The scaffolding around one of the twin gilded mosques here and the ruins of houses nearby are the only signs that remain of the severe damage done by the shelling in 1991 of this site, one of the most important in Muslim history.
The senior clergyman at one of the mosques, Sayed Ali Fadhil al-Gorouvi, when asked what caused the destruction, referred vaguely to "robbers who stole gold" from the shrine. The Government of President Saddam Hussein says the mosques were damaged by American bombs during the Persian Gulf war.
But many Shiite Muslims and residents of the town say that just as his Government has covered over the damage with new tile and gilding, the President is trying to cover up the revolt against his Government by the Shiites. The mosques were damaged, they say, when Mr. Hussein's forces moved in to put down the revolt.
The clergyman, a tall man who wears a long gray coat and a green and black stovepipe hat, also said Mr. Hussein "showed his love for the Shiites by personally donating 200 pounds of gold and 300 pounds of silver" for re-gilding minarets and cupolas "so that we can make the mosque even more beautiful."
The mosques, standing a few hundred yards apart on open ground in the town center, offer a stunning vision of gilded domes and brilliant blue tile work gleaming in the hot summer sun. They house the tombs of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson Hussein and his half brother Abbas, both slain at the first battle of Karbala in 680 during their unsuccessful revolt against the Caliph Yazid I.
The brothers' defeat and death split Islam by inspiring the mystical Shiite sect, which still predominates in southern Iraq. The tombs at Karbala, enclosed in ornate silver cages, are the holiest of Shiite shrines, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually from around the world.
Fighting between Muslim sects caused severe damage to the shrines in 1801, but they were quickly rebuilt.
The battle of Karbala in 1991 was part of a Shiite uprising against Mr. Hussein at the end of the gulf war. The uprising was brutally repressed by his army.
A henchman of the President, Kamal Hussein Majid, led the assault against the Shiite rebels who were holding Karbala's twin mosques. Standing on a tank outside the tomb of Hussein, he shouted: "Your name is Hussein and so is mine. Let us see who is stronger now." He then gave the order to open fire on the shrine.
Ironically, Mr. Majid returned to Karbala this year in an ambulance. He had been stricken with a brain tumor, and he came to implore the saint's forgiveness.
When this correspondent visited Karbala in 1991, it was a town under siege, ringed by tanks of Mr. Hussein's army.
The two tile-covered mosques had been heavily damaged by gunfire, their cupolas filled with holes and their great cedar doors blasted off their hinges. Both had been occupied by Iraqi soldiers, who had put machine-gun posts on the roofs.
The closest surrounding houses had been wrecked in fierce hand-to-hand fighting between Government forces and rebels. Army bulldozers completed the job of razing them.
A Government notice said that they were being cleared to make parking space for pilgrims and that the people who had lived there would be rehoused elsewhere.
Today the Hussein Mosque has been fully repaired, and repairs to the Abbas Mosque will be completed by year's end.
But a sort of collective amnesia overtakes the pro-Government Shiite officials in charge of these shrines when they talk about the 1991 battle of Karbala and the reconstruction.
Like the first battle of Karbala, the struggle in 1991 was a southern Shiite revolt that was suppressed by the ruling Sunni Muslims from central Iraq. But the directors of the mosques -- Shiites who remained loyal to Mr. Hussein and who were put in charge after the rebellion was crushed -- now attribute the death and destruction it brought their town not to Baghdad but to the gulf war.
The immense tract of bare earth now surrounding the mosques and the unrepaired ruins beyond were caused by "the bombs and rockets of the American aggression," said Mr. Gorouvi, the clergyman at the Abbas mosque. He was referring to the gulf air war, although the allies did not bomb anywhere near these religious sites.
Without exception, everyone who lost a home near the mosque was rehoused, he said.
At the Hussein Mosque, the senior clergyman, Abud Sohab Nasser Nasseral, gave a similar account. Gifts of gold and silver from the President to repair the ravages of "the American aggression" against his mosque repudiate those who say Baghdad "mistreats the Shiites," he said.
And its successful repair represents "Iraq's retaliation for that aggression and the cruel embargo against our people," he said, referring to the embargoes mandated by the United Nations.
In Baghdad, several former Karbala residents who sympathized with the 1991 uprising and who spoke on condition of anonymity said the clergymen had not told the whole story. Only Government loyalists were compensated for the destruction of houses and shops after the uprising was crushed, they said.
"It was collective punishment against the people who live near the mosques because they helped the rebels capture them," a former resident said. "But no one admits it."