Maqam Kaff al-'Abbas (a)

Maqam Kaff al-'Abbas (a)

Place of left hand
General Information
Type	Shrine
Location	Karbala, Iraq
Related events	Battle of Karbala
Architecture
Renovation	In different years

[[File:|280px|thumbnail|]] Maqām Kaff al-ʿAbbās (a) (Arabic:مقام کفِّ العباس; literal translation: the place of the hand of al-'Abbas) or Kaff al-ʿAbbās (Arabic: کَفُّ العَبّاس; literal translation: the hand of al-'Abbas) refers to two places where al-'Abbas b. 'Ali's (a) hands were cut off and fell to the ground. The two places are known as places of the right and the left hands. They are located in northeastern and southeastern parts of the Holy Shrine of al-'Abbas (a) at the entrance of two market-like alleys. There are symbols in these two places and pilgrims visit them.

The right-hand place was built in the middle of the 13th/19th century on the ruins of a creek, known as the creek of the grave of al-'Abbas (a ruin of the creek of 'Alqama), and the left-hand place was built by someone who had a dream in this regard in 1327/1909-10. This person split the wall of his house and built the place there.

The right-hand place is a bronze window located in the wall of a house in the al-Sukhni alley near the al-'Alqami gate. On the wall, there is a painting of two amputated arms under which it reads: "Abu l-Fadl al-'Abbas's (a) arm was amputated in this place". The left-hand place is a bronze window with mirrored margins, on which there are supplications and poems in Arabic, and the poems are said to be composed by a poet from Karbala, Shaykh Muhammad al-Siraj.

According to historians of Karbala, there is no evidence that these two places are really the places where 'Abbas's (a) hands were amputated, and they are probably symbolic.