Therhi massacre
1963 massacre of Shias in Pakistan
The Therhi massacre was a mass murder that occurred on 3 June 1963 in Thehri, Sindh, Pakistan. In it, 118 Shia Muslims were killed by a mob of Sunni Deobandi Muslims. Although it was not the first incident of violence against the Shia Muslims of Pakistan, this attack is considered to be the first major massacre of civilians in the Sindh.
Background
Legacy of Syed Ahmad Barelvi
Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Shah Ismail Dihlavi were pioneers of anti-Shia terrorism in the subcontinent. Barbara Metcalf says:
"A second group of Abuses Syed Ahmad held were those that originated from Shi’i influence. He particularly urged Muslims to give up the keeping of ta’ziyahs. The replicas of the tombs of the martyrs of Karbala taken in procession during the mourning ceremony of Muharram. Muhammad Isma’il wrote,
‘a true believer should regard the breaking of a tazia by force to be as virtuous an action as destroying idols. If he cannot break them himself, let him order others to do so. If this even be out of his power, let him at least detest and abhor them with his whole heart and soul’.
“Therhi massacre” enters the record as 1963 massacre of Shias in Pakistan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Therhi, massacre and Shias can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65044752. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Therhi massacre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.