Explaining the transition from text to image in the representation of Ashura-related events requires an understanding of visual discourse: a language that redefines events and concepts through visual signs and aesthetic experience. This study aims to identify the earliest manifestations of the visual discourse surrounding the events of Ashura within written sources and to examine how textual narratives were transformed into pictorial representations. The central research question explores in which sources these visualizations first appeared and what formal and narrative characteristics they exhibited. Findings indicate that the earliest depictions emerged in six illustrated manuscripts belonging to the Baghdad Ottoman school of book decoration. These manuscripts include Hadīqat al-Saʿadā (963 AH, 983 AH, 1009 AH, 1235 AH), Maqtal Āl al-Rasūl (988 AH), and Rawżat al-Shuhadā (1004 AH). Through a descriptive–analytical methodology, qualitative content analysis, and comparative study, it becomes evident that the creation of these miniatures was made possible by anonymous painters working within a sociocultural context marked by degrees of religious tolerance from rulers and support from Sufi circles and local Shiʿite communities. These artworks served not merely as decorative embellishments to the texts but can be regarded as the beginnings of a distinct visual theology of Ashura. Consequently, the manuscripts produced within the Baghdad Ottoman school provided the earliest platform for the emergence of visual discourse on Ashura in the history of Islamic art—a discourse that continued to evolve within later artistic genres.