The Invitation to Husayn, and the Law School of Iraq

When Muawiya died in 680, letters went from Kufa to Husayn in Mecca urging him to come and lead them. He sent his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil ahead to test the ground; the governor arrived, the promised support melted away, and Muslim was executed. Husayn set out anyway and was intercepted at Karbala, where he and his companions were killed. The failure of the Kufans to rise runs through Shia devotional literature as a standing reproach and a warning about the distance between what people say and what they do.

Four years later a movement calling itself the Penitents marched out of Kufa to die in battle in expiation for having failed him, and the revolt of al-Mukhtar in the city shortly afterwards made the avenging of Husayn its programme. Both belong to the origins of Shia political feeling.

Kufa's other legacy is legal and textual. Its scholars were known for reasoning from principle where no explicit text applied, in contrast to the Medinan preference for inherited practice, and out of that milieu came Abu Hanifa, whose students founded the school of law that bears his name and that is now followed by more Muslims than any other. Kufa also gave the Quran one of its canonical readings: the transmission of Asim through his student Hafs is the recitation printed in most editions worldwide, so an eighth century teaching circle in this city governs how the text is read aloud today.