The Ashura Mournings as Viewed by Orientalist Tourists

The Ashura episode took place at Karbala in 61 AH/680. It has since drawn the attention of not only Muslim scholars but also influenced non-Muslims researchers and Orientalists. By now, it has been more than a century that there are certain Orientalist research groups in the west that study various aspects of the event of Ashura and its impacts. Although Orientalists made chiefly non-Muslim communities acquinted with the event of Ashura, they have formed their iwn, idiosyncratic conceptions of this movement. There have been many drawbacks in their writings on Ashura, among them, their reliance on less authoritative sources, negligence of the prayerscand ziarat-texts issued by the Infallible Imams in favor of Imam al-Husayn and his companions.