The Mourning of Muharram (also known as the Remembrance of Muharram or Muharram Observances) is a set of commemoration rituals observed by Shia Muslims, as well as some non-Muslims.
The commemoration falls in Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar.
Family members and companions accompanying him were killed or subjected to humiliation. The commemoration of this event during the yearly mourning season, with the Day of Ashura as the focal date, serves to define Shia communal identity. Muharram observances are carried out in countries with a sizable Shia population.
Shia Muslims mourn during Muharram, although Sunnis do so to a much lesser extent. Storytelling, weeping, self-flagellation, and re-enactments of the Battle of Karbala form the crux of the observances.
In a rather bizarre custom, people go on mourning processions to remember their sacrifice and whip themselves using chains to honour the sacrifice.
Acts of flagellation are a symbolic reenacting of the blood-shedding of Husayn ibn Ali. The previous record of this dramatic act reaches back to the seventeenth century practice in the Caucasus and in Azerbaijan, and was observed in the nineteenth century by the Shia Twelvers in central and southern cities of Iran and the Arab world.
There were various types of flagellation including striking of chests with the palms, striking of backs with chains, and cutting foreheads with knives or swords.In 1993, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran issued a fatwa calling flagellation wrong, fake and false.
