Ḥadhlam ibn Sutayr said: I came to Kūfah in Muḥarram of the year sixty-one, upon the return of our Master ‘Alī ibn Al-Ḥusayn (may their glory be exalted) with the women from Karbalā’, and the armies surrounded them. The people came out to look at them. When he approached with them on bare-backed camels, the women of Kūfah began to weep and wail. I heard our Master ‘Alī ibn Al-Ḥusayn (may his glory be exalted) saying in a faint voice, worn out by illness, with the yoke around his neck, and his hand chained to his neck: "These women weep, so who killed us?"

He said: And I saw our Mistress Zaynab bint ‘Alī (may their glory be exalted). I never saw a woman more eloquent than her, as if she was speaking from the tongue of Amir Al-Mouminine (may his glory be exalted). He said: She gestured to the people to be silent, so breaths returned, and voices quieted. She said: "All praise is due to Allah, and blessings be upon my father, the Messenger of Allah. As for what follows: O people of Kūfah, O people of cheating and abandonment, may the tear never cease, and may the wailing never calm! Your likeness is that of her who undid her yarn after she had strengthened it, taking your oaths as [a means of] deceit between you. Is there among you anything but the boastful, the proud, the inflamed, the desirous, cowards in encounter, incapable against enemies, breakers of the oath of allegiance, betrayers of the trust? {"So evil is that which your souls presented for you in that Allah became angry with you, and in the punishment you will abide eternally."} Do you weep! Yes, by Allah, weep much and laugh little! You have indeed won its shame and disgrace, and you will never wash away its filth from yourselves forever. The descendant of the Seal of Prophethood, the Master of the youth of Paradise, the refuge of your best, the recourse in your calamity, the sign of your way, and the locus of your proof, you abandoned and killed him! How evil is that which you bear! So, downfall and reversal. Indeed, the effort has failed, the hands are doomed, the transaction has been lost, you have returned with wrath from Allah, humiliation and misery were stamped upon them.'"¹