Today is Tuesday; 9th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 2nd of the Islamic month of Safar 1441 lunar hijri; and October 1, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2350 solar years ago, on this day in 331 BC, Alexander of Macedon, during his invasion of the vast Persian Empire defeated Emperor Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela near Mosul in present day Iraq, resulting in the fall of the Achaemenian Empire of Iran. Two years earlier, Darius III had suffered a surprising defeat in the Battle of Issus in Anatolia in what is now Turkey, at the hands of Alexander, who went on to occupy the Mediterranean coasts of Syria and then seized Egypt before MUSICing into Iraq for the decisive battle with the numerically superior and well-armed Iranians, equipped with 200 devastating war chariots and 15 Indian war elephants. Lack of discipline among Iranians made them lose the battle, and Darius while fleeing to the interior of Iran to reorganize his forces from the east, was treacherously murdered by his own general, Bessus.

1320 lunar years ago, on this day in 121 AH, Zayd bin Ali, a son of Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) – the great-grandson and 4th Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) – was cruelly martyred near Kufa in Iraq by the Godless Omayyad regime, at the age of 42. His mother was a virtuous lady from Sindh in what is now Pakistan, and he rose up against the tyranny of Hesham Ibn Abdul-Malik, the 10th self-styled caliph of the usurper regime, in order to safeguard the achievements of the uprising of his Infallible Grandfather, Imam Husain (AS). After being deserted by the Kufans, he bravely fought until he was martyred. His son Yayha buried him in the riverbed of the Euphrates by briefly diverting the waters and then restoring their normal flow, but the Omayyads bribed turncoats to find the location. They took out the corpse of this pious and learned member of the Prophet’s Household, decapitated it, and hung it on the gallows for four years. Zayd’s martyrdom was foretold by the Prophet of Islam over a hundred and ten years ago when he put his hand on the back of his younger grandson, and said: “O Husain, it will not be long until a man will be born among your descendants. He will be called Zayd; he will be killed as a martyr. On the day of resurrection, he and his companions will enter heaven.” Zayd’s body was later buried, and his head which had been sent to Damascus was, after the fall of the hated Omayyads, buried in Karak in Jordan, which was then part of Syria. Zayd’s sons were also persecuted, especially Yayha, who was martyred in 125 AH, after a valiant fight in distant Khorasan in the area called Jowzajan which is presently in Afghanistan. The Zaydi Shi’ite Muslims of Yemen revere Martyr Zayd as an Imam, although he never claimed the imamate, and was obedient to his elder brother, Imam Mohammad Baqer (AS), and after him to his nephew, Imam Ja’far Sadeq (AS).

1174 lunar years ago, on this day in 257 AH, a person of obscure origin and said to be a descendant of slaves, who went by the name of Ali bin Mohammad and styled himself Sahib az-Zanj or Leader of the black-skinned people of East African origin, was finally killed in southern Iraq after having unleashed a great sedition and destruction. A Godless person, he lived for a while in the Abbasid capital, Samarra, where he mixed with some of the influential slaves of Caliph Muntasir and saw the deep financial discrimination among Muslims as a result of state policy. He moved to the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, where he pretended to be Shi’a Muslim in order to rouse the people into rebellion against the caliphate. His followers grew so large that land taxes were collected in his name, but the rebellion failed, and he relocated to the Iraqi port city of Basra, where he claimed himself to be a Kharijite or renegade from Islam and started collecting around him the bonded labourers of the marshlands. Soon, supported by Bedouin Arabs and black-skinned people, he styled himself Emir and embarked on plunder, death and destruction. He launched a general massacre of the populace, burning entire localities including the Jame’ Mosque, where he killed the eminent grammarian Abbas bin Faraj Riyyashi while in prayer. His rebellion, which coincided with the secession of Egypt by Ahmad ibn Toloun and of the uprising in Iran of Yaqoub bin Laith Saffar, lasted 14 years, during which he seized southern Iraq up to Wasset and parts of Iran’s Khuzestan, defeating several armies sent by the Abbasid caliphs, until he was defeated and killed. He left a trail of destruction and famine, with agricultural lands desolate and as many as half-a-million people killed. The Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), had prophesied the revolt of Saheb az-Zanj two centuries earlier, citing Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) as source of information, as is evident from the following passage in Sermon 127 of Nahj al-Balagha:

“O' Ahnaf! It is as though I see him advancing with an army which has neither dust nor noise, nor rustling of reins, nor neighing of horses. They are trampling the ground with their feet as if they are the feet of ostriches.”

696 lunar years ago, on this day in 745 AH, Spanish Muslim poet and literary figure, Mohammad Ibn Yusuf Ibn Ali al-Barbari, known as Abu-Hayyan al-Gharnati, passed away at the age of 91 in Cairo, Egypt. Born in Granada (Gharnata) in southern Spain, he travelled widely to acquire knowledge, before moving to Ceuta in what is now Morocco in North Africa. He then traveled through Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and reached Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage. He wrote the famous book “al-Bahr al-Muheet” on the linguistic meanings of the holy Qur’an. A master of Arabic grammar, he considered himself a student of the school of the celebrated Iranian grammarian of Arabic language, Sibwaiyh of Shiraz. He has left behind numerous books, including a Diwan or collection of poems.

679 lunar years ago, on this day in 762 AH, Muslim astronomer, mathematician, and theologian, Ali Ibn Mohammad Ibn ad-Durayhim, passed away. He lived mostly in Syria and Egypt and lectured for many years on various topics. He is considered the pioneer of the science of cryptanalysis. In fact, he was the first to analyze the various capabilities of substitution for cipher or zero, and to present what is called today the Vigenere Table. He actually formulated this table more than two centuries before the European Blaise de Vigenere, who seems to have copied it from Islamic sources. Ibn ad-Durayhim's book entitled "Clear Chapters Goals and Solving Ciphers" was recently discovered. It includes the use of statistical techniques pioneered by the famous philosopher Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi.

603 solar years ago, on this day in 1416 AD, Yaqub Spata, the Muslim ruler of Arta in Albania, was murdered by the Christian chief, Carlo I of Tocco, mainly for embracing the truth of Islam. Born in a Christian family, he was raised at the Ottoman court of Sultan Mohammad I, where he became Muslim and changed his name to Yaqub.

432 solar years ago, on this day in 1587 AD, Shah Abbas I was crowned the 5^th Safavid Emperor of Iran at the age of 16 years in Qazvin by a faction of the powerful Qizilbash guards led by Murshid Qoli Khan who deposed his father, the weak-willed and almost blind Mohammad Khodabandah after a reign of 9 years. He became ruler during troubled times, when discord was rife between factions of the Qizilbash army that had earlier killed his elder brother Hamza Mirza and mother Queen Khair un-Nisa Begum. Meanwhile, the Ottomans and the Uzbeks, exploiting the political chaos, had seized Iranian territory in the west and northeast respectively. Abbas soon reduced the influence of the Qizilbash in the administrative and military affairs, executed the killers of his mother and brother, and reformed the army, enabling him to fight the Ottomans and Uzbeks and retake Iran's lost provinces. He decisively defeated the Ottomans in several battles in the Caucasus, in Anatolia and in Iraq, where he rebuilt on a grand scale the shrines of the Infallible Imams in Najaf, Karbala, and Kazemain. He drove back the Uzbeks from Khorasan and rebuilt the shrine of Imam Reza (AS), the 8^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). During his 42-year reign, he also liberated Iranian territories from the Portuguese invaders in the Persian Gulf and from the Mughals of India in what is now Afghanistan. Shah Abbas I was a great builder and moved his capital to Isfahan, which he adorned with beautiful mosques, palaces, bazaars, caravanserais, gardens, and the famous Naqsh-e Jahan Square, to the extent that Isfahan came to be known as Nisf-e Jahan (Half the World). He patronized poets and painters, resulting in the birth of the Isfahan School that created some of the finest arts in Iranian history. He respected religious figures, and during his era some of the greatest ulema and philosophers, such as Shaikh Baha od-Din Ameli, Mir Baqer Damad and Mullah Sadra Shirazi flourished. Shah Abbas also promoted commerce, trade and diplomacy, establishing relations with European powers to keep the Ottomans in check, and strengthening ties with the Shi'ite Muslim sultanates of Haiderabad-Deccan and Bijapur in Southern India, where the name of the Safavid Emperor was recited in the Friday Prayer sermons. At the same time he maintained friendly relations with the Mughal Emperor Jahangir of Northern India.

192 solar years ago, on this day in 1827 AD, Russia, in violation of the Treaty of Golestan signed in 1813 with Qajarid Iran, following the end of its war and occupation of Daghestan and other regions in the Caucasus, sent an army under General Ivan Paskevich to start the 2^nd Russo-Persian war. The Russians seized the Khanate of Yerevan from Iran as well as Nakhchevan and what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan. Yerevan is currently capital of the Republic of Armenia.

132 solar years ago, on this day in1887 AD, the eastern part of Baluchistan was formally annexed by the British to their dominions in India to end any claims to this vast region by Afghanistan and Iran. This region which is now in Pakistan, originally belonged to Iran, both before and after the advent of Islam, and until the assassination of Nader Shah Afshar in the 1740s.

123 solar years ago, on this day in 1896 AD, Liaqat Ali Khan, the Indian Muslim statesman who became Pakistan’s first prime minister on its birth in 1947, was born in an aristocratic family in Karnal, East Punjab. He was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University in India, and at the Oxford University in Britain. Trained as lawyer, on his return to India, he rose to prominence as an influential member of the Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah. On 16 October 1951, he was shot in the chest during a public meeting in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

118 solar years ago, on this day in 1901 AD, with the death of Amir Abdur-Rahman Khan, the Pashto ruler of Afghanistan, the plight of the Hazara people neared its end. Although he is credited with what is called the unification of Afghanistan, his principal aim was to make the rule of ethnic Pakhtouns paramount by cruelly suppressing other ethnic and lingual groups such as the Tajik, Uzbek, Balouch and Hazara. He used to treat the Persian-speaking Hazara Muslims as slaves, because of their adherence to the path of the Ahl al-Bayt or Blessed Household of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). In 1880, the Hazara rose in revolt but were savagely crushed and many of them were forced to seek refuge across the borders in British India, especially in Quetta, as well as in Khorasan and the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. The Hazaras remained de facto slaves with no rights, until King Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan's independence in 1919.

101 solar years ago, on this day in 1918 AD, Abdullah was installed as the last Khan of Khiva of the Khongirad Dynasty at the age of 45 years on the death of his father Muhammad Rahim Bahadur. He had no real authority since Junaid, a Turkmen general, held executive powers. In 1920 the Bolsheviks overthrew the Khanate of Khiva and sent Abdullah as prisoner to Moscow where he died a few years later in a hospital. The Khanate of Khiva was set up in 1511 in the historical ancient Iranian region of Khwarezm, which briefly returned to Iranian rule under Nader Shah Afshar from 1740 and 1746.

98 solar years ago, on this day in 1921 AD, the police chief of Khorasan, Colonel Mohammad Taqi Khan Pesyaan, was killed by agents of the regime. He was a highly influential figure and strove for Iran’s independence. Following the British-engineered coup to install the colonialist agent Reza Khan as prime minister of the young Qajarid king, he commenced his struggle against infiltration by foreign powers and their local lackeys in government affairs. He was joined by officers in Khorasan Province and soon took charge of all provincial affairs in the name of the beleaguered government of Ahmad Shah Qajar. As a result battles started with Reza Khan’s agents, leading to his martyrdom in one such clash.

70 solar years ago, on this day in 1949 AD, the People's Republic of China was officially announced by communist party leader, Mao Zedong. After the end of World War 2 and the withdrawal of Japanese occupation forces, Mao emerged victorious from his struggle for control of China with the US-backed nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, who fled to the island of Formosa, which is known today as Taiwan.

64 solar years ago, on this day in 1955 AD, the Muslim populated Eastern Turkestan region, which the Qing Dynasty of China had conquered in the second half of the 9^th century from Yaqoub Beg the Tajik and restored the previous Khaja Dynasty to power, was renamed by the communist regime of Beijing as The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is China’s largest administrative division and the eighth largest subdivision in the world, spanning over 1.6 million km, but only about 9.7% of the land area is fit for human habitation. Xinjiang contains the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which is administered by China and claimed by India. Xinjiang borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The most well-known route of the historical Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border. In recent decades, abundant oil and mineral reserves have been found in Xinjiang, and it is currently China's largest natural gas-producing region. Xinjiang, which is geographically divided into the Dzungarian Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south by a mountain range, is home to several ethnic groups, including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakhs, Hui, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Mongols and Russians. Muslim Turkic peoples in Xinjiang include Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars and the Kazakhs; Muslim Iranian peoples include Pamiris and the Sarikolis/Wakhis; and Muslim Sino-Tibetan peoples such as the Hui. The Pamiris and Wakhis, which overlap into Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, are predominantly Ismaili Shi’a Muslims, following Karim Agha Khan. With a documented history of at least 2,500 years, a succession of people and empires have vied for control over all or parts of this territory. In the last decades, the separatist conflict, mostly by the Uyghur Muslims, has plagued the region, with occasional clashes with Chinese forces, which after the failure of decades of communism, have resorted to the policy of suppression of Islamic tenets and culture. The Uyghur language, though officially discouraged is still written in the Perso-Arabic letters. The capital of Xinjiang is Urumqi and among its major cities are Kashgar, Khotan, and Yarkand with their rich Islamic culture, including use of Persian language.

59 solar years ago, on this day in 1960 AD, Nigeria gained independence from British colonial rule. Islam entered Nigeria a thousand years ago and various Muslim dynasties emerged in the northern parts culminating in the Fulani Empire or the Sokoto caliphate which the British conquered in 1903. The southern parts of Nigeria were mostly animists and since the 17^th century were used by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, and the British as major centres of slave trade to the Americas. The British merged the north and the south before independence. Some 65 percent of the 155 million population of oil-rich Nigeria is made up of Muslims including 10 million Shi’ites or followers of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. Nigeria covers an area of 923,768 sq km. it is located in West Africa and has a large coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, sharing borders with Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Benin.

34 solar years ago, on this day in 1985 AD, warplanes of the illegal Zionist entity pounded the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Tunis, martyring seventy people and injuring hundreds of others. The PLO headquarters were shifted to the Tunisian capital following Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982. The UN failed to condemn this blatant act of state terrorism because of US veto at the Security Council.

23 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, the scholar Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hussaini, popular as Aqa Najafi Hamedani, passed away at the age of 82 in Hamadan. Born in holy Najaf in Iraq, in his childhood he came to Hamedan along with his scholarly father and after preliminary studies, returned to Najaf at the age of 21 for higher studies. He attended the classes of leading scholars such as Ayatollah Mohammad Hussain Gharavi Isfahani, the Gnostic Ayatollah Qazi Tabatabai, and Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hussain Na’eni, whose daughter he married. After staying for 22 years in Iraq and attaining the ranks of Ijtehad, he returned to Hamedan, where he spent the rest of his life teaching and writing books.  His major work is the18-volume exegesis of the holy Qur’an titled “Anwaar-e Darakhshaan” in Persian.

AS/SS