Today is Thursday; 18th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 11th of the Islamic month of Safar 1441 lunar hijri; and October 10, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1403 lunar years ago, on this day and the subsequent night in 38 AH, the famous Battle of Laylat al-Harir took place during the War of Siffin, near Raqqa in Syria, when the army of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), pressed ahead with its decisive assault on the forces of the rebel, Mu’awiyya ibn Abu Sufyan, till the early morning hours. The Imam himself, with his flashing twin-bladed sword “Zulfeqar”, dispatched over five hundred enemies of humanity to the bowels of hell, while his commander Malek Ashtar displayed feats of bravery to reach within striking distance of the camp of Mu’awiyya, who was about to flee. At this crucial stage, when victory was in sight, the crafty enemy commander Amr ibn Aas ordered his troops to raise on spear-points what he said were copies of the holy Qur’an, pleading for peace, a ruse which made a band of hypocrites or more properly “khwarej” or renegades, to force the Imam to cease fighting.

1349 solar years ago, on this day in 680 AD (as per the Georgian Calendar), occurred the fateful Day of Ashura or the 10th of Muharram in the year 61 AH, on which the heartrending tragedy of Karbala took place in Iraq, resulting in the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS), the younger grandson and 3rd Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). The Immortal Saga of Imam Husain (AS) continues to inspire Muslims and all conscientious people in every age and place, and throughout history has been the catalyst for reform and revolutionary movements against tyranny and injustice.

1291 solar years ago, on this day in 728 AD, the Iranian ascetic, Hassan al-Basri, passed away at the age of 86 in the Iraqi port city of Basra, where he lived most of his life. He is considered a progenitor by the Sufis, as well as by the Sunni sect, although neither the term “Sufi” existed in his times, nor the sect which the 2nd Abbasid caliph, Mansour Dawaniqi, created as “Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah” sometime around 150 AH (around 765 AD) to divide the general public from Shi’ite Muslims (staunch followers of Prophet Mohammad’s (SAWA) Ahl al-Bayt), had yet evolved. Born in Medina to Peroz, a freed Persian captive and his wife Khaira – a Persian maid of Omm Salama, one of the wives of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) – he was a controversial character, who gave rise to dubious narrations. He grew up in Omm Salama’s house, knew the status of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, and held Imam Ali (AS) in high esteem, but erred in differing with him by following his own deviant opinion. Despite respect for the Prophet’s grandsons, Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS), he failed to support them, and in the next generation was rebuked by the Prophet’s 4th Infallible Heir, Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), for his confusion to discern between free will and compulsion. During the era of Imam Mohammad Baqer (AS), he showed inclination towards the tyrannical Omayyad regime and gathered followers around him. In short, unsupported statements of the law make up the greater bulk of quotations from him, and proved troublesome for even the Sunni jurists that emerged a generation later. The famous biographer Ibn Sa’d in his book “Tabaqaat” quotes Hassan Basri as acknowledging that only some of what he told people was based on what he had really heard from the Prophet’s companions, as opposed to his own opinions. This suggests he had less information available to him about the norms laid down by the Prophet. Ibn Sa’d, himself a Sunni, states that what Hasan Basri expressly related from the Prophet through a named Companion is reliable, whereas what he related directly from the Prophet (considerably more) is unreliable. The “Tabaqaat” notes that he paraphrased hadith rather than repeat them verbatim, lengthening or shortening them as per his whim. He is thus an example of an ascetic, a worshipper, and a scholar gone off the track.

1287 solar years ago, on this day in 732 AD, the Battle of Tours, near Poitiers in France, southwest of Paris, ended in the defeat of the Omayyad forces and killing of their commander, Abdur-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, the governor of the Spanish region of Cordoba, by a huge army of Franks and Germans. The Christians were led by Charles Martel (an illegitimate son of the German chief, Pepin), whose barbaric nature as marauder of the frontiers of the Roman Empire, the Muslims failed to properly estimate. Another reason for defeat of the Arabs was preoccupation with war booty, as well as squabbles between various ethnic and tribal factions. Al-Ghafiqi, who had been appointed by the Omayyad tyrant of Damascus, Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik, as commander in France in 730, after the death of Samh Ibn Malik in the Battle of Toulouse in 721 and of Anbasa Ibn Suhaym in the Battle of Gaul in 726, crossed the Pyrenees mountain range with 50,000 cavalry. He swiftly took Bordeaux and Aquitaine and poised for a decisive victory when Tours turned out to be a debacle that also claimed his life. This Battle is considered a strategic win for the Christians, since their defeat would have led to the conquest of all France and Germany by the Muslims and the possibility of their crossing the English Channel for subjugation of the British Isles. The debacle at Tours did not stop the Muslim advance elsewhere in Europe. Muslim presence continued in southern France for over a century. In 734, the Muslims took Arles, St. Remy, Avignon, and retook Lyons and Burgundy. Successful raids were conducted on the western (Atlantic) coast of France throughout the 8th and 9th centuries. In 889 the Muslims established a presence in western Switzerland, which lasted almost two centuries. During the reign of Abdur-Rahman III of Spain, Fraxinetum, Valais, Geneva, Toulon and Great St. Bernard were taken by Muslim armies who then swung around Lake Geneva in 956 and established themselves in the mountain passes leading into northern Italy. At the same time, Sicily and parts of southern Italy were firmly in the hands of the Fatemid Ismaili Shi’ite Dynasty of North Africa. Thereafter, Muslim military power began to decline, not because of the superiority of Europeans but due to infighting. Taking advantage of this chaos, Christian armies ejected the Muslims from southern France, Italy and the Mediterranean islands during the early Crusades (in 1050), persecuting, massacring and enslaving the population.

1020 lunar years ago, on this day in 421 AH, Sultan Mahmoud, the prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid Turkic dynasty who for 34 years ruled the eastern Iranian lands, died. He turned Ghazni into the capital of an extensive empire that covered most of today's eastern and southern Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, parts of Uzbekistan, as well as Northwest India. His initial campaign was the capture of Khorasan along with his father, Sebuktigin, a slave of Alaptagin, who in turn was a Turkic slave of the Iranian Samanid dynasty of Bukhara. On succeeding his father, Mahmoud invaded Sistan to end the Iranian Saffarid dynasty. He then turned towards the north to end the rule of the Samanid dynasty. He next invaded Punjab in the east and overthrew the Ismaili Shi'ite Muslim kingdom of Multan which was allied with the Fatemids of Egypt. Mahmoud massacred the Ismailis and then penetrated into India defeating the Hindu rulers of Lahore. He next crushed the Rajput confederacy, and in the subsequent years the Indian kingdoms of Nagarkot, Thanesar, Kannauj, Gwalior, and Ujjain were all conquered and left in the hands of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist kings as vassal states, since he never maintained a permanent presence in India. Despite his brutal nature, Mahmoud was a patron of arts and Persian poetry. He brought whole libraries from Rayy and Isfahan to Ghazni after raiding these Iranian cities. He demanded that the Khwarezmshahi court send its men of learning to Ghazni, such as Abu Rayhan Birouni, and Abu Ali ibn Sina. Birouni joined Mahmoud's court and accompanied him to India where he stayed, learned Sanskrit, and did valuable research on a wide variety of subjects such as astronomy, geology, anthropology, and history. Ibn Sina declined and fled to the Buwaiyhid courts in Rayy, Isfahan, and Hamedan. The famous Persian poet, Abu'l-Qassem Ferdowsi, after laboring 27 years, went to Ghazni and presented his monumental epic, the "Shahnamah", to Mahmoud. According to historians, Mahmoud had promised Ferdowsi a dinar for every distich written, but when he saw the "Shahnamah" was made up of 60,000 distiches, which required him to pay 60,000 dinars, he retracted and presented him a mere 200 dinars, which Ferdowsi declined and returned to Tous, where after writing a scathing satire against the Sultan, he died heartbroken. Mahmoud's last four years were spent contending with the influx of Oghuz Turkic tribes from Central Asia, and rebellions by Seljuqs. Mahmoud's tomb is located at Ghazni in what is now Afghanistan.

940 lunar years ago, on this day in 501 AH, the prominent narrator of hadith, Ja'far ibn Hussain ibn Ahmad as-Sarraj, passed away in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon at the age of 82. He was an expert in jurisprudence, Qur'anic sciences, Arabic grammar, and linguistics, and traveled to numerous lands including Egypt. He has left behind a collection of poems. His books include “Nizam al-Manasek”.

439 solar years ago, on this day in 1580 AD, after a three-day siege, the English Army brutally beheaded over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.

398 solar years ago, on this day in 1621 AD, Asmat Begum, the highly cultured Iranian lady, whose daughter Noor Jahan and granddaughter Mumtaz Mahal became two of the most famous empresses of the Moghal Empire of Hindustan (northern subcontinent), died in Agra. She was laid to rest in the beautiful mausoleum known by her husband’s name “Tomb of E’temad od-Dowla”. Born in Khorasan, she was the daughter of Mirza Ala od-Dowla Aqa Mullah of the illustrious Aqa Mullah clan. She married Mirza Ghiyas Beg Tehrani, the youngest son of Khorasan’s deputy governor Khwajah Mohammad-Sharif, and became mother of four children. Following decline of fortunes in Iran, the family migrated to India, where Emperor Jalal od-Din Akbar welcomed the talented Ghiyas Beg, who in the reign of the next emperor, Noor od-Din Jahangir, became a trusted minister and was awarded the title of E’temad od-Dowlah. The couple’s youngest daughter, Mehr un-Nisa, married Emperor Jahangir and was given the title of Noor Jahan, bringing further promotions at the court for father Ghiyas Beg and brother Abu’l-Hassan Asaf Khan. Asmat Begum later became the paternal grandmother of Empress Mumtaz Mahal (Asaf Khan’s daughter Arjmand Bano Begum), in whose memory the loving husband Emperor Shah Jahan built the famous white marble mausoleum, Taj Mahal – one of the wonders of the world. Asmat Begum, who was also the great-grandmother of Emperor Aurangzeb and subsequently the ancestress of the rest of the Moghal emperors that followed until the last one Bahador Shah Zafar was removed by the British in 1857 and exiled to Burma, played a politically active role in the affairs of the Moghal court. She is perhaps best known for having invented the famous rose perfume called “Atr-e Jahangiri”, which the emperor described as the discovery of his reign. Upon her death, her devoted son-in-law wrote in his memoirs “Tuzak-e Jahangiri”: “Without exaggeration, in purity of disposition and in wisdom and the excellences that are the ornament of women no Mother of the Age was ever born equal to her, and I did not value her less than my own mother.” Heartbroken over his wife's death, Mirza Ghiyas Beg died a few months later in January 1622 and was buried beside her.

288 solar years ago, on this day in 1731 AD, the English philosopher and biologist, Henry Cavendish, was born in the French city of Nice. He turned into an authority on physics, chemistry, and biology. He was the first European to prove that hydrogen is lighter than air and the objects that are filled with hydrogen can ascend. He died in 1810.

239 solar years ago, on this day in 1780 AD, the Great Hurricane swept across the Caribbean islands killing 20,000-to-30,000 people. It is probably the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds possibly exceeding 320 km per hour or 200 miles per hour.

117 solar years ago, on this day in 1902 AD the first session of International Arbitration Court was held in Hague, Netherlands. Founded in 1899 upon the demand of Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, this court is one of the oldest international judicial bodies and operates under UN supervision.

108 solar years ago, on this day in 1911 AD, the Wuchang Uprising led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty and founding of the Republic of China in February 1912, following a railway crisis that resulted in the Xinhai Revolution. On this day, 17 years later in 1928, Chiang Kai-Shek became Chairman of the Republic of China, but lost the country to the communist leader, Mao Zedong in 1949.

106 solar years ago, on this day in 1913 AD, the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans commingled in the Panama Canal after US engineers blew up the Gamboa Dam and water began to fill the Culebra Cut. By the summer of 1913, the locks and the Culebra Cut (culebra means snake) had been finished. The struggle to dig the Culebra Cut had lasted seven years. On 26 September water was first turned into the locks. This act also marked the final stage in the creation of Lake Gatun, 85 ft above sea level, the largest man-made lake at that time.

75 solar years ago, on this day in 1944 AD, 800 Gypsy children were murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp by Nazi German soldiers, who during World War 2 killed tens of millions of European Christians in the holocaust, which the Zionists and their backers in the West today wrongly claim to be directed against the negligible minority of European Jews.

61 lunar years ago, on this day in 1380 AH, Ayatollah Shaikh Mohammad Ali Ordubadi, the Source of Emulation for Muslims of Azarbaijan, the Caucasus and Soviet Union, passed away in holy Najaf. Born in Tabriz, northwestern Iran, he was the son of the prominent scholar Ayatollah Mirza Abu’l-Qassem, and travelled to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq for higher studies. After mastering jurisprudence, theology and philosophy, he moved to holy Najaf where he attained the status of Ijtehad. He was an authority on the biography of narrators and well versed in hadith, poetry and literature. He wrote over 52 books, including the Arabic works “al-Qabasaat fi Usoul ad-Din”, “Manahej al-Yaqin”, “ash-Shehab al-Mobin”, “ash-Shuhub ath-Thaqeba”, and “Rujoum ash-Shayatin”.   

49 solar years ago, on this day in 1970, Fiji gained independence from 90 years of British rule, and was declared a republic. The Fiji Archipelago covers an area of 18,274 square km and is situated in the Pacific Ocean. Almost 40 percent of the 850,000 population is made up of descendants of Indians brought by the British as contract labourers in the 19th century. Muslims number 85,000 or 10 percent of the national population, while Shi’ites or followers of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt are estimated around 30,000.

21 solar years ago, on this day in 1998 AD, Iranian linguist and Persian language expert, Dr. Mostafa Moqarrabi, passed away at the age of 88. Born in Tehran, as a member of “Farhangistan-e Zabaan”, he contributed to the preparation of school textbooks, and was active in the compilation and publishing of the Persian Language Encyclopedia. In 1953, he joined the prominent scholar Iraj Afshar and his team of scholars such as Mohammad Taqi Daneshpazhuh, Abbas Zaryab Khoei, and Manouchehr Sotudeh, to publish the journal “Farhang-e Iranzamin”, which focused on publishing manuscripts of treatises and short books. He has left behind several works including translation of “History of the World” for school students, and compiled the book “17 Discourses”.

AS/SS