Today is Wednesday; 2nd of the Iranian month of Mordad 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 21st of the Islamic month of Zil-Qa’dah 1440 lunar hijri; and July 24, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

871 solar years ago, on this day in 1148 AD, European Christian invaders started the siege of Damascus during the Second Crusade, but thanks to the stiff resistance of the Muslim defenders and the timely arrival of fresh forces led by the Turkic ruler, Noor od-Din Zangi, they were decisively defeated five days later, resulting in the disintegration of the crusade that was led by King Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany.

753 lunar years ago, on this day in 687 AH, physician and Shafei jurisprudent, Ala od-Din Abu'l-Hassan Ali ibn Abi-Hazm al-Qarshi ad-Dimashqi, popular as Ibn an-Nafees, passed away at the age of 77 in Egypt. He is famous for being the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of the blood, three centuries before the European scientist, Miguel Sereto. Born in Damascus, he attended the famous medical college Bimaristan-e Noori, and apart from medicine, he learned jurisprudence, literature and theology. At the age of 23 he moved to Egypt, where he worked at the an-Nassri Hospital, and later as the chief of physicians at the al-Mansuriyya Hospital. His magnum opus is "ash-Shamil fi't-Tibb", which was planned to be an encyclopedia of 300 volumes, but was left incomplete as a result of his death. His book on ophthalmology is also an original work. Another of his famous books is "Kitab al-Mukhtar fi’l-Aghziya" on the effects of diet on health. His commentaries include one on the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates' book, and several volumes on the Iranian Islamic genius Abu Ali Ibn Sina's "al-Qanoun fi’t-Tibb” (The Canon of Medicine). He also wrote a commentary on Hunayn Ibn Ishaq's book.

514 solar years ago, on this day in 1505 AD, Portuguese marauders on their way to India, after discovering the sea route round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of southern Africa with the help of Muslim navigators, whom they treacherously killed, sacked the flourishing Muslim city-state of Kilwa on the eastern coast of Africa (in what is now Tanzania), and killed the sultan for refusing to pay them enough money.

236 solar years ago, on this day in 1783 AD, expansionist Russia, taking advantage of the internal power struggle in Iran between the Zand Dynasty and Qajar warlord, Agha Mohammad Khan, duped Georgia in the name of Christianity to renege its age-old traditional ties with the Persian Empire, by imposing the Treaty of Georgievsk. The humiliating treaty stipulated that Georgia will not have any diplomatic ties with any country without the approval of Russia, and that every new Georgian ruler would require the confirmation of the Czar. The results of the Treaty of Georgievsk proved disastrous for the Georgians. In 1795, a year after crowning himself Shahenshah of Iran, Agha Mohammad Khan asked Georgia to return to the Iranian fold. King Erekle on the assumption of Russian support, assembled an army to fight, but was soundly defeated in the Battle of Krtsanisi that saw his capital Tbilisi, along with the west Georgian kingdom of Imereti, surrender to the Iranian forces. In 1796, Catherine II sent an army to Transcaucasia, but her death the same year ended any Russian challenge to Iran. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, using Qarabagh as his base, launched a wide scale campaign to end Russian influence in Georgia, but his assassination in 1797 by a fellow Iranian ended his moves. In December 18, 1800, taking advantage of the weak-willed pleasure loving Fath Ali Shah’s rule in Tehran, Russia formally annexed Georgia and deposed the Bagratid Dynasty that had signed the Treaty of Georgievsk. Georgia, which regained its independence in 1991 following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, has made the fatal mistake of falling into the orbit of the US and Western Europe, while large parts of the country are virtually outside the control of the government in Tbilisi, such as the ethnic Turkic Muslim Abkhazia, and South Ossetia which is populated by ethnic Iranic Christians.

236 solar years ago, on this day in 1783 AD, the famous South American revolutionary, Simon Bolivar, was born in the capital of present day Venezuela, Caracas. He liberated many South American lands from Spanish colonial rule, and was elected president of the Federation of Greater Colombia that included present day Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador. Soon Bolivar led the revolutionaries to liberate Peru, followed by the land named today in his honour as Bolivia. He dreamt of unity of South America within a federation but failed to fulfill his goal. He died in 1830.

217 solar years ago, on this day in 1802 AD, French author, Alexandre Dumas, was born. He wrote numerous novels on the French Revolution and history based on the memoirs of his father, who was an army general. Among his books, mention can be made of “The Three Musketeers”, and “The Count of Monte Cristo”. He was also a highly skilled playwright and has written a number of famous plays. He died in 1870.

176 lunar years ago, on this day in 1264 AH, a year after his ascension to the Peacock Throne, the 16-year old Naser od-Din Shah Qajar appointed his chief tutor Vazir-e Nizam (army commander) Mirza Mohammad Taqi Khan as Prime Minister (Shakhs-e Awwal-e Iran), with the supplementary titles of Amir-e Kabir and Atabak. “Amir-e Kabir” came to be known as his common designation, while “Atabak” was used for the first time since the Seljuq period in view of the tutorial relationship between the minister and his young master. Amir Kabir, who rose from humble origin because of his great talents, had earlier served the country in diplomatic capacity with distinction during the prolonged negotiations in Erzurum in what is now Turkey for delineation of the long Iran-Ottoman border. As Prime Minister, his achievements included the vaccination of Iranians against smallpox; economic development of the fertile Khuzestan Province; foundation in Tehran of the Dar ol-Fonoun Academy (for teaching medicine, surgery, pharmacology, natural history, mathematics, geology, and natural sciences to train the civilian and military staff); cancellation of the one-sided treaties with the Russians and the British; launching of a newspaper; crackdown on the seditious Babi-Bahai plot against Islam and the country; and execution of the heretic Mohammad Ali Bab. The intrigues of local agents of foreign powers because of the loss of their vested interests made them poison the ears of the hardly 20-year old Shah to dismiss this efficient servant of state from his post in 1268 AH after hardly four years as Prime Minister. He was exiled to Kashan where on the orders of Naser od-Din Shah he was killed while in the “hammam” (bathhouse) of the famous garden-pavilion of Feen.

108 solar years ago, on this day in 1911 AD, Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas" was rediscovered by American historian Hiram Bingham. It was the place in Peru where the last Incan Emperors found refuge from the Spanish invaders of South America.It is situated on a mountain ridge through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later. Machu Picchu is now an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.

98 solar years ago, on this day in 1921 AD, The League of Nations arbitrarily handed over to Britain the mandate to govern the former Ottoman provinces of Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan, while France was given control of Syria and Lebanon, as per the plan drawn to traumatize the fate of Muslim lands after World War 1 and to finally implant in the region the illegal Zionist entity called Israel.

96 solar years ago, on this day in 1923 AD, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland and imposed upon Turkey to settle the conflict that had originally existed between the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire, the French Republic, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Greece, and the Kingdom of Romania since the onset of World War I. It replaced the failed Treaty of Sevres, which was signed by all previous parties but later rejected by the Turkish national movement which fought against its terms and the loss of territory. The Treaty of Lausanne defined the borders of the modern Turkish Republic, which gave up all claims to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire and in return the Allies recognized Turkish sovereignty within its new borders. The treaty divided the Kurdish-populated Ottoman region among Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Article 39 allowed Turkish nationals to use any language they wished in commerce, public and private meetings, and publications. The treaty specifically protected the rights of the Armenian, Greek and Jewish communities, while the former Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul were lumped together to form Iraq. Turkey and Greece agreed to a massive exchange of religious minorities. Christians were deported from Turkey to Greece and Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The treaty came into force on 6 August 1924, when the instruments of ratification had been officially deposited in Paris, France by all the parties.

77 solar years ago, on this day in 1944 AD, Operation Gomorrah was launched by the Allied air forces against the hapless German city of Hamburg during World War 2, with the British and Canadian planes bombarding at night and the American aircraft bombarding in the day. By November, over 9,000 tons of explosive were dropped, killing thirty thousand men, women, and children, and destroying two hundred and eighty thousand (280,000) buildings. The barbarism of the victorious Allied forces, especially the Americans, in Germany and Europe, has been hushed up in order to conceal the mass massacres of the people and wide scale rape of women, while in order to mislead world public opinion, western propaganda has been directed at Nazi crimes.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, following the illegal imprisonment of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA) by the British-installed and US-backed Pahlavi regime, leading ulema of the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad converged on Tehran and released a statement acknowledging his religious authority as Marja’ or Source of Emulation for Muslims. The regime, in a bid to pacify the protesting masses, shifted the Imam from prison to a house where he continued to be kept under detention. The people and ulema, however, refused to be deceived and continued their protests. The regime panicked and sent the Imam into exile to neighbouring Turkey, from where a year later he moved to holy Najaf in Iraq.

27 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, in Bosnia, Serb prison guards at a former ceramics factory of Keraterm, fired machine guns through metal doors of "Room 3" where over 200 Muslim prisoners were held. The carnage continued for hours. In 2001 Dusko Sikirica the former Serb camp commander, along Dragan Kolundzija and Damir Dosen was tried at the International Criminal Court in Hague for the slaughter. Sikirica was sentenced to a mere 15 years in prison for the mass murder, while Dosen and Kolundzija were let off with more lighter 5 and 3 year sentences. Around 3,000 detainees, mainly Bosniak Muslims, passed through the Keraterm concentration camp located outside the city of Prijedor. The detainees, who lived in an atmosphere of terror and constant fear, were subjected to daily physical violence, constant humiliation, degradation, inhumane conditions, and fear of death. Severe beatings were commonplace. All manner of weapons were used during these beatings, including wooden batons, metal rods, baseball bats, lengths of thick industrial cable that had metal balls affixed to the end, rifle butts, and knives. The 15-to-60 year old Muslim detainees were subject to killings, beatings, sexual assaults, and other cruel and humiliating actions.

18 solar years ago, on this day in 2001 AD, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, was sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

8 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, in Iran, a pair of US-Zionist agents firing from a motorcycle martyred 35-year Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, an electronics masters’ student at Khwajeh Naseer University in Tehran. He was driving home with his wife (Shohreh Pirani) after picking up their daughter from kindergarten. His wife was also wounded in the attack. Rezaei-Nejad was the fourth scientist killed by bomb, gunshot or poisoning by US-Israelis funded terrorists since 2007. The pair of terrorists, riding a motor cycle had actually been assigned to assassinate Dariush Rezaei, a physics professor whose area of expertise was neutron transport, but targeted Rezaei-Nejad instead. On August 2, 2011, German news website Spiegel Online published an article titled "Mossad behind Tehran Assassinations.”

AS/SS