The origin of the name Karbala

Faqar Saadoun Hassan
Asst. Lect. Haider Diaa Salman

Karbala consists of two Assyrian words, Karb meaning sanctuary or temple, which gives it a religious character that people go to to get closer to God, and in Aramaic, it means the sanctuary of the god. As for the origin of the name Karbala in the language mentioned by Arab lexicographers, Karbala means softness in the feet, and it is said that he came walking in a slender manner as if he was walking in mud or wading in water. (Al-Ansari, 349:2008)

Historians and researchers were able to reach knowledge of the word Karbala from the coining of the word and its linguistic analysis:
A- It was said that it was coined from the Arabic word Kur Babylon, which is a group of ancient Babylonian villages, including Nineveh, which existed since ancient times, and is now a series of archaeological hills extending from the south of the Hindiya Dam to the mouth of the Al-Alqami River in the marshes. (Al-Ta’mah, 18:1964)
B- Al-Ghadiriyah: It is the flat lands that were cultivated for Bani Asad and is located today north of Karbala and is known as the lands of Al-Hussainiya.
T- Karbala: With emphasis on the letter “l” and is located east and south of Karbala.
Th- Karbala or Aqar Babel: It is a village in the northwest of Al-Ghadiriyah and its ruins contain important antiquities.
C- Al-Nawawis: It was a general cemetery for Christians before the Islamic conquest and is located in the lands of Al-Hussainiya district near Nineveh. The ruins located in the northwest of Karbala, which are known as Old Karbala, have been extracted from some ceramic pots in which the Babylonians used to bury their dead.
Yaqut Al-Hamawi referred in his dictionary to the meaning of Karbala for several possibilities, including Karbala with an extension, which is the place where Al-Hussain bin Ali (AS) was killed at the edge of the desert near Kufa. (Al-Khalili, 1965:110) It was also called Bakaer, which is the low-lying lands that include the site of the grave of Al-Hussein (peace be upon him) to the corridor of his holy spot. The water came to the water around it during the reign of Al-Mutawakkil Al-Abbasi. The water was spacious and extended with a series of extended hills and connected hills in the northern, western and southern sides of it, forming for the onlookers a semi-circle, the entrance of which is the eastern front, from which the visitor heads to the resting place of our master Al-Abbas bin Ali (peace be upon him). In addition to what was mentioned by the magazine Al-Iraq Al-Jadeed in its topic, A Historical Glimpse of Karbala, where it said that the origin of the interpretation of the name of the city of Al-Hussein goes back to the fact that it is Assyrian, composed of two words, Karba-Ilu, meaning near the god.