Crossing Chankharpul into Old Dhaka on a weekday afternoon, the first thing a visitor notices is the colour black. Along the narrow lanes leading to the Mughal-era Hoseni Dalan, black banners hang from balconies and cornices, bearing elegies to the martyrs of Karbala. On makeshift tables, volunteers pour glasses of sherbet for passersby, a gesture of hospitality that cuts through the humid pre-monsoon air. Men, women and children, ignoring sudden showers or the midday glare, stream into the historic imambara, some standing in silent reverence before the tazia, others lighting candles to fulfil a vow or dropping money into donation boxes. This is the run-up to Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, in one of South Asia’s oldest centres of Shia devotion.

On the morning of Ashura, a Friday this year, the tazia procession will set out from Hoseni Dalan at 10 a.m., winding through Nazimuddin Road, Begum Bazar and Chawkbazar before heading to Dhanmondi Lake for a symbolic immersion. The ritual, organisers say, has drawn not only Shia faithful but also large numbers of Sunni Muslims for generations, making it a fixture of Dhaka’s cultural calendar. Security remains tight, a legacy of the militant attack on the 2015 Ashura procession; police and rapid-action battalion personnel are deployed throughout the area. Yet the atmosphere, as described by participants, is one of sombre commemoration rather than fear.

Ashura’s significance, however, stretches far beyond the lanes of Old Dhaka and far back in time. Historians of religion note that the tenth of Muharram was already a day of fasting and sanctity in pre-Islamic Arabia, when the Quraysh would clothe the Kaaba in a new covering. Jewish communities in Medina observed it as the day God delivered the Israelites from Pharaoh, a tradition the Prophet Muhammad initially endorsed before distinguishing Muslim practice by recommending an additional fast on the ninth or eleventh. The martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala in 61 AH (680 CE) later layered a profound grief onto the date, particularly for Shia Muslims, transforming it into a day of mourning, processions and elegiac poetry. In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, Friday sermons on Ashura this year addressed not only the Karbala narrative but also the spiritual discipline of guarding the heart in an age of fitna (trials) and the call to use Muharram as a pivot toward greater obedience. One sermon, delivered on the same Friday, took up the theme of educating children through example rather than shouting, tying the sacred month to a national family day and underscoring how the day’s moral introspection extends into the domestic sphere.

Across the Muslim world, the day is marked in sharply different registers. In Nigeria, religious scholars caution against innovations: treating Ashura as a festival, avoiding marriages in Muharram out of superstition, or holding public mourning rituals that the Prophet, they argue, did not sanction. Instead, they emphasise voluntary fasting, charity and repentance. In Indonesia, a parallel tradition has grown around caring for orphans during Muharram, with mosques and foundations distributing school supplies and organising educational outings. The head of the Dompet Dhuafa foundation, Ahmad Juwaini, told reporters that the month should serve as a reminder that orphans need sustained support, not one-off handouts. These varied observances, from Dhaka’s tazia to Jakarta’s orphan programmes, reflect a single date that functions as a prism, refracting local histories, theological commitments and social needs.

As dusk falls on Ashura in Dhaka, the Hoseni Dalan will host a special majlis known as ‘sama-e-gariba’. The lights inside the imambara will be extinguished, and the faithful will sit in darkness, recalling the desolation of the survivors of Karbala. In that deliberate absence of light, the day’s many layers—ancient fast, prophetic tradition, political martyrdom, communal charity—converge into a silence that speaks across centuries.