Today is Wednesday; 21st of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 4th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1440 lunar hijri; and April 10, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1414 lunar years ago, on this day in 26 AH, the valiant Standard-Bearer of the Immortal Epic of Karbala, Hazrat Abu’l-Fazl al-Abbas (AS), was born in Medina to the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). His mother was the virtuous lady Omm al-Baneen Fatema bint Hezaam of the al-Kilabiyya clan noted for its courage and bravery. Imam Ali (AS) had married her several years after the passing away of his beloved wife, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA) the daughter of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Hazrat Abbas (AS), who was over two decades younger than his older brothers, the Prophet’s grandsons, Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS), was very much attached to them since childhood. Out of respect for their immaculate lineage, he never called them brothers, but would refer to them as Lords and Masters. He was in Karbala like a shadow beside Imam Husain (AS), and while trying to fetch water for the thirsty camp of the Imam, he sacrificed his life, by first losing both his hands, but never tasted a drop of water even when he succeeded in reaching the bank of the River Euphrates. His shrine till this day stands as a sentinel to the shrine of Imam Husain (AS), with pilgrims from all over the world seeking his intercession with God Almighty by addressing him as “Bab al-Murad” or the Gateway of Needs. His birthday is marked in the Islamic Republic of Iran as “Roz-e Janbaz” or the Day of the Valiant Veterans. We congratulate all listeners on the auspicious birth anniversary of Hazrat Abbas (AS), and will present a special feature on his life later in our programme.

1000 lunar years ago, on this day in 440 AH, Iranian mystic and poet, Abu-Saeed Abi’l-Khair, passed away at the age of 83 in his native Khorasan. He was an expert on the exegesis of the Holy Qur’an, in addition to hadith, and jurisprudence, and was very deeply devoted to the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. The important details of his thoughts and life are known from the book “Asrar at-Tawhid” (Mysteries of Monotheism) written by his grandson, Mohammad Ibn Munawwar, after his death. He was also an accomplished poet, and mostly composed quatrains.

986 lunar years ago,  on this day in 454 AH, Mo’iz ibn Badees, the 4^th ruler of the Zirid dynasty of Morocco died after a reign of 46 years during which he turned against his own benefactors the Fatemid Ismaili Shi’ite dynasty. In the first year of his reign, during the regency of his aunt, as many 20,000 Shi'ite Muslims were massacred at the fall and destruction of Mansuriya, the former seat of government of the Fatemids near Kairouan, Tunisia. Ibn Badees earned notoriety for his persecution, suppression and killing of followers of the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt.

757 lunar years ago, on this day in 683 AH, Iranian statesman, Shams od-Din Mohammad ibn Baha od-Din Mohammad ibn Mohammad Juwaini was martyred by the Mongol ruler, Arghun Khan on the alleged charges of poisoning of his father Abaqa Khan, who actually died of excessive drinking. A vizier and Sahib-Divan or Minister of Finance for 22 years under three Ilkhans – i.e. Hulagu, Abaqa and Ahmad Tekuder –both his grandfather Mohammad and his father Baha od-Din, had held the post of Sahib-Divan for Mohammad Jalal od-Din Khwarezmshah and Chingiz Khan's son Ogedei Khan respectively. Born in Juwain, near Naishapur in Khorasan, he was a skillful political and military leader, who is also known to have patronized arts and culture. His brother is the famous historian Ata Malik Juwaini, the author of "Tarikh-e Jahan-Gusha".

746 lunar years ago, on this day in 694 AH, Ghazan Khan, the 7^th ruler of the Iran-based Ilkhanid Dynasty that included Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and parts of Turkey, Syria and Georgia, embraced the truth of Islam along with over 100,000 Mongols. He changed his name to Mahmoud and ruled for nine years during which he demolished the temples built by the Buddhist occupiers of the Muslim lands. He was the son of Arghun. His principal wife was Kokechin, a Mongol princess sent by Kublai Khan, and escorted to Iran from China by Marco Polo. Military conflicts during Ghazan's reign included war with the Egyptian Mamluks for control of Syria, and battles with the Mongol Chaghatai Khanate for control of Central Asia. A man of high culture, Ghazan spoke several languages, and reformed many elements of the Ilkhanid realm, especially in the matter of standardizing currency and fiscal policy.

683 solar years ago, on this day in 1336 AD, the Ilkhanid ruler of Iran-Iraq, Arpa Mahmoud Khan, was defeated at Maragha by the rebellious governor of Baghdad, Oirat Ali Pasha, and subsequently captured and killed, after a reign of a little more than a year. A direct descendent of Boke, the younger brother of the founder of the Ilkhanid Dynasty, Hulagu Khan (grandson of the fearsome Chengiz Khan) he came to power following the death of Abu Sa’eed Bahadur Khan the last effective Ikhanid ruler. Almost immediately he had to deal with an invasion by Ozbek Khan of the Golden Horde, which he defeated and used it as a pretext for executing Queen Baghdad Khatoun, the widow of Abu Sa’eed, in an effort to cement his power. Those who followed Arpa Mahmoud Khan to the Ilkhanid throne were mere puppets raised by various factions before the dynasty vanished from the scene in 1357 after a century of rule.

206 solar years ago, on this day in 1813 AD, French mathematician, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, died at the age of 77. Among his important scientific books, mention can be made of the book: “Analytical Mechanics”, which took him 25 years to compile.

204 solar years ago, on this day in 1815 AD, Mount Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, began a three-month-long massive eruption, lasting until July 15 that ultimately killed over 80,000 people and affected the Earth's climate for the next two years. It was the most powerful explosion in 1,600 years, formed a crater 5-mile across on Sumbawa, lowered the island by 4,000 feet, and immediately killed 10,000 people. The series of eruptions between April the 5th and 15th had worldwide effects more far-reaching than the famous 1883 eruption of Krakatoa – also in Indonesia. The record amounts of ash Tambora spewed into the atmosphere encircled the globe, screened the sun's light and caused a global drop in temperature. Thus 1816 was a “Year without a summer,” with severe climate abnormalities across the globe. Frosts killed crops and late heavy snowstorms occurred. Elsewhere, there were severe storms, excessive rainfall and floods, as well as widespread famine and disease that led to more deaths.

151 solar years ago, on this day in 1868 AD, at Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeated an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians were killed and many more injured, only two British/Indian troops died. It was part of the British colonial designs to subjugate other lands with the help of their well-trained Indian sepoys (corruption of the Persian word “sepahi” for soldiers).

100 solar years ago, on this day in 1919 AD, the Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, was murdered in the wake of a conspiracy. The indigenous Mexicans considered him to be their saviour. He was betrayed by Mexican President Francisco Madero, who after initially posing as a reformist sabotaged the land reforms. This forced Zapata to take up arms towards the end of the year 1910 with the motto of “land and freedom” and he retook from people of European origin the lands of the Amerindians that they and their ancestors had seized. His native language was Nahuatl of the Aztecs.

88 solar years ago, on this day in 1931 AD, famous Lebanese Arab writer and poet, Khalil Jebran Khalil, died at the age of 48 in New York, the US, where he lived the major part of his life, though he came back to Lebanon and spent several years mastering the Arabic language and absorbing the culture of the east, before returning to the US. He wrote and composed poems in both Arabic and English. Although a Christian he was highly influenced by Islam and the dynamic personalities of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) and Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). He wrote: “I am Christian and I am proud of it, but I am in love with Prophet of Islam and have great regard for his name.”

On Imam Ali (AS), he writes: “In my view, (Imam) Ali was the first Arab to have contact with and converse with the universal soul. He died a martyr of his greatness; he died while prayer was between his two lips. The Arabs did not realise his value until appeared among their Persian neighbors some who knew the difference between gems and gravels. He was like a prophet sent for a nation other than his own during a period to which he did not belong.”

73 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, the last French troops left Lebanon. In the wake of World War I and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Britain and France occupied the extensive land of Shaam or Greater Syria, and carved it up into Palestine and Jordan under British control, and modern Syria and Lebanon under French control. The French plan was to create a Christian state in Lebanon for the local Maronite sect in order to weaken the Muslim majority, similar to the plot of the British to illegally settle the Zionists of Europe in Palestine for creating Israel. In 1943, the French government in exile, while France was under German occupation, imposed a communally divisive constitution on Lebanon, according to which the President should be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the parliament a Shi’a Muslim, although the Shi’a were the largest single group in the land. In 1945, following end of World War 2 Lebanon was granted independence and the following year the French forces withdrew. The Shi’a Muslims, although the largest single group in Lebanon, were long oppressed since the time of the Ayyubid and Ottoman rulers, until the arrival of the charismatic Iranian religious scholar, Imam Seyyed Musa Sadr in the late 1950s. He uplifted their social status and prepared the ground for making them a powerful force in Lebanon. Today, the legendary anti-terrorist movement, Hezbollah, not only defends the birthrights of the Lebanese Shi’as but the rights of all people of Lebanon against the plots of the Zionist entity, the US, West European regimes, Arab reactionary states, and their local agents, trying to subvert the country.

47 solar years ago, on this day in 1972 AD, a 6.9 earthquake in the Iranian province of Fars killed over 5,000 people, and injured many more, in addition to destroying houses.

46 solar years ago, on this day in 1973 AD, operatives of the illegal Zionist entity’s spy agency, Mossad, assassinated three Palestinian officials in the Lebanese Capital, Beirut, namely Kamal Naser, Kamal Adwan, and Mohammad Yousef Najjar. In 1983, on the 10^th anniversary of the martyrdom of these officials, Mossad agents martyred in Portugal Attam Sartawi, the political advisor of the Palestine Liberation Organization leader, Yaser Arafat. These crimes against humanity by the usurper state of Israel are proof of its terrorist nature and violation of territorial integrity and national sovereignty of other countries.

31 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, Iraqi warplanes chemically bombarded the western Iranian city of Marivan and a village in its vicinity, martyring and wounding a large number of civilians. This crime against humanity was carried out with the tacit approval of the US and West European regimes, which had supplied the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Saddam with internationally-banned chemical gases. Also on this day, the Ba’thist forces chemically bombarded the Faw operational zone on the southernmost tip of the Iran-Iraq border, martyring and wounding many people.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1999 AD, Lieutenant General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, the acting commander of Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces General Headquarters and a veteran of the 8-year holy defence during the war the US had imposed through Saddam, was martyred at the age of 55 in Tehran when he opened the gate of his house by MKO terrorists dressed as cleaners. Born in a village in northeastern Iran, following completion of high school he joined the military academy. He was an opponent of the Shah’s despotic regime and suffered imprisonment as a result. He was freed from prison with the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, and on rehabilitation in the armed forces, selflessly served the Islamic Republic by actively participating in the battles against the Ba’thist invaders on the warfronts. In 1981, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA) appointed him commander of the Army’s Ground Forces. Martyr Sayyad Shirazi played a pivotal role during the 8-year imposed war and continued his yeoman services in its aftermath till he achieved martyrdom.

AS/SS