Ashura refers to Albanian special pudding made of cracked wheat, sugar, dried fruit, crushed nuts, and cinnamon prepared and eaten by the members of the Islamic Bektashi sect to mark the end of the ten-day fasting period of Matem. Matem falls on the first ten days of the month of Muharrem and commemorates the battle of Kerbela in the present-day Iraq in 680 A.D. in which Imam Husein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed. It is a period of fasting or at least of abstinences from drink in memory of Husein and his troops who were encircled by the enemy and left without water before their death.