Islam is, at its foundation, the word and legacy of one being: the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It was he who declared the Quran to be the divine word of God, and it is his Hadith, his own words and actions, that form the second pillar of the faith. These two things together are what over a billion Muslims across the world ground their belief in. But what happened to his family after him is where histories diverge, and where one of the most profound and misunderstood traditions in all of Islam begins.

At the heart of Shia Islam lies a tragedy. In 680 AD, the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussain ibn Ali, was brought to the scorched plains of Karbala, Iraq, not by choice, but by force.

There, he was martyred alongside 72 companions and nearly every male member of his family. The women and children who survived were not spared grief. They were imprisoned, paraded, and taken to Damascus, to the court of Yazid, the man who had ordered their destruction. And there, even their right to mourn was denied. They were forbidden from grieving the massacre of their own family.

It was Imam Hussain's sister, Syeda Zainab, and his son, Imam Zain ul Abideen, who, upon their eventual release, took it upon themselves to ensure the tragedy of Karbala would never be forgotten. From their courage was born the concept of Azadari: the collective mourning and lamenting of the hardships endured by the Prophet's family. Every year since, the Shia community commemorates the great sacrifice of Hussain by observing a sixty-day mourning period across the Islamic months of Muharram and Safar. The first ten days culminate on Ashura, the day Imam Hussain was martyred.

But the persecution did not end on those plains. Of the eleven Imams of the Shia who followed Hussain, not one died a natural death. They were poisoned, imprisoned, or martyred. The progeny of the Prophet lived under constant threat across centuries. This sustained persecution gave rise to a practice known as Taqiyya: the concealment of one's faith as an act of survival. For generations, Shia Muslims carried their beliefs quietly, carefully, passing them down in whispers to protect themselves and their families from violence.

And so, across centuries, many of them and their followers........

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