Today is Saturday; 27th of the Iranian month of Bahman 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 10th of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1440 lunar hijri; and February 16, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1903 solar years ago, on this day in 116 AD, Roman Emperor Trajan, following his surprise attack on the Iranian province of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) that saw Roman armies reach for the first time the shores of the Persian Gulf in what is now Kuwait, was so elated by this unexpected success that he prematurely sent a laureatae to the Senate in Rome, boosting of what he called the conquest of the Parthian Empire. However, as he left the Persian Gulf for Babylon, the Iranians led by Sanatrukes, the nephew of their Emperor, Osroes I, imperiled Roman positions in both Mesopotamia and Armenia, forcing Trajan to withdraw his troops that had penetrated Khuzestan. Although Sanatrukes was killed in the battle that the Iranians lost at Seleucia and their capital Ctesiphon (Mada’en near modern Baghdad) was temporarily occupied by the Romans, Trajan's deteriorating health started to fail him. Following the heat stroke he suffered during the unsuccessful Roman attempt to capture the fortress city of Hatra on the Tigris near Mosul in what was then the Iranian province of Khavaran, and coupled with the renewed uprising of the people of Mesopotamia, Trajan was forced to retreat. His claim of being the conqueror of Parthian Empire turned out to be hollow. Early in 117, his health worsened and he died in Selinus in Cilicia in what is now the southeastern coastal region of Turkey on 9 August.

882 lunar years ago, on this day in 558 AH, Abdul-Mo'men ibn Ali al-Koami, the founder of the Muwahhedoun (Almohad) State in Morocco and Andalusia, died. His capital was Marrakesh and he made relentless efforts to expand his territories in Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar, and in the east till the borders of Egypt.

822 lunar years ago, on this day in 618 AH, the acclaimed Persian poet and mystic, Farid od-Din Attar Naishapouri, was killed during the Mongol invasion of Khorasan at the age of 78. The son of a pharmacist, he followed his father's profession and led a prosperous life before experiencing an inner revolution that made him turn to mysticism and frequent travels that took him to Iraq and Arabia including holy Mecca, as well as to the different cities of Iran and Transoxiana. One of his valuable prose works is “Tazkerat al-Awlia” on the status of mystics. His poetical masterpieces manifest the power of imagination as is evident by the versified book “Manteq ot-Tair” (Discourse of the Birds). Attar, who in some of his poems also pays tribute to the peerless personality of Imam Ali (AS), had a profound influence on the great Persian poet, Mowlana Jalal od-Din Balkhi Roumi.

800 lunar years ago, on this day in 640 AH, al-Mustansir-Billah, the 36^th and penultimate self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid dynasty died in Baghdad after a reign of 16 years. His lasting contribution was the founding of the Mustansiriyya Madrasah on the banks of the Tigris. A monumental water-powered alarm clock that announced the appointed hours of prayer and the time both by day and by night was installed in its entrance hall. The original building which survived the Mongol invasion in 1258 AD that threw the Abbasid caliphate into the dustbin of history is now part of the modern al-Mustansiriyya University.

770 solar years ago, on this day in 1249 AD, Christian priest, Andrew of Longjumeau, was dispatched by France’s Louis IX as his ambassador to Karakoroum, Mongolia, to meet with the Khaqan of the Mongol Empire, Guyuk Khan, to discuss an alliance with the Buddhists for attacking the Muslim world from the east and the west. Earlier, Andrew had carried letters from Pope Innocent IV to the Mongol Emperor, for the same purpose, but both his missions ended in failure. This is evident of the deep animosity of European rulers towards Islam and Muslims.

740 solar years ago, on this day in 1279 AD, King Afonso III of Portugal, who was a bitter enemy of Portuguese Muslims and occupied the principality of al-Gharb (Algarve), died at the age of 69. He has earned lasting notoriety by ending over five centuries of flourishing Islamic rule in the southern and western parts of the Iberian Peninsula in what is now called Portugal, where the Christians followed a policy of expansionism and occupation.

715 solar years ago, on this day in 1304 AD, Jayaatu Khan, Emperor Wenzong of Yuan Mongol Empire was born in China as Tugh Temur. Apart from Emperor of China, he is regarded as the 12th Great Khan of the Mongol Empire or Mongols, although it was only nominal due to the division of the empire. He first ruled from 16 October 1328 to 3 April 1329 before abdicating in favour of his brother Khutughtu Khan Kusala, and again ruled from 8 September 1329 to 2 September 1332 after Khutughtu Khan Kusala's death. He died at the age of 28. His most concrete effort to patronize learning was his founding of the Academy of the Pavilion of the Star of Literature, first established in the spring of 1329, and was designed to undertake "a number of tasks, including the collection, collation, and compilation of books; and the appraisal and classifications of the paintings and calligraphic works in the imperial collection. Of the 113 officials successively serving in the academy, there were many distinguished Chinese literati, and the best Mongolian and Muslim scholars of the time. Concentrating so many talents in one governmental organ to perform various literary, artistic, and educational activities was unprecedented not only in the Yuan dynasty but also in Chinese history.

628 solar years ago, on this day in 1391 AD, Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos died after a 50-year reign, spending his last years as a vassal of the Ottoman Sultans, Murad I and Bayazid I, after an unsuccessful bid to make an alliance with Rome and the Catholic Church against Muslims. He made a humiliating tour of several European lands, suffering detention in Venice and ridicule in other parts for resisting demands to give up the Greek Orthodox creed and accept the supremacy of Rome. In the end he realized that his survival and that of the Orthodox sect of Christianity lay in accepting the suzerainty of the Turks rather than acknowledge the schism of the Catholic sect.

321 solar years ago, on this day in 1698 AD, Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician, geophysicist, geodesist, and astronomer, known as "the father of naval architecture", was born. His work founded photometry, the measurement of light intensity, discovered centuries earlier by Muslim scientists. A child prodigy, at the age of 15 he was a professor, following his father, Jean Bouguer, in hydrography - the study of bodies of water, both salt and fresh. He participated in the expedition to Peru (1735-44) to measure an arc of the meridian near the equator. In 1729 he invented a photometer to compare intensity of two light sources illuminating separate halves of translucent paper. The eye itself, he determined, could not be used as a meter, but could establish the equality of brightness of adjacent surfaces. Bouguer's law gives the attenuation of a beam of light by an optically homogeneous (transparent) medium.

259 solar years ago, on this day in 1760 AD, the British treacherously massacred 29 Amerindian chiefs of the Cherokee tribe at Fort Prince George in South Carolina in what is now the USA in violation of the peace treaty. A few years earlier, a Cherokee delegation had visited London for meeting with King George II and conclusion of a pact to prevent further encroachment on the native lands by the white settlers, especially in view of the Anglo-French rivalry for domination of North America. The flare up began when the British on mere suspicion that the Cherokees might side with the French, tried to enslave them, and when matters became tense, killed scores of them, scalping and mutilating their bodies. They later collected bounties for the scalps. This barbarism naturally enraged the Amerindians and a skirmish followed with the forces of Governor Littleton of South Carolina. To pacify the situation, 29 of the Cherokee chiefs surrendered to the British, who viewed them as hostages and when tensions arose, Littleton mercilessly massacred them in cold blood. The European occupiers (British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, and the Dutch as well as the US), have a bleak, black and bloody history of conducting genocide in America.

166 lunar years ago, on this day in 1274 AH, the prominent Iranian Islamic scholar and literary figure, Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Qasim Ordo-Abadi, was born in the northwestern city of Tabriz. Following completion of studies, he left for holy Najaf in Iraq to attend the classes of prominent ulema of his day. After attaining the status of Ijtehad, he returned to his hometown, Tabriz. Ayatollah Ordo-Abadi wrote numerous books. Among his works mention could be made of “ash-Shahaab al-Mobeen fi Ejaaz al-Qur'an al-Kareem” on the Immortal Miracle this heavenly scripture is. He passed away in 1333 AH.

73 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, for the first time the right to veto was exercised by the Soviet Union at the UN against a proposal at the Security Council. This questionable right is limited to the 5 self-imposed permanent members of Security Council – the US, Russia, Britain, France, and China. The US frequently uses veto to kill any resolution, especially against the crimes of the illegal Zionist entity.

66 solar years ago, on this day in 1953 AD, the first man-made diamonds, the size of grains of sand, were produced in Sweden in a high pressure press by subjecting graphite to 83,000 atmospheres pressure and about 2000°C for an hour. The research, headed by Erik Lundblad, was funded by the Swedish electrical company ASEA. The idea was conceived by refrigerator inventor, Baltzar von Platen. ASEA decided not to publish the results to keep the experiment a commercial secret. Less than a year later, 16 Dec 1954, General Electric in the US also produced man-made diamonds, which is recognized as the first process that was reproducible.

40 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, Chief of the Pahlavi regime’s dreaded anti-public outfit, SAVAK, Ne’matollah Naseeri, was executed for his crimes against humanity, after being found guilty of the imprisonment, torture and death of thousands of Iranian Muslims during his 13-year tenure. Although the crimes of the Shah’s officials against the Iranian nation were crystal clear, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), ordered the setting up of a revolutionary court to try these corrupt and murderous elements in order to make their guilt clear to the public. A personal friend of the Shah, Nassiri had gained notoriety for removing Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq from power.

35 solar years ago, on this day in 1984 AD, Hojjat al-Islam Sheikh Ragheb Harb, the Friday Prayer Leader of Jibshit in Southern Lebanon and one of the founders of the Islamic Resistance Movement against the illegal Zionist entity, attained martyrdom at the age of 31 years at the hands of Israeli forces. Earlier he was detained by Israeli agents for calling the people of southern Lebanon to rise against the Zionist occupiers. After his release he continued his struggle against the occupation of southern Lebanon by the Zionist regime until his martyrdom. At the funeral procession of this combatant religious leader, clashes occurred between the youths of Jibshit and the Zionist forces, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of a number of Muslim people of Lebanon.

27 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Abbas al-Musawi, the Secretary-General of Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist movement, Hezbollah, attained martyrdom at the age of 40, along with his wife, 5-year old son, and three companions, when aircraft of the Zionist entity targeted his car in southern Lebanon, while he was returning from ceremonies marking the 8^th anniversary of the martyrdom of prominent religious leader, Hojjat al-Islam Sheikh Ragheb Harb. This cowardly act of Zionist state terrorism enraged Muslims worldwide, but the Western regimes, despite their claim to support human rights, not only did not condemn it, but tried to justify it. Hezbollah elected Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Hassan Nasrollah as its next Secretary-General, who continues to lead the people of Lebanon to victories against the Zionists and Takfiri terrorists. Seyyed Abbas al-Musawi, who was a student in holy Najaf, Iraq of the celebrated Martyr Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer as-Sadr, was deeply influenced by the thoughts of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA).

6 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, a terrorist bomb blast at a market in Quetta, Pakistan, martyred almost a hundred Muslims of the ethnic Hazara community, while over 200 others were injured. Shi’a and Sunni Muslims are frequently targeted by terrorist outfits such as Taleban, Sepah-e Sahaba, Laskhar-e Jhangavi, etc.

AS/SS