Today is Friday; 22nd of the Iranian month of Azar 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 16th of the Islamic month of Rabi as-Sani 1441 lunar hijri; and December 13, 2019, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

Over three lunar millennia ago, on this day, the Thamoud tribe of the al-Hijr region in the fertile northwestern part of Arabia, was afflicted with divine wrath for the abominable sins of its members, after having been given a lengthy respite to repent and reform, which the sinners spurned and instead committed the cardinal  crime of killing the she-camel that had miraculously emerged from a splitting rock in answer to the supplication of Prophet Saleh to Almighty God when the Godless stuck to their demand for a supernatural miracle. The place is believed to be “Mada’en Saleh” between Medina and the Levant, in the Hejaz. Only a few people especially the poor believed in the monotheistic message of Prophet Saleh, while the majority, particularly the rulers, laughed at him and refused to heed his words of guidance. The special camel would give abundant milk every day for the poor to drink, and they were very happy. The sinners became angry and brutally killed the camel. They then threatened Prophet Saleh with death, but before they could carry out their murderous plot, divine wrath struck them, as black clouds gathered in the sky, covering the moon and the stars. Valleys and mountains were as dark as night. At midnight strong thunderbolts struck, while an earthquake occurred to obliterate the sinners, while Prophet Saleh and the believers had already left for a safe place.

1076 lunar years ago, on this day in 365 AH, the 4th self-styled caliph of the Fatemid dynasty of North Africa-Sicily, al-Mo‘ez le Din-Allah, died in his new capital Cairo (Qahera in Arabic), after a reign of 23 years during which the centre of his caliphate was moved from Mansuriyya in Tunisia to the newly conquered Egypt. The Fatemids, who claimed descent from Imam Ja’far Sadeq (AS), the 6th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), but did not adhere to the teachings of the last six of the Prophet’s 12 Infallible Successors, had thrown off the yoke of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad. Their Shi’ite Muslim Sicilian general, Jowhar as-Saqali, conquered Egypt from the Abbasids and on the orders of Caliph Mo’ez founded the city of “Qahera” (Victorious) to commemorate the victory. Mo’ez soon founded the famous mosque and academy known as al-Azhar in honour of “Zahra” (Radiant), which is an epithet of the Prophet’s daughter, Hazrat Fatema (SA). For the first time in Egypt the “Azaan” was recited in the Shi’ite Muslim manner with proclamation of the name of the Prophet’s First Infallible Successor, Imam Ali (AS), after testifying the Oneness of God Almighty and the Mission of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). For over two centuries, al-Azhar was the site of Ismaili Shi’ite learning until the fall of Egypt to the Kurdish general, Salah od-Din Ayyubi, who forcibly converted the country and its people to the Sunni sect.

976 lunar years ago, on this day in 465 AH, the Iranian mystic Abdul-Karim ibn Hawazin al-Qushayri, died in his hometown Naishapur in Khorasan, northeastern Iran. Known as “Sheikh al-Islam”, following the death of his teacher and father-in-law, Abu Ali ad-Daqqaq, he became the master and teacher of the mystical order called al-Qushayriyya. He was an authority on theology, philosophy, hadith, and exegesis of the Holy Qur’an. He has left behind a large number of books, including the treatise tilted “Risalat al-Qushayriyya” on Islamic mysticism.

971 solar years ago, on this day in 1048 AD, the Iranian Islamic multi-sided genius, Abu Rayhan Mohammad Ibn Ahmad al-Birouni, passed away at the age of 78 in Ghazni. He was born in the outer district of Kath, the capital of Khwarezm in Central Asia. The word Birouni means "outer" in Persian and hence his surname. His first twenty-five years were spent in Khwarezm where he studied jurisprudence, theology, grammar, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and other sciences. His native tongue was Khwarezmian, an Iranian language that died out with the Turkification of Central Asia. He also distinguished himself as a geographer, historian, chronologist and linguist, and is considered an impartial writer on customs and creeds of various nations. While in Mazandaran at the Ziyarid court, he wrote his first important work: “al-Asaar al-Baqiyya an-al-Qoroun al-Khaliyya” (Chronology of Ancient nations and Vestiges of the Past). With the conquest of the region by Mahmoud Ghaznavi he became court astrologer and accompanied the Turkish Sultan on his invasions of India, where he lived for several years and learned the Sanskrit language, in addition to becoming familiar with various aspects about India – the result of which was the highly analytical work in Arabic “Kitab Tahqiq ma li'l-Hind”. Of the more than hundred books written by him, some 65 percent are devoted to astronomy, mathematics, and related subjects like geography and geology. In physics, he introduced experimental scientific methods, and unified statics and dynamics into the science of mechanics, while combining the fields of hydrostatics with dynamics to create hydrodynamics. Birouni also devised his own method of determining the radius of the earth by means of the observation of the height of a mountain and carried it out at Nandana in India. Several centuries before Copernicus and Galileo at a time when Christian Europe was immersed in the dark ages, Birouni, who adhered to the School of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), has stated in his works that the earth is round and spherical. In mineralogy, this Iranian Muslim genius determined the specific density of several metals and minerals with remarkable precision. He wrote almost all his works in Arabic except for “Kitab at-Tafhim”, which is in Persian, and in which he has scientifically proven the movement of the earth around the sun and the force of gravity.

815 solar years ago, on this day in 1204 AD, the Jewish-Arabic scholar, philosopher and physician, Abu Imran Musa bin Maimoun (called Maimonides by the West) died in Egypt near Cairo at the age of 65. He was born in Cordoba, in Islamic Spain and flourished during the reign of the Almoravid Dynasty. After leaving Spain, he lived for several years in Morocco, before settling in Egypt. He wrote extensively in both Arabic and Hebrew and this is firm proof that at time when Jews were persecuted and massacred in Christian Europe, they enjoyed freedom in the Islamic World.

786 lunar years ago, on this day in 655 AH, Shajarat ad-Durr, the widow of the Ayyubid ruler, Sultan as-Saleh, died in Egypt. She played a crucial role after the death of her husband in repelling the Seventh Crusade launched against Egypt by Europeans. She was of Turkic slave origin, and her becoming Sultana (Queen), marks the end of the rule of the Kurdish Ayyubid Dynasty over Egypt and the start of the era of the Mamluks that lasted for two-and-a-half centuries.

769 solar years ago, on this day in 1250 AD, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, died at the age of 56 after a 30-year reign. An ethnic German, residing in Sicily with his capital at Palermo, which still had Muslim culture and a sizeable Muslim population, at his coronation, he said to have worn the red silk mantle bearing an Arabic inscription that had been crafted during the reign of Roger II, indicating the date 528 AH of the Islamic calendar. It incorporated a generic benediction (du’a), wishing the wearer “vast prosperity, great generosity, high splendour, fame, magnificent endowments, and the fulfillment of wishes and hopes. This robe is housed in the Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Fredrick was a multilingual man of learning, who was well versed in Arabic, and interacted with learned Muslims. Since scholarly knowledge played an important role at the courts of Muslim rulers, the questions Frederick sent to Muslim scholars included optical phenomena like the curving of objects in water. The Pope and the Church were hostile to him because of his religious tolerance, at times excommunicating him. On being crowned, he settled some 60,000 Sicilian Muslims in southern Italy – 20,000 in Lucera (Lugherah in Arabic), 30,000 in Apulia and its surroundings, and the rest in Stornara, Casal Monte Saraceno, Castel Saraceno and Campania. These included Iranians of Sicily as well, in particular, the Khwarizmi community of Palermo. The Muslim population of southern Italy, along with local converts from Christianity as well as descendants of Arabs and Berbers who had settled centuries earlier, thrived for another 80 years, till their towns and cities were sacked in 1300 by Charles II of Naples, who expelled (to Albania), forcibly converted to Christianity and sold into slavery most of the population, besides turning mosques into churches. Fredrick II also enlisted Muslims into his personal bodyguards, as they had the advantage of immunity from papal excommunication, and with their help he kept a menagerie which had not only monkeys and camels, but also a giraffe and an elephant. In February 1229, Fredrick II took part in the 6^th Crusade to Palestine to annul papal excommunication, and through a treaty with the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kamel, took control of Bayt al-Moqaddas (Jerusalem), Bethlehem and Nazareth, that stipulated Muslim control of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. In 1244, he lost Bayt al-Moqaddas and other towns that were liberated by the Muslims including the powerful Iranian Khwarazmian clan based in Egypt.

298 solar years ago, on this day in 1721 AD, Alexander Selkirk, Scottish sailor and pirate, who spent more than four years as a castaway after being marooned on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean, died of yellow fever at the age of 45 during a voyage and was buried at sea. By the time he was rescued, he had become adept at hunting and making use of the resources he found on the island. His story of survival was widely publicised when he returned home, and partly became a source of inspiration for the writer Daniel Defoe's fictional character Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk spent four years stranded on the Juan Fernandez Islands – he lived on Mas-a-Tierra [Closer to Land] which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. It  is interesting to note that Defoe’s novel was also inspired by the Latin/English translation of the book “Hayy ibn Yaqdhan” by the Spanish Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, who drew the name of the tale and most of its characters from an earlier work by the Iranian Islamic multi-sided genius, Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna).

265 solar years ago, on this day in 1754 AD, Mahmud I, Ottoman sultan (born 1696) Placed on the throne by the Albanian admiral Khalil who deposed his uncle Ahmad III in 1730, died after a reign of 24 years, during which he was engaged in fruitless wars in Europe and on the western borders of Iran, while Nader Shah Afshar was on his expedition to India. On 24 November 1731, Khalil was strangled by the sultan's order and 7,000 of those who had supported him were also put to death.

235 solar years ago, on this day in 1784 AD, Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer, best known for “The Dictionary of the English Language”, died at the age of 75. He made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. After nine years of efforts, his work titled “A Dictionary of the English Language” was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on modern English, and until the completion of the “Oxford English Dictionary”150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent English dictionary. He famously said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” (to which had Ambrose Bierce replied, “I beg to submit that it is the first”). Johnson, an antagonist of slavery, left behind an annuity and much of his personal property to his black valet, Francis Barber.

149 solar years ago, on this day in 1870 AD, France invaded West Africa. During the decade-long war, thousands of French soldiers were killed and wounded, while there is no mention of the greater number of African people killed by the French occupiers. Military technology enabled the French to subdue and occupy Senegal, Guinea, and Ivory Coast by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of black people. These countries remained under French colonial rule till the second half of the 20^th century.

82 solar years ago, on this day in 1937 AD, the Nanjing Massacre took place in China, when Japanese occupation troops began carrying out several weeks of mass rape and barbaric killing of civilians after the fall of Nanjing. Imperial Japan, which was involved in World War 2, has a bleak, black and bloody record of occupying Southeast Asian countries and mercilessly massacring fellow Buddhists, including those of the Korean Peninsula.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, the prominent Egyptian scholar and dean of al-Azhar, Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltut, passed away at the age of 70. A disciple of the school of thought of Sheikh Mohammad Abduh, the student of the famous Iranian pan-Islamist reformer, Seyyed Jamal od-Din Asadabadi, after assuming chairmanship of al-Azhar in 1958, he announced his vision for reform. Shaltut attempted to prove that the shari’a law was not an obstacle to modern society, but rather a guide through the changes modern society brings with it. He was fervently determined to see al-Azhar achieve greater independence from the state’s control. Sheikh Shaltut is remembered for encouraging harmonious interactions between the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. He maintained close relations with Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Borujerdi and zealously campaigned for open discussion and cooperation between the two branches of Islam. Shaltut issued a fatwa declaring the Ja’fari or Twelver Shi’a School, as a legally valid Islamic system of jurisprudence, permissible to any Muslim adhering and practicing it for fulfillment of religious rites. This fatwa is still seen as a symbol of hope for those aspiring for reconciliation between the two main branches of Islam.

31 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, prominent Iranian author, translator, and researcher, Gholam-Reza Sa’eedi, passed away. An ardent promoter of the Islamic culture of Iran, he was an authority on natural sciences, mathematics, and astronomy, as well as Persian, Arabic, French, and English languages. He lectured at universities for several years, and made visits to India and Pakistan, to study Iran’s cultural bonds with the Subcontinent. He was deeply influenced by the thoughts of the Islamic thinker and Urdu-Persian poet, Allamah Mohammad Iqbal Lahori. Professor Sa’eedi authored several books, including “The Life of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).”

16 solar years ago, on this day in 2003 AD, Saddam, the former Iraqi dictator was caught in his hideout near his hometown Tikrit by Kurds and placed under custody. The repressive Ba’th minority regime was ironically overthrown by its own creators, the US and Britain. The nabbing of the brutal dictator led to euphoria among world people, especially of Iraq, Kuwait, and the Islamic Republic of Iran – victim of the 8-year war he had imposed on the orders of the US. While the world was eager to hear Saddam's confessions of his US-backed crimes against humanity, the Americans kept him under tight control so that he would not be able to admit his close ties with the western regimes. A person of doubtful paternity, Saddam came into the limelight in 1968 following seizure of power by the Ba’th Party through coup. In July 1979, five months after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he was ordered by his British and US masters to take over as president from General Ahmad Hassan Bakr. During his 24-year reign of terror he massacred millions of Iraqi people, both the Shi’ite Arab majority and the Sunni Kurds. This ruthless dictator was finally hanged on 30th December 2006.

AS/SS