Today is Tuesday; 29th of the Iranian month of Mordad 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 18th of the Islamic month of Zil-Hijjah 1440 lunar hijri; and August 20, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

The 18th of Zil-Hijjah is a Great Day in the History of Mankind. On this day great miracles occurred in history such as the turning into a garden of the huge fire the tyrant Nimrod had ignited and flung Prophet Abraham into it. On this day, Prophet Moses, on divine commandment, designated Prophet Joshua as his successor, and in the following centuries Prophet Solomon appointed Asef Ibn Barkhiya as his deputy, and Prophet Jesus (AS) named Simeon as his vicegerent.

1430 lunar years ago, on this day in 10 AH, on divine commandment, on revelation of ayah 67 of Surah al-Ma'edah, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) proclaimed his cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali (AS) as vicegerent at the pond or Ghadeer of Khom near Juhfa while returning to Medina from his farewell Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. After a memorable sermon to a gathering of 120,000-plus pilgrims, the Prophet raised the Imam’s hand, and expressed the immortal phrase, "Man kunto Mowlahu fa haza Aliyun Mowlahu" (For whomsoever I am Master, this Ali is his Master). God then revealed ayah 3 of Surah Ma'edah announcing the perfection of faith, completion of divine favours, and decreeing of Islam as the universal religion. For the next three days during the Prophet's stay at Ghadeer-Khom, every single person of this huge gathering personally pledged allegiance to Imam Ali (AS) as Amir al-Mominin (Commander of the Faithful) by clasping the palm of his right hand. For the convenience of the women attendees, the Prophet ordered the placing of water-filled basin in which Imam Ali (AS) dipped his hands and withdrew, while the ladies took turn to dip their own hands as proof of their allegiance to him. Hence, this day is a Grand Eid for Muslims and we congratulate our dear listeners on this auspicious event.

1405 lunar years ago, on this day in 35 AH, the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), reluctantly assumed charge of the political leadership of the Islamic realm upon the insistence and begging of the Muslims to take up the reigns of the caliphate, of which he was deprived 25 years earlier on the passing away of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), despite his proclamation as the righteous caliph at Ghadeer-Khom and the swearing of allegiance to him by 120,000 Muslims. This fresh pledge of allegiance to him happened three days after the killing of Othman ibn Affan, and thus started the only instance of the model administration of social justice in history.

1383 solar years ago, on this day in 636 AD, a series of 6-day military encounters, known as the Battle of Yarmouk ended near the Yarmouk River in Palestine between the neo-Muslim Arab forces and the Christian armies of Byzantine or the Eastern Roman Empire, resulting in the decisive victory of Muslims and opening the way for the Islamicization of Syria. This was the start of a new phase of wars in the Levant-Mesopotamia region between new adversaries, only 8 years after the end of the 26-year long (602-628) last and deadliest round of the Byzantine-Sassanid wars that had raged for almost four centuries, beginning with the start of armed hostilities between Severus Alexander and Ardashir I in 230 AD, as continuation of the Roman-Parthian wars started over three centuries earlier in 92 BC for control of Syria, Mesopotamia, Anatolia (modern Turkey) and Armenia. Thus, with the advent of Islam and the shattering defeat of both the Persians and the Byzantines, the religious demography of the region was permanently changed, although Iranians as Muslims would continue to influence events and play vital roles in the region and beyond, on a scale greater than the pre-Islamic era.

828 solar years ago, on this day in 1191 AD, during the Crusader Wars launched by European powers on Palestine, King Richard I of England, wrongly called the ‘lion-hearted’, cowardly slaughtered in sadistic manner around 3,000 enchained Muslim men, women, and children, in full view of the army of Salah od-Din Ayyoubi. This dastardly event, known in history as the "Massacre at Ayyadieh", took place at the fall of Acre to the Crusaders and is the strongest proof of Richard being a bloodthirsty terrorist, and not the courteous and chivalrous warrior-king depicted in the highly biased works of later English writers. The enraged Muslim army tried to attack in a bid to prevent the cold-blooded massacre, but because of its small numbers was repulsed by the Christians.

768 lunar years ago, on this day in 672 AH, the famous Iranian Islamic religious scholar and scientist, Khwaja Mohammad Naseer od-Din Tusi, passed away at the age of 75 in Kazemain, Iraq, and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Prophet Mohammad’s (SAWA) 7th Infallible Heir Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS). Born in Tus, Khorasan, he was a scientist, philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who made valuable contributions to world civilization. Even the Mongol invaders acknowledged his genius and Hulagu Khan, appointed him as his scientific advisor. Naseer od-Din Tusi built the famous observatory at Maragheh. It had various instruments such as a 4-meter wall quadrant made from copper and an azimuth quadrant which was his unique invention. Using accurately plotted planetary movements, he modified Ptolemy's model of the planetary system. The observatory and library became a centre for a wide range of work in science, mathematics and philosophy. He wrote some 80 books on various subjects including theology, ethics, science, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, etc., in both Arabic and Persian.

642 solar years ago, on this day in 1377 AD, Shah Rukh Mirza, the ruler of Iran, Central Asia and what is now Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan and northwestern India, was born in Samarqand to the fearsome Turkic conqueror, Amir Timur. His mother was a Tajik Persian-speaking lady. In contrast to his father, whom he succeeded in 1405, he was a peace-loving ruler. His capital was Herat in Khorasan, and during his long rule of 42 years, although he lost Iraq to the Qara Quyunlu Turks, he hotly contested for control of Anatolia (modern Turkey) with the Ottomans, who were decisively crushed by his father. He was a great patron of arts, especially Persian architecture and literature, as well as works in Chaghatay and Arabic languages. He commissioned a number of historical and geographic works by the Iranian scholar Hafez-e Abru. Among them is “Tariḵh-e Shah Rukh” – a history of his reign that was later incorporated by its author into the larger "universal history" compilations “Majmu’a-e Ḥafeẓ-e Abru” and “Majma’ at-Tawariḵh as-Solṭani” (section “Zobdat at-Tawarikh-e Baysonqori”). His wife, the highly refined Iranian lady, Gowhar Shad, funded the construction of two outstanding mosques and theological colleges in Mashhad and Herat. The Grand Gowhar-Shad-Mosque adjacent to the shrine of Imam Reza (AS) was finished in 1418. Shahrukh died during a journey to Rayy (near modern Tehran) at the age of 70 and was succeeded in Transoxiana by his elder son, Ulugh Beg who was an accomplished astronomer and scholar, while almost all other sons had predeceased him including the famous calligrapher Baysonqor Mirza. Shah Rukh maintained diplomatic relations with the Mamluk rulers of Egypt-Syria, the Venetian Empire of the Mediterranean, China and the Muslim and Hindu rulers of the Deccan (Southern India). In fact, two of his ambassadors have left detailed account of their missions. The first is the detailed diary of Ghiyas od-Din Naqqash who was sent to the court of the Ming Emperor of China, and the second is the book “Matla us-Sa’dain wa Majma’ ul-Bahrain” by Abdur-Razzaq Samarqandi, the Iranian ambassador to the court of the Zamorin of Calicut (Kozikhode in Kerala), who during his 3-year stay (1442-45) in the Deccan also visited Vijaynagar.

500 lunar years ago, on this day in 940 AH, the great scholar, Shaikh Ali Ibn Abdul-Ma’ali al-Karki, passed away in Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid Empire of Iran. Born in Jabal Amel in what is now Lebanon, he was invited to Iran and appointed Shaikh ol-Islam by Shah Tahmasp I. Known as Muhaqqiq Thani (Second Researcher), he wrote several books, the most notable being “Jame’ al-Maqased”. Once, when a pseudo scholar, resentful of the formal establishment of the School of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt as the official creed of Iran in 927 AH, claimed that according to “abjad” or numerical values of letters the year equals “Madhab-e Na-Haq” (or false creed), Muhaqqiq al-Karki immediately responded by saying why was he taking the Persian version of the alphabets, when the language of the Qur’an is Arabic, in which the letters for the year 927 combine to form “Madhabuna Haq” , which means “Ours is the Righteous Creed.

485 solar years ago, on this day in 1534 AD, Turkish admiral Khayr od-Din Pasha ("Barbarossa" or Red-bearded to the Europeans), liberated the North African city of Tunis from the Spanish yoke. This angered Spain’s Charles V, who descended on Tunis the next year with a huge army and recaptured it. The resulting massacre of the city left an estimated 30,000 dead. Khayr od-Din who was Pasha or Ottoman Governor of Algeria, managed to evacuate Tunis with his army of several thousand Turks. The stench of the corpses was such that Charles V soon left Tunis and restored the local ruler, Muley Hassan to power. In retaliation, Khayr od-Din raided the coastal towns of Spain, destroyed the ports of Majorca and Minorca, captured several Spanish and Genoese galleys and liberated their Muslim oar slaves. In September 1535, he repulsed another Spanish attack on Tlemcen. In February 1538 Pope Paul III assembled against the Ottomans a so-called holy league composed of the Papacy, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Republic of Venice and the Maltese Knights, but Khayr od-Din’s forces led by Sinan Reis defeated this combined fleet at the Battle of Preveza in September 1538. The victory secured Ottoman dominance of the Mediterranean Sea and transformed it into a Muslim lake. In the summer of 1539, Khayr od-Din captured the islands of Skiathos, Skyros, Andros and Serifos and recaptured Castelnuovo from the Spanish. In October 1541, Charles V tried to besiege Algiers, and brought along with him the notorious Hernan Cortez – the butcher of the Mexicans, but was repulsed with heavy losses. Khayr od-Din then raided several Italian and Spanish islands and coastal settlements before besieging and capturing Nice in 1543 on behalf of the French king, Francis I, who was an Ottoman ally. He later landed at Antibes and the Île Sainte-Marguerite near Cannes before sacking the city of San Remo, other ports of Liguria, Monaco and La Turbie In the spring of 1544, after assaulting San Remo for the second time and landing at Borghetto Santo Spirito and Ceriale, Khayr od-Din defeated another Spanish-Italian fleet and raided deeply into the Kingdom of Naples. He then successfully repulsed further Spanish attacks on southern France. In June 1544, he appeared before Elba. Threatening to bombard Piombino unless the city's Lord released the son of Sinan Reis who had been captured and forcibly baptized 10 years earlier by the Spaniards in Tunis, he obtained his release. He then captured Castiglione della Pescaia, Talamone and Orbetello from the Spanish. Tunis was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1574.

400 solar years ago, on this day in 1619 AD, the 1^st group of black Africans kidnapped by the white Europeans to serve as slaves arrived in North America aboard a Dutch privateer. It docked in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo. For the next two centuries, hundreds of thousands of Africans were kidnapped and enslaved in the New World. Their descendants, although free today, are still denied basic rights, especially in the US, and treated as second or third class citizens.

257 solar years ago, on this day in 1762 AD, the Islamic scholar and reformer of the Subcontinent, Qutb od-Din Ahmad Ibn Abdur-Rahim, known as Shah Waliullah, passed away at the age of 59 in Delhi, where he was born during the last years of the 50-year reign of the 6^th Great Moghul Emperor, Mohammad Aurangzeb, who took Muslim power to its height in South Asia, controlling all of today’s India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the eastern half of Afghanistan. After initial education in his hometown, he left for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where he stayed several years acquiring knowledge of various Islamic sciences, and on his return to India, strove for the revival of Islamic rule and intellectual learning. His activities were not confined to spiritual and intellectual spheres only, since he lived in troubled times and saw a number of rulers ascending to and falling from the throne of Delhi. He observed the deterioration of Muslim rule and wrote to several political leaders, including Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan and Nizam Ali Khan Asef Jah II of Haiderabad-Deccan, to bolster the political life of Muslims. Waliullah was a prolific writer in both Persian and Arabic. He wrote fifty-one books, of which twenty-eight are in Arabic and twenty-three in Persian. He codified the vast store of Islamic sciences under separate heads. His works can be classified into six categories. The first deals with the holy Qur'an, including its translation into Persian for the first time in the Subcontinent. According to him, the object of studying the holy Qur'an is to reform human nature and correct wrong beliefs and injurious actions. The second category deals with hadith. The third category deals with fiqh or jurisprudence. The 4^th category deals with mysticism. The fifth pertains to his works on Muslim philosophy and theology, including Ijtihad. The 6^th category deals with Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.  

226 lunar years ago, on this day in 1214 AH, the famous Islamic scholar, Ayatollah Sheikh Morteza Ansari, was born in Dezful, southwestern Iran. Blessed with a sharp mind, he mastered the sciences of the day in holy Najaf in Iraq, and at the age of 35 attained the status of Ijtehad. He presented dynamic ideas in theology and jurisprudence. The main feature of his works is simplicity of language and rational approach to problems on the basis of the holy Qur'an and the Hadith. His books "ar-Rasael" and "al-Makaseb" are taught till this day at seminaries worldwide.

225 solar years ago, on this day in 1794 AD, the Battle of Fallen Timbers was fought as the final battle of the Northwest Indian War, a struggle between Amerindian tribes affiliated to the Western Confederacy, including some support from the British, against the newly formed United States of America for control of the Northwest Territory (an area bounded on the south by the Ohio River, on the west by the Mississippi River, and on the northeast by the Great Lakes). The US troops, resorting to brutal tactics, forced the Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat. The Amerindians fled towards Fort Miami, but they found gates closed against them by their British allies, resulting in the massacre of the natives. The US army spent several days destroying the Amerindian villages and crops in the area, as part of the genocidal policies of Washington.

122 solar years ago, on this day in 1897 AD, physician Ronald Ross made a key breakthrough when he discovered malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquito in the Sikandarabad suburb of Haiderabad in the Muslim kingdom of the Deccan (southern India). This day is thus known as Mosquito Day. After two years of research, in July 1897, he managed to culture 20 adult “brown” mosquitoes from collected larvae. He successfully infected the mosquitoes from a patient named Hussain Khan. After blood-feeding, he dissected the mosquito and found an "almost perfectly circular" cell from the gut, which was certainly not of the mosquito. On 20 August he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito, which he named "dappled-wings" and which later turned out to be species of the genus Anopheles. He thus managed to save millions of people.

79 solar years ago, on this day in 1940 AD, Ramon Mercador del Rio, a Spanish Communist, posing as a Canadian businessman by the name of Frank Jackson, met in Mexico City the famous self-exiled critic of the Soviet Union, Leon Trotsky, and fatally wounded his head with an axe blow. Trotsky died the next day.

59 solar years ago, on this day in 1960 AD, Senegal broke away from the Mali Federation two months after its formation on freedom from French colonial rule, and declared independence. The two countries, along with other West African lands were part of the Muslim Empire of Mali, which was encroached upon by invaders from Europe, starting with the Portuguese and ending in the 19^th century with the French, who wantonly looted the natural and human resources of this area.

51 solar years ago, on this day in 1968 AD, Warsaw Pact forces, led by the Soviet Red Army, entered Prague, the capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, to oust Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek for his tilt towards the west. The western media, mislead world public opinion by coining the term “Prague Spring” for the events in Czech-o-Slovakia, a country that never existed before 1918 and was eventually split into the two separate republics of Czech and Slovakia on 1^st January 1993.

41 solar years ago, on this day in 1978 AD, people of the southwestern Iranian city of Abadan staged huge demonstrations against the inhumane arson attack on Rex Cinema by agents of the British-installed and American-backed Pahlavi regime. In this tragic incident, 277 women, men, and children lost their lives.

31 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, the ceasefire went into effect to formally end all hostilities in the 8-year war imposed on Iran by the US through its agent Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad. Following Iran’s acceptance of UN Resolution 598 on July 20, Saddam had sent in heavily armed Iranian traitors on his payroll, known as the MKO hypocrites, in a bid to gain foothold on Iranian soil and score points against the Islamic Republic. On July 27, Iran launched Operation Mersad and by July 31 crushed the MKO terrorists, who had massacred villagers. With this defeat of the US-Saddam joint plot, the enemy had no choice but to formally cease all armed hostilities on this day.

21 solar years ago, on this day in 1998 AD, in an act of state terrorism, the US attacked Afghanistan and Sudan with scores of long-range missiles on allegation that bomb blasts at the US embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania) were by elements based in Afghanistan and Sudan. The US claimed that it destroyed a chemical weapons factory in Sudan but the target turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant. As noted by political observers the missile attacks ordered by President Bill Clinton were based on trumped up charges to deflect public attention from his sexual scandal with Monica Lewinsky.

12 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, religious scholar and poet, Sheikh Mohammad Hussain Bahjati, who wrote under the penname “Shafaq”, passed away at the age of 72. Born in Yazd, he enrolled at the Islamic seminary of Qom at an early age, studying under the leading scholars, such as Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi and the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). An expert in jurisprudence, hadith, history and languages, including Arabic and English, he was the classmate of the current Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Late National Expedience Chief, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He was the first poet of revolutionary poetry following the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Imam Khomeini (RA) had appointed him as his representative and Friday Prayer Leader of Yazd. He subsequently served as Friday Prayer Leader of Ardakan, and later taught Arabic and Persian at the Qom Seminary, in addition to his cultural activities in Tehran at the Sepah Publications. 

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