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Hundreds of Shia Muslims gather around the Husayn Mosque in Karbala after making the Pilgrimage on foot during Arba'een.

Arba'een (Arabic: اربعين, means "forty"), or Chehlum, as it is known by Urdu-speaking Muslims, is a Shi'a religious holiday that occurs forty days after the Day of Ashurah, the commemoration of the martyrdom by beheading of Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad which falls on the 20th day of the month of Safar. Husayn and 72 supporters died in the Battle of Karbala in the year 61 AH (680 CE). Forty days is the usual length of the time of mourning in many Islamic cultures.

The occasion reminds the faithful of the core message behind Husayn's martyrdom: establishing justice and fighting injustice, no matter what its incarnation -- a message that strongly influenced subsequent Shi'a uprisings against the perceived tyranny of Umayyad and Abbasid rule.

In the first Arba'een gathering in the year 62 AH, Jabir ibn Abdullah, a companion of the Prophet, was one of the people who performed a pilgrimage to the burial site of Husayn. Due to his infirmity and probable blindness, he was accompanied by Atiyya bin Saad. His visit coincided with that of the surviving female members of the Prophet's family and Husayn's son and heir Ali, who had all been held captive in Damascus by Yazid I, the Umayyad Caliph. Ali ibn Husayn had been too ill to participate in the Battle of Karbala, but looked on from the sidelines.

The city of Karbala in Iraq, the third holy place of Shi'a Islam, is the center of the proceedings where, in a show of humility, many crawl through the streets of the city while others fall on their hands and knees as they approach the Shrines of Husayn and his brother Abbas ibn Ali.

Observance of Arba'een in Karbala was banned for many years when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the observance in April 2003 was broadcast worldwide.^[1]

While Arba'een is always on the same day of the Islamic calendar, the date on the Gregorian calendar varies from year to year due to differences between the two calendars, since the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar and the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar. Furthermore, the method used to determine when each Islamic month begins varies from country to country (see Islamic calendar).

• 2005: March 31
• 2006: March 21
• 2007: March 10

1. ^ Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival. New York: Norton, 2006; pp 18–19.

• ARBAEEN by Mahmoud Ayoub, An article of Encyclopedia Iranica