Hosay: what Wikipedia removed
Hosay is a Caribbean Islamic commemoration of Ashura, observed with parades in Trinidad and Tobago. Through 2010 the opening said that day is commonly referred to in Trinidad history as the Muhurram Massacre by Indians and as the Hosay Riots in British and colonial records. Today the opening carries neither name, though massacre survives twice in the body. A reader arriving now learns of a festival and mausoleum-shaped floats and not that Indians in Trinidad called the day a massacre while British colonial records called it a riot.
The word “massacre” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2010. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 2. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| massacre | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| martyr | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| colonial | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- A photo caption noting Hosay in Port of Spain during the 1950s, dropped with the passage it illustrated.
- The note that some contemporary writers equate the commemoration’s mausoleums with mosques, dropped from the opening.
- The description of mock stick fights commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2010 (revision 364554950):
A tadjah at Hosay in Port of Spain during the 1950s Hosay or Tadjah is a West Indian commemoration , in which multi-colored model mausoleums are paraded, then ritually offered up to the sea, or any body of water. Some contemporary writers equate the multi-colored mausoleums with ” mosques .” In British Guiana, now Guyana , the festival was called Taziya or creolized into Tadjah in reference to these floats, the most visible and decorative element of this festival. In nineteenth-century Trinidad newspapers as well as government reports called Hosay the “Coolie Carnival.” The Hosay (derived from Husayn or Hussein) celebration is a Caribbean manifestation of the Shia Muslim Remembrance of Muhar…
2025 (revision 1296903964):
Muslim Indo-Caribbean commemoration Tadjah festival on a plantation in Suriname , circa 1890 A historic Ashura celebration in Jamaica, which is known locally as Hussay or Hosay. Hosay (originally from Husayn ) is a Indo-Caribbean commemoration that is popularly observed in Trinidad and Tobago , Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. In Trinidad and Tobago, multi-coloured model mausoleums or mosque -shaped model tombs known as tadjah are used to display the symbolic part of this commemoration. They are built and paraded, then ritually taken to the sea on last day of observance, and finally discarded into the water. The word tadjah derived from the Arabic word ta’zieh and signifies different c…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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