Mu’awiyah, during his life, made sure of Yazid’s succession by obtainingdeclarations of allegiance to Yazid from various parts of the empire. However,at his death, some resistance to Yazid’s claim appeared in both Madinah andKufa. The resistance eventually consolidated itself around the person of Husain,son of Ali, who left Madinah for Kufa, expecting support from the former alliesof his father. Yazid’s forces, however, easily put an end to Husain’s Kufansupport while the latter was still on the way. Thus it was that with only asmall number of supporters Husain had to face a far larger imperial force atKarbala. When his opponents demanded that he should immediately surrender, andformally swear allegiance to Yazid, Husain countered with three options. Heasked that they should allow him to return to Madinah and a life of quietude,let him proceed to some frontier of the Islamic/Arab Empire and fight there forIslam’s cause, or, as the last resort, take him to Yazid so that he could putthe matter directly before him. Some say that Husain’s opponents refused tobudge from their position and launched an attack, while other traditions claimthat some members of his own party, seeking to avenge the murder at Kufa of oneof their kinsmen, precipitated the battle. In any case, the end was swift.Husain and those of his companions who took part in the battle were killed; thesurviving women and children, and the sick were first taken to Damascus, andthen sent back to Madinah. The dynastic rule launched by Mu’awiyah and Yazidcontinued for several decades, only to be replaced by an endless series ofdynastic rules and a more imperious caliphate—all now forgotten except by thespecialists. On the other hand, the deaths of Husain and his companions aremourned every year by millions of people worldwide, and their lives are stillregarded exemplary by many more.