Sakina bint Husayn

Sakīna bint al-Ḥusayn (between 667 and 671 CE – 8 April 735), also known as Āmina, was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. She was the daughter of Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam, and Rubab bint Imra al-Qais. Sakina was a young child in 680 at Karbala, where she witnessed the massacre of her father and his supporters by the forces of the Umayyad caliph Yazid. The women and children, among them Sakina, were marched to the capital Damascus, where they were paraded in the streets and then imprisoned. She later returned to Medina, where she died at the age of sixty-eight and was buried in al-Baqi cemetery. She is noted for her eloquence and poetry, and for her patronage of contemporary artists, by some accounts. Birth Sakina or Sukayna was the epithet given to her by her mother, while her name is variously given in the sources as Āmina or Amīna or Umayma. The last one is less likely, however. Her father was Husayn ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam and the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Sakina was born to the first wife of Husayn, Rubab, who was the daughter of Imra' al-Qays ibn Adi, a chief of the Banu Kalb tribe. After remaining childless for some years, Sakina was the first child of the couple and possibly Husayn's eldest daughter, although some have reported that his eldest daughter was Fatima, born to Umm Ishaq bint Talha, the widow of Hasan ibn Ali, whom Husayn married to fulfil the last wishes of his brother. Sakina was born in Medina, but her birthdate is not known with certainty. Various reports give the years 47, 49, or 51 AH, that is, circa 671 CE. The Islamicist Wilferd Madelung places her birth sometime after the 661 assassination of her grandfather Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shia Imam. Battle of Karbala (680) and captivity Husayn denounced the accession of the Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Mu'awiya in 680. When pressed by Yazid's agents to pledge his allegiance, Husayn first left his hometown of Medina for Mecca and later set off for Kufa in modern-day Iraq, accompanied by his family and a small group of supporters. Among them was Sakina, a young child at the time, aged between five and twelve. Their small caravan was intercepted and massacred in Karbala, near Kufa, by the Umayyad forces who first surrounded them for some days and cut off their access to the nearby river Euphrates.