever they saw a pregnant woman, they disemboweled her and left the fetus on the mother’s bleeding corpse. Their cruelty could not be satisfied, they did not cease their murders and blood flowed like water. As a result of the bloody catastrophe, more than 4000 people perished… they destroyed the Imam’s shrine and converted it into a trench of abomination and blood. They inflicted the greatest damage on the minarets and the domes, believing those structures were made of gold bricks.” (3)
A Wahabi account of the same attack gives a similar account:
“The Muslims [i.e. the Wahhabis] surrounded Karbala and took it by storm. They killed most of the people in the houses and the markets. They destroyed the dome above al-Husayn’s grave. They took away everything they saw in the shrine and near it, including the coverlet decorated with emeralds, sapphires and pearls which covered the grave… Nearly 2000 people were killed in Karbala.” (4)
Fath-Ali Shah, who was Shah of Iran at the time, was fiercely critical of the Ottomans for failing to confront the Wahabis. While they refused his offer of Iranian troops to defend the town, he sent 500 families to settle in Karbala with the intention of defending it. Following the attack, a wall was built around the city to protect it against attacks, and the scholars of the city established a self-governing republic. The shrine itself recovered from the initial damage inflicted by the Wahabi invasion. Shah repaired the dharih and plated it with silver in 1817. He also plated the shrine with gold and repaired damage to it.
The autonomy was ended when the Ottomans sacked the city in the 1840s and reimposed their rule over it. The Ottomans had regained direct Ottoman control over Baghdad the decade earlier, and the new Ottoman governer, Najib Pasa, was determined to take control over the city. At the time, Karbala was heavily controlled by gangs, who themselves demanded protection money from the city’s inhabitants and pilgrims. These gangs refused to accept Ottoman control, and the Ottomans sieged the city, killing around 5,000 people and desecrating the shrines. It is mentioned in some texts that the massacre was so severe that one had to walk over bodies in order to cross the street. One scholar mentions seeing bodies left clinging to the dharih of Abbas ibn Ali.
“The dead were lying on top of one another to the extent that I could not cross the street except by walking over the corpses. It was as if I walked about invisibly, so many had perished… At the foundation of the mausoleum of our master Abu’l-Fadl ‘Abbas… I descried all about the illumined sepulchre murdered souls clinging to it, beseeching, seeking shelter and refuge within it. I saw most of the dead in the lanes and bazaars.” (5)
Thereafter, many scholars moved to Najaf, which took up the mantle of the center of Shia scholarship. The Ottomans, while not interfering in scholarly organisations, imposed a tighter grip on the city. Karbala began to recover with donations coming in once again from Awadh. The money would be transferred by the British and distributed to descendants of the nine leading scholarly families in Karbala, the custodians of the shrines, students and the poor. Money was also allocated for poor Indian residents, which attracted an Indian populace.
By the early 20th century, Persians made up 75% of the city’s population. Around this time the city was effectively run by the Kammuna family, who were relatives of the Shah in Iran. Under their leadership, the city did not see much of World War I, as the Kammuna family had established contacts with the British and therefore enjoyed self-governance. The Ottomans tried to regain control in 1916 but were driven out by inhabitants. The city’s autonomy ended when the British Empire took over in 1917 and drove the Kammuna family out of power. The British introduced laws that were intended to push the Persian community out, one such example was banning foreigners from holding government posts. The Persian community was reduced to 12% of the city’s population by the 1950s, and were thereafter assimilated into the Iraqi population.
A rebellion against the British was led by a group of scholars in the 20s, which included Mirza Mohammed Taqi Shirazi, who famously issued fatwas demanding the boycott of British tobacco.
