Muawiya’s governor barred the way with troops and
diverted the mourners to the cemetery. The last thing
Muawiya wanted was to have Hasan enshrined
alongside the Prophet. He was all too aware of the
potential power of shrines
A different account of Hasan’s forced resting place lays
the blame squarely at the door of another controversial
ɹgure. In the years since the Battle of the Camel, Aisha
had become the doyenne of Medinan society, the aging
dowager who settled disputes, arranged marriages, and,
whenever she needed to, which was often, invoked her
memories of life with Muhammad as a means of
enforcing her wishes. She seemed to have made her
peace with the past, but when she heard that Hasan’s
funeral procession was heading for the mosque, all the
old resentment came surging up again.
The son of her nemesis Ali to lie alongside the
Prophet? Under the ɻoor of the chamber that had once
been hers and that still legally belonged to her? She could
not allow such a thing. She gave orders for a gray mule
to be saddled and rode out to intercept the procession as
i t wound through the narrow alleys near the mosque,
stopping it in its tracks. “That chamber is still my
property,” she announced. “I do not grant permission for
anyone else to be buried there.”
The crowd of mourners came to a halt, and their
numbers soon swelled with others, attracted by the