An Najaf, Iraq: This city gets its name from an old legend. The legend holds that there had been a mountain where the city now sits. One of Noah’s sons refused to enter Noah’s ark on time. He wanted to sit atop the mountain to see where the waters that would cover the earth came from. While he was watching for water, the mountain crumbled, and he drowned. After the flood passed, a river appeared at the site. A few years later, it dried up. And that’s how the city got its name, which means, ‘the dried river.’

Legend also has it that Abraham – the great grand daddy of the Semitic religions – had come to the town with his son. The people of the town wanted them to stay, to make An Najaf their home. Abraham agreed, provided that he could buy a certain plot of land for farming. His son protested. He felt the plot would not be good farmland. But Abraham assured him that there would come a time when the land would be home to a tomb, a shrine from which 70,000 people would enter Paradise.

This city contains the Imam Ali mosque. Legend has it that buried in a tomb in the mosque is Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib: the Son of the Ka’aba, the Martyr of the Mihrab, the Commander of the Faithful, the Door of the Greatest Prophet’s Knowledge.

An Najah is the spiritual center of the Shia branch of Islam. It is a town with mosques and tombs and religious schools. It is, to the Shias, more significant than the Vatican is to Roman Catholics.

An Najaf is home to fact and rumor as well as legend:

Fact: After the U.S. army and allied forces drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in 1991, then President Bush encouraged the Shias to rise up against Saddam. And they did, particularly in An Najah.

Fact: Iranian-based Shia fighters entered Iraq to support the uprising against Saddam.

Rumor: It was the movement of those Iranian fighters that caused then President Bush to withdraw all support for the uprising he encouraged.

Rumor: In 1991, al-Khoei was sent by his father – Grand Ayatollah Abul Qasim al-Khoei – to find out when the allied forces would come to assist the uprising; when he reached French forces, he was told that General Schwarzkopf, commander of the allied forces, would come to meet him, but Schwarzkopf never showed up.

Fact: Al-Khoei fled to London where he lived until his recent return to Iraq.

Rumor: After the 1991 uprising, Saddam’s security agents regularly searched, harassed, and arrested Shia worshipers in An Najaf. Shia ministers and scholars were harassed, assaulted, and arrested at and near the city’s theological schools and mosques. Tens of thousands of Shias were told that they were Persian, not Arabian, and were deported to Iran.

Fact and rumor: Even before the 1991 uprising, Saddam’s government did much to eliminate the Mirjaiyat, the Shia religious leadership in An Najaf.

Ayatollah Qasim Shubar was arrested in 1979 and has not been seen since;

Ayatollah Sayyid Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister were executed in 1980;

Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Qazwini was arrested in 1980 and has not been seen since;

Sayyid Mehdi al-Hakim, the eldest son Grand Ayatollah Mohsin al-Hakim was killed in 1981;

Ayatollah Abul Sahib al-Hakim and 16 members of his family were killed in 1983;

Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Taqi al-Jawahary was arrested in the mid-80s and has not been seen since.

Fact and rumor: After the 1991 uprising, things just got worse.

Ayatollahs Ala’ad-din Bahr al-Aloom and Aiz ad-Din Bahr al-Aloom and over a dozen members of their family were arrested by security agents in 1991 and have not been seen since;

Grand Ayatollah Abul Qasim al-Khoei, age 93 and the senior Shia clergyman, died under house arrest in 1992 after intensive interrogation;

Over 100 of al-Khoei’s associates have not been seen since their arrest in 1992;

Taghi, al-Khoes’s brother was assassinated in 1994;

Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Murtada al-Borojourdi, age 69, was killed in 1998;

Grand Ayatollah Murtadha Ali Mohammad al-Borojourdi and two of his followers were shot and killed near the Imam Ali Mosque in 1998;

Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Mirza Ali al-Gharawi, age 68, was killed in 1998 along with his son and his son-in-law;

Ayatollah Sheikh Bashir al-Hussaini escaped an attempt on his life in 1999;

Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, age 66, was killed in 1999 along with two of his sons in downtown An Najaf; they were killed shortly after al-Sadr led morning prayers despite a government order that he not lead prayer; after his death, there were large protests outside the mosques in An Najaf; in Baghdad, tens of thousands of Shia gathered to protest, and government security forces – using automatic weapons and armored vehicles – killed hundreds of protestors; afterwards, hundreds more were arrested; similar events took place in other cities, including An Najaf;

Since al-Sadr’s death, security forces have conducted mortar and artillery attacks against a number of cities and villages dominated by Shia; security forces have regularly used automatic weapons and hand grenades against protestors; tens of thousands have been imprisoned, and many have been executed.

Fact: on 3 April, the U.S. army entered An Najaf and saw the first signs of popular approval for what it was doing. But as troops approached the Imam Ali mosque, cheers turned to jeers, and the crowd blocked the army’s advance. An army of Infidels could liberate the town from that brutal, Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, but it could not approach this holy site. After a tense standoff, the army backed away, and the crowd had a whole new reason to rejoice.

Fact: on 3 April, al-Khoei arrived in An Najaf. He organized a committee to maintain order, to prevent looting, and to prevent personal vendettas like those that occurred during the 1991 uprising.

Rumor: Al-Khoei arrived in Iraq with $3 million from the U.S. government, and handed out money to the Shias in An Najaf to win their favor. He had said that the Shias there had become so poor that they would follow anyone with money: “All you have to do is mention the name of the Imam Ali and say: ‘Here is the money and here is heaven’ and they will be with you. . . . Money and Islam and heaven is a powerful combination!’”

Fact: On 24 and 25 April, a contingent of several hundred teen-aged men threw stones at U.S. Marines patrolling An Najaf. The Marines were told that the youths mistook them for British soldiers, that the locals have grievances against the British dating back to colonial times.

About the Author: Mister Thorne is a mathematics editor living in San Francisco. To contact him, send e-mail to lyricalreckoner@yahoo.com.

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