By: the student Muhammad Riyad Kazim‍
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Supervised by: Lect. Yasmine Hatem Badid‍
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The historical Stages that the Governorate Went Through:‍
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The city went through successive historical stages that led to its continuous development. In the year (65 AH, 684 AD) Al-Mukhtar bin Ubaidah Al-Thaqafi surrounded the grave of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him) with a wall like a mosque and built floors on it. Thus, Al-Mukhtar was the first to place a stone‍
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dome of bricks and pebbles, and built around it a number of foundations for the current city of Karbala (8).‍
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As for the current construction above the grave, it dates back to the period (247 AH – 941 AD), when Al-Muntasir Billah ordered the reconstruction of the grave (which his father Al-Mutawakkil Ala Allah Al-Abbassi had demolished). This was in the year 247 AH, as he did not stop at demolishing the grave, but also demolished the houses and floors around it, and ordered the irrigation of The location of his grave and preventing people from visiting it, and Al-Muntasir Billah called people to visit him, so Muslims in his days began to flock to Karbala and populate it, and the first to inhabit it was Taj al-Din Ibrahim al-Mujab, the grandson of Imam Musa bin Jaafar (peace be upon him). The residents began to build their homes around the shrine (9). The city flourished during the era of the Buyids, as Adud al-Dawla al-Buwayhi visited it in the year (278 AH – 980 AD) and ordered the construction of the shrine of our master al-Abbas (peace be upon him) with a dome of bricks above it. He also surrounded the city with a wall that is considered the first wall in the history of the city, and he established taverns and markets between and around the two shrines, and thus the city developed greatly and the people felt safe and stable, so Karbala appeared during his era prosperous and flourishing culturally and urbanly (10). The condition of the city worsened during the period in which The Seljuks ruled Iraq (447-590) (1055-1193 AD). It was an ambiguous and turbulent period. Its area shrank due to the deterioration that affected some of its neighborhoods, and its economic situation worsened due to the loss of security and stability in it and the looting of the holy grave in the year (448 AH). Then, the city flourished again in the late Abbasid state until the Mongols entered Baghdad in the year (656 AH – 1258 AD). The Mongols’ cultural backwardness was reflected in most of the cities of Iraq, such as Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Erbil. Although the destruction and devastation affected a number of cities, the religious cities and their surroundings were spared from destruction and sabotage. In fact, the cities of the holy shrines received attention from some Mongol sultans who embraced Islam‍
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(8) Al-Kalidar, Abdul Jawad, History of Karbala and the Shrine of Al-Hussein, Al-Haidariyah Press, Najaf, 1967: p. 29).‍
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(9) Al-Issa, Ali Abbas Ali, Religious Tourism in Karbala Governorate, Master’s Thesis Submitted to the Council of the College of Administration and Economics‍
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(10) Al-Kalidar, Muhammad Hassan, A Brief History of Karbala, Al-Irshad Press, Baghdad, 1971: p. 19).‍