Investigating the Decree of Fasting on the Day of Ashura

Traditions show different decrees about fasting on the day of Ashura. Based on religious and political considerations, some of them consider it obligatory and some others consider it forbidden. The range of these differences began from the early traditionalists and it reached to its peak in the period of Akhbaris, and it has been continued till the present time, in the form of presentation of fatwas and the exegesis of the jurisprudential sources and narrative treatises. Analysis of narrations which admit it and narrations which reject it, based on Jurisprudence of Hadith, can be an important step in understanding the origin of their issuance and their correctness. In this way, understanding the impact of the great Incident of Karbala, the history of the issuance of these traditions, as well as the position of the Imams towards fasting on the day of Ashura, has a significant role in finding a common sense of these narrations. Imam Baqir (AS) and Imam Sadiq (AS), with the anticipation of the result of the act of fasting on the day of Ashura in deflecting the aims of Ashura Uprising, has confronted the schematization and heresy of Umayyad Dynasty, and rejected the issuance and content of these traditions and did not consider the content of these narratives compatible to the Incident of Karbala.