(2002 est. pop. 550,000). Karbala is a city in central Iraq, eighty-eight kilometers southwest of Baghdad. It is one of the holiest cities of Shiʿa Islam (adherents of the Shiʿa branch of Islam today account for one-tenth of the world's Muslim population) and a center of pilgrimage. Prior to their mass expulsion during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1990), people of Iranian descent constituted one-half of the city's population.
In 680 CE the plain upon which Karbala later rose was the site of a battle between the army of the Umayyad caliph (the spiritual and political leader of followers of Sunni Islam, the largest branch of Islam) and a small band led by Husayn ibn ʿAli (c.
626–680), the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, the third imam of Twelver Shiʿia Islam (the dominant sect of Shiʿa Islam), and its foremost symbol of martyrdom. It is believed that after the defeat of his rebellion, Husayn's decapitated body was buried where it fell. A few years later his tomb had already become a center of pilgrimage, and by the mid-eighth century a shrine was built over it. The shrine was damaged and rebuilt several times, most notably in 1801 by desert nomads and in 1991 during Baghdad's suppression of the mass rebellion that followed the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991). Today the sanctuary surrounding the shrine, with its three minarets, gilded dome, mosque, and adjoining Shiʿa college, is one of the greatest in the Islamic world. Nearby is a smaller sanctuary and shrine built for alʿAbbas, Husayn's half-brother and standard bearer. Because popular Shiʿite belief guarantees paradise to all who are buried in Karbala, the outskirts of the city are dominated by large cemeteries. To the west of the city are the ruins of al-Ukhaydhir, an early Abbasid castle.
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