Before Ibn Ziyad and Yazid

The survivors were taken to 'Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad in Kufah. Al-Tabari reports that when he praised Allah for having disgraced and killed them, Zaynab answered that praise is for Allah who honoured them with His Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and purified them, and that it is the sinner who is disgraced. When he asked how she saw what Allah had done to her family, she replied that death had been written for them and they had gone out to meet it, and that Allah would gather him and them, and they would dispute before Him. When Ibn Ziyad ordered that 'Ali ibn al-Husayn be killed, she held on to her nephew and said that if he killed the boy he must kill her with him, and he let him live.

They were then sent to Yazid in Damascus. Al-Tabari reports that a man of Syria asked Yazid to give him one of the young girls of the family as a servant. Zaynab told him that he had no right to that, nor did Yazid. When Yazid insisted that he could do it, she answered that Allah had not given him that right unless he left the religion of Islam. He said it was her father and brother who had left the religion; she replied that it was by the religion of Allah, of her father, her brother and her grandfather that he, his father and his grandfather had been guided, if he was truly a Muslim. Yazid fell silent.

Yazid then had the family sent back to Madinah with an escort. Of Zaynab's last years the early sources say little. Most later writers place her death around 62 AH, and her burial place is disputed: shrines in both Damascus and Cairo bear her name, and some historians say she was buried in Madinah.