Husayn was offered allegiance to Yazid and refused, traveling toward Kufa on a promise of support that evaporated. Surrounded at Karbala, his camp was cut off from the Euphrates for three days before the battle in which he and roughly seventy-two companions, including his infant son, were killed. Shia Islam does not treat this as a past defeat to be mourned politely; the ritual insists on the wound staying open, because a closed wound would let the injustice become history.