Ali Zayn al-Abidin
c. 659 CE–c. 713 CE · Medina
Ali ibn al-Husayn, called Zayn al-Abidin ("ornament of the worshippers") and al-Sajjad ("the one who prostrates much"), was a great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. Sources place his birth around 38 AH (c. 658-659 CE), most likely in Medina. His mother is named by early reporters such as Ibn Sa'd as an umm walad (a freed slave-mother); the popular later tradition that she was a captured Sasanian princess, "Shahrbanu," is regarded by modern scholars as a legend that grew up in the ninth century, not as attested history.
He is best known as the son who survived the massacre at Karbala in 61 AH (680 CE), where his father al-Husayn and many kin were killed by Umayyad forces. Reports agree he was spared because he was too ill to fight; he was then taken captive with the women of the household to Kufa and on to the Umayyad capital, Damascus, before being allowed home to Medina.
There he lived a quiet, scholarly, devotional life, remaining politically neutral during the civil wars of the period. Even non-Shia tradition esteemed him, and Sunni authorities such as al-Zuhri transmitted from him. Shia tradition attributes to him al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (a celebrated collection of supplications) and the Risalat al-Huquq ("Treatise on Rights"). He died around 94-95 AH (c. 712-714 CE) and was buried in the Baqi cemetery in Medina. The claim that he was poisoned on Umayyad orders is a traditional Shia account, not independently confirmed.
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Medina
What they did here
Born c. 38 AH (658-659 CE), into the household of al-Husayn ibn Ali; sources most often name Medina, though some report Kufa, so the exact birthplace is not firmly fixed. His mother is described by early sources (Ibn Sa'd, Ibn Qutayba) as an umm walad; the Sasanian-princess origin is a later legend.
About Medina
Medina (al-Madina, formerly Yathrib), in the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, is the city to which the Prophet Muhammad emigrated in 622 (the hijra), establishing the first Muslim community; it contains his tomb and is Islam's second-holiest city. As the cradle of early Islamic law and hadith scholarship it remained a major centre of learning that drew the scholars connected here.
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