The Jewel in Lebanon's Crown

By Mohsin Asharia


Baalbek. You may have heard of this archaeological site. It was once home to the largest ever stone block construction in the world, over 5000 years ago. The Romans made it a sacred site, calling it Heliopolis, “City of the Sun”, where they worshipped the god Jupiter. Now home to meticulously preserved Roman temple ruins, this Lebanese town lives on as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and tourist destination.

However, in the shadows of the “Largest Stone in the World” ruins in Baalbek one can catch a glimpse of glimmering blue mosaic minarets. They look strikingly familiar to those seen some 35 miles south in the Shrine of Syeda Zainab in Damascus. Enter the mosque and the familiarities continue, with mirrored tiles and gilded mausoleum, clung to by pilgrims, tears flowing from their cheeks. A banner hangs from the top of the shrine. It reads in Arabic: “Peace be on you, O Khawla daughter of Husayn (as)”.

Lebanon is associated more with beach holidays in Beirut than ziyarat trips, but pilgrims, mainly Iranian and Lebanese, flock on a daily basis to the shrine of Syeda Khawla, one of Imam Husayn’s (as) youngest daughters, in this distant town. Syeda Khawla was reportedly anywhere between a newborn and two years of age when she accompanied the caravan of women and children taken from Karbala to Damascus. Sadly, the young girl never reached Sham and passed away en route in Baalbek.

It is difficult to understand the exact historical details of the shrine, and I am no historian, but Syeda Khawla’s pure body was reported to have been buried by her brother Imam Zainul Abideen (as), who planted a tree and possibly engraved a tombstone by her grave.

Reportedly, around 300 years ago, a member of one of the notable families in Baalbek, namely the Mortada family, saw Syeda Khawla in a dream, where she asked him to divert a stream of water, “Ras al Ayn”, within his orchard, away from her tomb since it was injuring her body. This happened on numerous occasions until the orchard owners decided to excavate the area, where it is said that they discovered the grave of Syeda Khawla, fresh as if it had just been recently buried. They marked her tomb accordingly and built a shrine in remembrance.

 

More recently, in 2005, Iranian funding allowed for a spectacular new shrine to be built, and the mosque is now an epicentre in the Shia-majority city. The original cypress tree thought to have been marked by the 4^th Imam is still intact and pilgrims who wish to have children often invoke Allah for this blessing through this young child.