Distinguished mason, late Hajj Abd ul-Ali (r.a.) has narrated:

During my Ziyarat of Karbala, I was one day in the holy courtyard and another person was also there. I asked his name and he said: So and so Khorasani. I asked what his profession was and he said that he was a mason. I noted that we belonged to the same profession and asked him whether he was a visitor or a caretaker.

He explained: I am working on this site since many years. I asked: Have you have witnessed an extraordinary happening in this holy land?

Yes, he replied, there is a grave facing the Qibla in the holy courtyard, famous as the grandfather's grave. Since it was in a dilapidated condition some people contracted me to repair it. I started the renovation and initially had the ground around it dug up to lay the foundation. When a corpse was found in excavation, I was in formed and I saw that it was a fresh body. but lying on its left side and facing the grave of the chief of the martyrs. and its back was to the Qibla. I had the grave closed immediately and completed renovation work.

This story is supported by circumstances, which late Mirza Husayn Noori (a.m.) has mentioned in the book of Dar us-Salam.

He writes: Our teacher, Allamah Shaykh Abd ul-Husayn Tehrani (a.m.) acquired some houses to extend the western courtyard of the tomb of Imam Husayn ('a) to include them in the holy precincts and also constructed around sixty cellars in that portion to bury the dead, which were sealed with brick work.

Believers buried their dead in those cellars. After a long time, it was realized that those ceilings would not be able to bear the load of public traffic and would possibly collapse, leading to hardships and deaths. So the Shaykh ordered the roofs to be removed and reconstructed with more stability.

Since a large number of corpses had been buried in those cellars, he instructed them to renovate one cellar at a time. Thus, the ceiling of whichever cellar was demolished; first a person entered it and piled earth on the corpses to conceal them; so that no sacrilege is committed.

In this way, they reached up to the cellar opposite the holy sepulcher and when they descended to conceal the bodies, they found that the heads of the corpses buried in those graves, which were previously in the west, were now upside down.

When this information became public, numerous people gathered to see it directly. The bodies buried in that area had changed their position. They were three in number, one of them being of Aga Mirza Ismail Isfahani, the engraver, who worked in the holy courtyard. When his son saw this, he testified that he was present at the time of his father's burial and at that time his feet were in the direction of the holy sepulcher, but now the head was towards it.

It became clear that this was a warning from the Almighty Allah that they should learn the way of behaving with the Holy Imams (‘a). That same day the learned, pious Mulla Abu ‘l-Hasan Mazandarani narrated to me that sometime before this miracle, I had a dream about whose interpretation I was confused, but today it had become clear, and the dream was as follows:

When the pious maternal aunt (mother's sister) of my son passed away, I buried her in this part of courtyard. One night, I saw her in dream and inquired about what all had passed on her. She said that all was well, except for the fact that we had buried her in a cramped place, which prevented her from stretching her legs and that she had to place her head on the knees.

When I awoke, I tried to unravel its meaning, but could not understand it. However, now I understood that stretching legs in the direction of Imam ('a) is an act of disrespect. This miracle occurred during the month of Safar in 1276 A.H.

The conclusion derived from these two stories is that the Almighty Allah, through these strange happenings, wanted to explain the necessity of according respect to the Holy Imams (‘a).

When the Almighty Allah cannot accept that the back or feet of the dead should point to the grave of that Imam, how obligatory and important must be its respect on the living?

May Allah curse and increase His chastisement on those who consider themselves Muslims, and yet trespass on the sanctity of that holy tomb, put obstacles in the way of pilgrims; on the contrary, continue to torture and punish them, especially the accursed Mutawakkil Abbaside, who appointed some men to destroy the tomb and erase its signs. The strange fact is that in the end, Mutawakkil released those pilgrims, as mentioned in the book of Shaykh Shustari's Khasais ul-Husaynia.