The site selected for the monument was where the Muslim Arabs defeated the Persians in 636 CE and is generally seen to be the beginning of Islamic domination of the region. On the day the monument was dedicated in 1990, Saddam rode under the arches astride a white horse. It has been suggested that this was an allusion to the slain Shiite martyr Hussein, killed in Karbala in AD 680, whose death caused the rift between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. The monument, although presenting a triumphalist narrative in relation to the Iran-Iraq war, has assumed a broader symbolism and represents those Iraqis who fell in any war throughout the country's history.