Srinagar, June 22 -- By Saqib Ali Mir

The desert plain of Karbala lay under the harsh Iraqi sun when Husayn ibn Ali stood before an army that dwarfed his small caravan.

Men who had travelled with him for weeks watched the horizon fill with soldiers. Women and children waited in tents behind them. Water had become scarce, escape had ceased to be an option, and a political dispute that had simmered for decades now approached its final act.

Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram in 680 C.E., occupies a singular place in Islamic memory. Husayn's martyrdom transformed a local confrontation into a story that still resonates fourteen centuries later.

Karbala, however, emerged from a chain of events that began long before Husayn reached Iraq.

Its...