Ashura Day & Italian Gardens: On Tuesday January 30, 2007 I came to Hyde Park close to Marble Arch where Shi’ite Muslims were gathering for their annual Ashura Day Procession from there to the Notting Hill Mosque.
The procession celebrates the life and ideals of Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet, and mourns his martyrdom at Karbala in Iraq in 61 AH (AD680.) His example in dying for human dignity, human rights and the aims of his faith inspire them in trying to live a good and moral life and they seek Husain’s blessing on their daily lives.
Here is part of the post I wrote in 2007 of the event (with slight corrections):
Several thousand people joined in the annual procession in London, making their way slowly from Hyde Park to the mosque in Notting Hill. Many wore black, and all joined in the chanting of “Ya Husain” accompanied by the beating of drums clashing of sanj (cymbals) and the blowing of trumpets, along with calls to prayer. Those taking part beat their breasts, largely in a symbolic fashion, although there were groups of young men who from time to time swung their arms vigorously.
The Ashura Procession is impressive to see, and everyone taking part seemed to welcome my interest in what was taking place and were happy to be photographed.
The weather was dull and it soon began to get dark; it didn’t help that I had one of my fiddle-fingers technical disaster days, where I kept finding I’d altered the camera settings without being aware of doing so. But it was the kind of occasion where it would be hard not to get some interesting images.
The procession was slow-moving – I wrote “it was moving at a speed that would not have embarrassed a snail” and by the time it reached Lancaster Gate I had taken many pictures and also needed a rest. Dusk was approaching rapidly – and there had been little enough light all day. I went into the Italian Gardens and took a few pictures there in the falling gloom, experimenting a little with flash for some of them.
The Grade II listed Italian Gardens were Prince Albert’s idea, and built for Queen Victoria in 1862 as a part of the gardens of Kensington Palace which had been opened to the public in 1841. Albert had previously created an Italian garden at their Isle of Wight Osborne House.
The gardens were designed by some of the big names of the day. Sir Charles Barry and Robert Richardson Banks designed the Pump House (now a shelter), Sir James Pennethorne the overall layout, and the reliefs and sculptures were by the unfortunately named John Thomas. The first monument in the garden erected in 1862 by public subscription was a statue by William Calder Marshall of Charles Jenner, the pioneer of vaccination against smallpox. The gardens were renovated a few years ago.
The gardens are at the point where the River Westbourne (known by a dozen different names at various times and places) once flowed into Hyde Park. The river comes from various sources in West Hampstead and Brondesbury, flowing through Kilburn and through Hyde Park (where it was dammed in 1730 to produce the Serpentine) and then on through culverts and a large pipe across Sloane Square Station and on into Bazalgette’s Northern Low Level Sewer – with only storm discharges reaching the Thames at Pimlico. These should end with the completion of London’s Super Sewer.
By 1834 the growth of London and widespread adoption of water closets had largely turned the river into a foul sewer and it could no longer be used to supply the Serpentine, The water for this lake and the gardens now comes from three artesian wells bored in Hyde Park.
Remember Gaza & Ashura – Two events in London on December 27th 2009 was the first anniversary of ‘Operation Cast Lead’, Israel’s earlier war against Gaza which began on 27 Dec 2008. By the time this illegal attack came to an end on 18 Jan 2009, it had killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and devastated the Gaza strip, destroying homes and infrastructure.
Remember Gaza – Israeli Embassy, Kensington
That attack in 2008 had come after a number of earlier attacks by Israel on Gaza over the years – which had resulted in a growing active resistance from Palestinians, including the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel and the free election of Hamas with a majority in Gaza in 2006.
After Hamas took over the running of the Gaza strip in 2007, Israel imposed an indefinite blockade of Gaza that has continued until now. Intended to stop Hamas importing weapons it “also led to significant humanitarian challenges, as it restricts the flow of essential goods, contributes to economic hardship, and limits the freedom of movement for Gaza’s residents.”
The current destruction of Gaza is of course on a much greater scale than in 2008, with over 20,000 Gazan deaths including 10,000 children. More journalists have now been killed in Gaza than were killed in the whole six years of the Second World War; many aid workers have also been killed. Over 90% of those living in Gaza have been forced to flee their homes with many families living in squalid conditions in makeshift tents without water supplies or sanitation and short of food. UN officials on the ground describe it as “hell on earth”.
It is now clear to almost everyone around the world outside Israel that the current Israeli attacks go far beyond anything that can possibly be justified as a response to the horrific attack by Hamas on 7th September. Now impossible not to see the current attacks as an attempt at genocide, the complete elimination of the Palestinian population of the area, and this has been the clearly stated aim of some Israeli right-wing politicians including some of those in the Israeli government.
It is hard at the moment to see any end to the current destruction of Gaza and its people by Israeli armed forces. The US seems unable to exert any real influence on Israel but has been able to effectively stymie any international action through the United Nations, watering down the United Nations Security Council resolution to almost meaningless platitudes – and even then abstaining.
As Russia’s UN Ambassador stated to the council, this resolution “would essentially be giving the Israeli armed forces complete freedom of movement for further clearing of the Gaza Strip“.
More than a thousand came to protest as close a police would allow them to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington on December 27th 2009. They called for an end to the siege of Gaza, justice for the Palestinian people and the trial of Israelis responsible for war crimes, and for Egypt to allow the peace convoy taking humanitarian aid to Gaza to proceed.
It was a peaceful but noisy rally, with a number of speakers including Jeremy Corbyn as well as Palestinians from Gaza. Police stopped people from crossing the road towards the private road leading to the Israeli embassy and led them back, with one man who sat down and refused to move being carried back with reasonable care by smiling officers.
Also present at the protest were a group of ultra-orthodox Neturei Karta Jews who oppose Zionism, believing it to be a political movement that is against their view of the Jewish religion. They were taking part in other similar demonstrations in major cities around the world and a group of their Rabbis was on its way to Gaza to show solidarity with the people.
Also taking place earlier in the day in London on 27th December 2009 was the annual Ashura Day procession, which takes place on the 10th of the Muslim month of Muharram to mourn the assassination of the Imam Hussain and his followers at Karbala in AH 61 (680 AD.) Because the Islamic Calendar is based on a year of 12 lunar months this observance occurs at different dates each year according to the civil Gregorian calendar – and in 2023 was in July.
The march began at Marble Arch and two large groups of Shia Muslims – men followed by women -marched from there to the Islamic Centre in Holland Park. Most were dressed in black and many beat their chests with their hands in mourning as they marched to the beat of drums and the sounding of trumpets. Some wept as the marched. Many had been fasting for the previous nine days of Muharram, saying prayers and giving charitable gifts.
Imam Hussain was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and he and his followers had refused to accept the authority of Caliph Yazid as they believed this would have meant abandoning the “true” Islam of his grandfather. He and his small group of followers were surrounded at Karbala, left for three days in the desert without water and then Imam Hussain and his 72 male companions including male children were slaughtered and the women made to march as captives to Damascus.
Temple Festival: 400 Years of Middle & Inner Temple – Saturday 19th January, 2008
Temple Church, 2008
A few weeks ago I spent an interesting afternoon with several friends. We met at Temple underground station then walked up Milford Lane and into the Middle Temple, turning right at Fountain Court, passing Middle Temple Hall, turning north into Middle Temple Lane and then right into Pump Court and then paying our entry fee to visit Temple Church, one of London’s more remarkable ancient churches. After a long time there we walked out and up Fetter Lane to Holborn Circus and on to Ely Place and spending some time in St Etheldreda’s RC Church, also worth a visit, before turning back and down Ely Place to the Old Mitre pub.
Middle Temple Hall, 2008
This is only one of many in London worth a visit, and we soon left for another and finally for a meal in one of those Wetherspoons is currently trying to sell. Sitting there I reviewed the numerous pictures I had taken on the walk, and thought a few were not bad. When I got home I took the SD card out of the camera and left it on my desk. The following morning I put it into my USB card reader but the reader didn’t respond and nothing came up on my computer. I put it back into the camera and got an error message and the camera was now also unable to read the card. I tried another camera with the same result.
I carefully cleaned the contacts on the card, but that didn’t help. I googled a bit, but all of the articles I found assumed you could access the card, which I couldn’t. I gave up and binned the card. I’ve never had this problem before using CF and SD cards for 20 years, taking pictures most days. On one or two occasions I’ve had to use rescue software to read files from cards, and back in the early days I did manage to overwrite some files after I had put them on my computer with smaller versions of the same images, but I can’t recall ever having been unable to access the files at all. And I did on one occasion lose one or two full cards after the pocket they were in was ripped when things got rather physical in a protest I was covering.
Middle Temple Lane
Fortunately it didn’t really matter. I’d had an enjoyable afternoon, and the pictures, though interesting weren’t important. I could in theory go back and repeat them, possibly better, though it’s very unlikely I will. And although there were some places on our route I’d not photographed before, others I had, for example on the visit the pictures here come from, when on Saturday 19th January 2008 the Middle & Inner Temple were celebrating 400 years since James I granted the site in perpetuity to the Honourable Societies of the Middle and Inner Temple for training and accommodating barristers, on condition that they also looked after the Temple Church.
Of course the Temple Church was by then almost 450 years old – here’s the first couple of paras of what I wrote back in 2008:
The Knights Templar moved down from the north end of Chancery Lane to Temple around 1160, and of course built a church. Soon after they were suppressed in 1308, the site went to the Order of St John, and not long after they leased the site to some law students.
Henry VIII didn’t just become head of the church in England to make it easier to change wives, but also used it to grab for himself the huge riches of the monasteries – including the Temple site with its two templar halls full of lawyers. (When there was a pilgrimage of several thousand in protest, led by lawyer Robert Aske, Henry promised to look into their complaints and most went home happy. Then he had Aske hung in chains from a church tower until he starved to death and forgot his promises. But Aske came from Grey’s Inn, not the Temple.)
Ashura Day Procession – Marble Arch, Saturday 19 Jan, 2008
The Knights Templar were of course fighting in the crusades against Islam in Palestine and elsewhere, and their church has memorials to many of the nobler knights, including some who bear my family name, though almost certainly I’m not in any way descended from them. Marshalls were stable boys as well as knights. But it did seem appropriate in some way that my day took me from the Temple (though I didn’t on that occasion go in the Temple Church) to one of the major Islamic religious commemorations of Shia Islam.
Ashura Day remembers the martyrdom of Husain and his small group of followers at Kerbala, Iraq in 61AH (680 AD.) Processions in London have taken place for many years now, and I first photographed one of them in 2000, returning in several years including 2008. It takes place annually on the 10th of Muharram, which I think in 2023 will be July 29th.
The event began at Marble Arch and then several thousand people walked along Hyde Park Place and the Bayswater Road, some banging drums and blowing trumpets, while others chant through loudspeakers to lead the mainly black-clad walkers in their mourning, remembering the martyrdom of Husain and his small group of followers.
I left the procession, which was on its way to the Islamic Centre in Penzance Place in Notting Hill, at Lancaster Gate. It was getting rather dark and taking pictures by available light was becoming tricky – and I was getting tired and glad to get on the tube.
