Today is Friday; 2nd of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 15th of the Islamic month of Rajab 1440 lunar hijri; and March 22, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1447 lunar years ago, on this day, 7 years before his migration from Mecca to Medina, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) instructed a group of early Muslims, suffering from the persecution of pagan Arabs, to migrate to Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), across the Red Sea, where the ruler, King Negus (Najashi) was a justice-loving monotheist. The 15-member group made up of 11 men and 4 women was led by the Prophet’s trustworthy companion Othman bin Madh’oun. A year later, the second migration of Muslims to Abyssinia took place when the Prophet instructed his paternal cousin, Ja’far ibn Abi Taleb (AS) to lead a group of some 88 persons. The pagan Arabs, alarmed at the hospitality accorded to the Muslims in Abyssinia, and resenting the spread of Islam, sent a delegation to King Negus, led by the notorious disbeliever, Amr ibn Aas, to extradite the believers. It is a well known fact of history, how Hazrat Ja’far (later at-Tayyar) refuted the accusations of the pagan Arabs in the Abyssinian court and by providing proof from the holy Qur’an of the prime position in Islam of Prophet Jesus (AS) and his virgin-mother, Mary (SA), convinced King Negus of the righteousness of Prophet Mohammad’s (SAWA) universal mission. Hazrat Ja’far (AS) returned to Arabia for good thirteen years later in 7 AH, incidentally on the day the impregnable Jewish fortress of Khayber was single-handedly conquered by his younger brother, the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS). He attained martyrdom a year later in the Battle of Mu’ta against a joint force of the Byzantine Empire and its Christian Arab allies, the Ghassanids, in what is now Jordan. His elder son, Abdullah was married to Imam Ali’s (AS) elder daughter, the Prophet’s granddaughter, Hazrat Zainab (SA).

1438 lunar years ago, on this day in 2 AH, upon God’s command, the “qibla” or focal point of worship for Muslims changed from the direction of Bayt al-Moqaddqas in Palestine to the holy Ka'ba in Mecca. The change of direction happened when Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) was leading the prayers in Medina in the mosque known till this day as “Zu-Qiblatayn” or Mosque of the Two Qiblahs.

1377 lunar years ago, on this day in 63 AH, Hazrat Zainab (SA), the venerable granddaughter of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), was martyred in a garden outside Damascus by an enemy of the Ahl al-Bayt who struck a fatal blow on her head with a pickaxe. The Heroine of Karbala who bequeathed to posterity the life-inspiring mourning ceremonies of Moharram and Safar for her brother, Imam Husain (AS), needs no introduction. We offer condolences to all listeners, and later in our programme, we will present you a special feature on her life and times.

1164 lunar years ago, on this day in 276 AH, the Iranian philologist of Arabic, Abu Mohammad Abdullah bin Muslim ibn Qutaybah ad-Dinawari, passed away in Baghdad. He was born in Kufa in Iraq, while his father was from the Khorasani city of Merv in what is now Turkmenistan. Having studied hadith and philology he became qazi or judge in Dinawar, near Hamedan in western Iran, and afterwards a teacher in Baghdad. He was the first representative of the eclectic school of Baghdad philologists that succeeded the schools of Kufa and Basra. He is regarded by Sunni Muslims as an authority on hadith. Among his works are "Gharib al-Qur'an" on its lexical issues, "al-Imama wa al-Siyasa" in which he has exposed the deviation of the caliphate from its goals, and "ash-She'r wa'sh-Shu'ara" on poetry and poets.

728 lunar years ago, on this day in 712 AH, the Iranian mystic and poet, Najm od-Din Zarkoub Tabrizi, passed away. He is the author in Persian of the “Futuwwat-Namah”, on the rites of “Jawan-mardi” or chivalry into which Sufis are initiated for serving the cause of God and humanity.

625 solar years ago, on this day in 1394 AD, Mohammad Ulugh Beg, the Timurid ruler of Transoxiana, and an accomplished astronomer and mathematician, was born in Soltaniyeh in northwestern Iran. Grandson of the fearsome Turkic conqueror, Amir Timur, he was deputy and eventually successor of his father, Shahrukh Mirza, in Central Asia and later parts of Khorasan and Afghanistan. His mother was the virtuous lady, Gowharshad, who built the grand mosque in Mashhad at the shrine of Imam Reza (AS) – the 8th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) – which still bears her name. Ulugh Beg patronized art, literature and science. In 1428 he built the famous observatory at his capital Samarqand in cooperation with the famous Iranian astronomer, Ghiyas od-Din Jamshid. In his observations he discovered a number of errors in the computations of the 2^nd century Greco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy, whose figures were still being used. His map of 994 stars was the first one since Hipparchus. The crater “Ulugh Beg” on the Moon was named after him by the German astronomer, Johann Heinrich von Madler, on his 1830 map of the Moon. He also measured the solar year, starting with the Spring Equinox or Nowrouz at 365 days 5 hours, 49 minutes and 15 seconds, making it more accurate than what Copernicus would later estimate. He also determined the Earth's axial tilt as 23.52 degrees, which remains the most accurate measurement to date – more accurate than later measurements by Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and precisely matching the currently accepted figure. In mathematics, Ulugh Beg wrote accurate trigonometric tables of sine and tangent values correct to at least eight decimal places. His works were written in Arabic and Persian and translated into Latin in 1665.

307 solar years ago, on this day in 1712 AD, Edward Moore, English poet and playwright was born. He was the author of “The Trial of Selim the Persian”, a lengthy drama in verse, as well as the domestic tragedy of “The Gamester”, on which his fame rests.

306 solar years ago, on this day in 1713 AD, the Tuscarora War came to an end with the fall of Fort Neoheroka, effectively opening up the interior of North Carolina to European occupation. On March 1, the British, Dutch, and Germans had started the siege of Fort Neoheroka in North Carolina against the local Amerindians, and its fall 17 days later resulted in the slaughter of almost a thousand Amerindians of the Tuscarora nation and the imprisonment of hundreds of women and children, who were sold into slavery in the Caribbean so they could not return to their homeland. The year before, the white men had killed over three hundred Tuscarora people and sold into slavery over a hundred women and children. The 4-year Tuscarora War (1711-to-1715) which led to the slaughter of thousands of Amerindians was the bloodiest conflict in North America. When the first Europeans arrived in North Carolina in the 1650s, the Tuscarora had lived in peace with them, at a time when nearly every other colony in America was actively involved in some form of conflict with Native Americans. However, the white settlers increasingly encroached on Tuscarora land, raided villages to take slaves, and introduced epidemic diseases. After their defeat, most of the Tuscarora migrated north towards what later became New York where they were joined by their Iroquoian cousins, before their ultimate annihilation by the Europeans. The US has a bleak and bloody record of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

280 solar years ago, on this day in 1739 AD, the untoward incident of the killing of some residents of Delhi occurred when a group of Indians, spreading rumours of Nader Shah Afshar's death, attacked and killed several Iranian soldiers. Weeks earlier after defeating the Moghul army at the Battle of Karnaal, Nader Shah had entered Delhi in dignity, along with Mohammad Shah. He soon returned to Iran after restoring the inefficient Mohammad Shah to power, when the able Mughal prime minister, Nizam ul-Mulk Asef Jah (Founder of the Haiderabad-Deccan State), politely turned down the offer to be Emperor of India. Nader Shah took with him the famous Koh-e Noor diamond, the Peacock Throne and the Tent of Pearls.

254 solar years ago, on this day in 1765 AD, Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the New England American Colonies. This was the first direct British tax on the colonists. The Act led to intense resentment among the colonists and had to be repealed the following year. It covered just about everything produced by the colonists and began the decade of crisis that led to the uprising of the New England colonists and birth of the United States of America (USA).

187 solar years ago, on this day in 1832 AD, the famous German poet, writer, and scientist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, passed away at the age of 82 in Weimar. Born in Frankfurt, he studied law, music, painting, and different languages, as well as botany and geology. He coined the term morphology to describe the systematic study of the structure of living things. His deep interest in Persian and Arabic literature, especially the poems of the renowned Iranian poet, Hafez, made him study Islam and the holy Qur'an. He noted: “The miracle of Islam par excellence is the Qur’an, through which a constant and unbroken tradition transmits to us news of an absolute certainty. This is a book which cannot be imitated. Each of its expressions is a comprehensive one.” Goethe’s most famous books include the “West-Eastern Divan” (inspired by the lyrics of Hafez), “Faust”, and “Iphigenie”.

138 solar years ago, on this day in 1881 AD, the international football union was established to supervise matches between world countries. Known currently as FIFA, it drafted football laws. The first official international football match was between England and Germany in 1901.

123 lunar years ago, on this day in 1317 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasim Musavi Khoei, was born in Khoy in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province. After initial studies in Tabriz, he left for holy Najaf in Iraq at the age of 13 to continue his studies. Here, his piety and knowledge attracted the attention of the India-based Iranian religious scholar, Mirza Ahmad Najafi-Tabrizi, who gave his daughter in marriage to him and lodged him in his own house. Mirza Ahmad used to frequent the semi-independent state of Banganapalle in south India, ruled by a Seyyed family of Iranian origin, who were patrons of scholars and learning. Soon Ayatollah Khoei mastered logic, rhetoric, theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, and in the process attained the status of Ijtehad. In 1971, he succeeded Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakim as the leading Marja’ of the Islamic world and thereafter groomed a large number of scholars from Iran, Iraq, the Subcontinent, Bahrain and Lebanon. Among his valuable books are “Lectures in the Principles of Jurisprudence”, in 10 volumes, “Islamic Law” in 18 volumes, and "Mu'jam Rijal al-Hadith" in 24 volumes. The last named is an authoritative work on evaluation of narrators of hadith. During the 8-year war imposed on Iran in the 1980s by the US through Saddam, he refused to yield to the Ba’thist minority regime’s pressures to denounce the Islamic Republic, even though his house was frequently subjected to water and electricity cuts. He passed away in Kufa at the age of 96, a year and some five months after Saddam brutally crushed popular uprising of the Iraqi people. It is believed the regime martyred him through poisoning.

103 solar years ago, on this day in 1916 AD, the last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicated the throne, thus ending some three centuries of rule by the Qing dynasty. China, which was the centre of science and civilization when Europe was in the dark ages, thus became a republic.

76 solar years ago, on this day in 1943 AD, World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus was burnt alive by German occupation forces. Some 5,295 settlements were destroyed by the Nazis, often with all their inhabitants, during their 3-year occupation that killed 2 million people in Belarus.

74 solar years ago, on this day in 1945 AD, the Arab League was formed upon the proposal of the Egyptian king, Farouq, and its endorsement by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. The goal behind the Arab League was to maintain the territorial integrity and independence of member states and to establish close political, economic, and cultural relations between the members. The Arab League today has become an impotent body, serving the interests of the US by creating disunity and seditions among Arab states.

73 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, the British withdrew from Jordan, which they had created in 1921 by dividing up Syria and placing Abdullah, the son of their Meccan agent, Sharif Hussain, as king, in return for his treacherous role in World War I against the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Jordan, which is a US client state and subservient to the illegal Zionist entity, Israel, covers an area of more than 90,000 sq km. It shares borders with Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Occupied Palestine. Over 75 percent of its people are Palestinians.

63 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, Belgian-American chemist and historian, George Sarton, who is considered the founder of the discipline of history of science, died at the age of 72. His most influential work is “Introduction to the History of Science”, in three volumes. His goal was to achieve an integrated philosophy of science that provided a connection between the sciences and the humanities, which he referred to as "the new humanism"

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, the Pahlavi regime desecrated the sanctity of the Faiziyyeh Islamic Seminary in the holy city of Qom, since it was one of the important bases of the Iranian people's Islamic movement. In this barbaric attack, a large number of ulema and students were battered, beaten, and thrown down from rooftops. Several of them attained martyrdom. This incident was a prelude to the historic uprising of June 5, 1963, and finally the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.

37 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, the heroic "Fath ol-Mobin" operations were launched by the Iranian Muslim combatants to drive out Saddam's invading army. These operations led to liberation of parts of southwestern Iran from Ba'thist occupation, and ended the military threats against the Iranian cities of Dezful, Andimeshk, Shoush, and hundreds of villages. Over 25,000 invading Ba'thist troops were killed and wounded and 15,000 others taken captive, while a large number of enemy equipment was destroyed or seized.

31 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, less than a week after his brutal chemical bombardment of Halabche in Iraqi Kurdistan, Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, sent jets to bombard the Kurdish town of Sewsenan, with a variety of chemical weapons.

27 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, communism ended in Albania, as the Democratic Party of Albania won a decisive majority in the parliamentary election.

15 solar years ago, on this day in 2004 AD, religious scholar and leader of the Palestine Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, was assassinated by the illegal Zionist entity. After performing the early morning prayers at a mosque in Gaza Strip, he was targeted by helicopter gunships and attained martyrdom in the company of ten other Palestinians. Born in 1938, he started his struggles against the Zionist entity while at high school and was detained on several occasions. In 1987, he founded the Hamas Movement, and two years later he was detained and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1997, however, he was swapped with two Zionist spies during the exchange of captives. He suffered from blindness and physical disability. The martyrdom of Sheikh Yasin once again manifested the barbaric state terrorism of the Zionist entity.

AS/SS