UpcomingArbaeen · Shahada (Witness) - Arbaeen 1448 (2026) Series · Session 6

Arbaeen Day 1448/2026 - Special Program

Premieres Tuesday, 4 August 2026

The sword won the tenth of Muharram. The blood won the fortieth of Safar. This is the Day of Arbaeen — the complete forenoon programme for the twentieth of Safar 1448, and the close of the Shahada (Witness) series. Forty days ago we left Imam Husayn, peace and blessings be upon him, on the burning plain of Karbala — killed, unburied, and alone. This morning we come back to the grave, at the hour Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, peace and blessings be upon him, appointed for the visitation of the fortieth: when the day has risen high. This is the hour the blind old companion Jabir ibn Abdillah al-Ansari reached that grave, led across the desert by Atiyya — the first pilgrim on a road that fourteen centuries of feet have walked since. At the heart of the programme is the Arbaeen maqtal — The Victory of Blood, the Legacy of Witness — the long road of the captives from Karbala to Kufa to Damascus and home again, and the testimony they bore along every mile of it. It is told, as this whole series has been told, in the voice of the Awaited One, Imam al-Mahdi, may God hasten his return. On Ashura that voice broke. Today, at the grave, it speaks whole. There are grades to the witness. There is the witness sealed in blood — Husayn and the seventy-two, who testified with their bodies at noon. And there is the witness carried in word, in chains, in survival — Sayyedah Zaynab, the ailing Imam Ali Zayn al-Abedeen, and the little ones of the House, who testified in the tyrant's own hall and refused to be silenced or to disappear. The first witness is the more glorious. The second is the one that carried the first out of the desert and into every century since. A witness sealed in blood and never spoken of again, the empire could have buried. It was the witness in word that the empire could not kill — and that is why the blood was victorious over the sword. The programme closes with Ziyarat Arbaeen, the salutation Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq taught his companion Safwan ibn Mihran al-Jammal — recited here on the very day and at the very hour it was given for, in a full poetic English rendering made so that every word can be understood. It does not end the way Ziyarat Ashura ends. It does not close in grief. It closes in a pledge: our help is made ready for you, until God gives you His leave — so, with you, with you, and never with your enemy. Then the two rak'ah of the visitation, the supplication that follows it, and the question this series has carried from the very first field to this grave, and now leaves with each of us for the rest of our lives: Where is your brother? Essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand Arbaeen and the largest annual gathering on earth, the captivity of the Ahl al-Bayt, the sermons of Sayyedah Zaynab in the courts of Kufa and Damascus, the meaning of Ziyarat Arbaeen, and the theology of shahada — witness — that Karbala made permanent. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome 00:15 Introduction — The Meaning of the Fortieth Day 02:50 Adhaan 07:23 A View from Karbala and Damascus 10:43 Quranic Verses 12:29 Maqtal of Arbaeen — The Victory of Blood, the Legacy of Witness 35:23 Introduction to the Nohe 35:58 Nohe 1 — Hear the Chains 43:54 Nohe 2 — We Will Rise 53:34 Ziyarat Arbaeen — A Poetic English Rendering 1:02:33 The Two Rak'ah of the Visitation 1:09:55 Supplication After the Prayer 1:13:46 Closing