Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei lauded the young Iranian people for their massive presence in Arbaeen ceremony (40th day of mourning for Imam Hossein after he was martyred on the day of Ashoura over 13 centuries ago). RNA - A mourning ceremony marking the Arbaeen was held at the Hussayniyah of Imam Khomeini (RA) with groups of university students as well as Ayatollah Khamenei in attendance in Tehran on Saturday.
At the end of the ceremony, the Supreme Leader delivered a brief speech in which he expressed gratitude for the enthusiastic and sincere mourning ceremony held by the youth.
"The sincerity and (spiritual) illumination of you dear ones are very precious and I always ask God to keep you and me perpetually steadfast on the right path," he said.
"If you are steadfast on the right path, the country will improve, and the world and the mankind will benefit from the outcomes," Ayatollah Khamenei underlined.
Imam Hossein (PBUH) was martyred in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that's home to the Imam's holy shrine.
In the battle, Imam Hossein (PBUH) was decapitated and his body mutilated by Yazid's armies. All of Imam Hossein's male family members, relatives, friends, soldiers who all together formed a 72-member army were beheaded in an unequal war with a 30,000-strong army of the enemy in the desert of Karbala.
The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson for the Shiites.
Imam Hossein's martyrdom - recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song - remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to Shiites, who make up a majority of the Muslim population in Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Bahrain.
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