Today is Sunday; 22nd of the Iranian month of Dey 1398 solar hijri; corresponding to 16th of the Islamic month of Jamadi al-Awwal 1441 lunar hijri; and January 12, 2020, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1103 lunar years ago, on this day in 338 AH Ali ibn Buyeh Daylami, titled Emad ad-Dowlah, the founder of the Buwaiyhid dynasty of Iran-Iraq-Oman, died. He first entered the services of the Iranian Samanid dynasty of Bukhara in Central Asia under Nasr II, and later joined Maakaan, who ruled Gorgan and Rayy as a governor of the Samanids. He managed to occupy a high position and gained army commissions for his two younger brothers, Hassan and Ahmad. When Maakaan rebelled against the Samanids by seizing Khorasan, and was attacked by Mardavij the Ziyarid prince, Ali, along with his brothers, switched sides. Soon Ali was granted administrative rule over Karaj (near modern Tehran). When warned of Mardavij's plan to eliminate him, Ali with a small number of Daylamite troops decided to expand his position. Moving against the heretical Khurramites, who controlled the surrounding mountains, he gained control of the region, and in order to further secure his position, he decided to take control of Isfahan, which was then under control of the Abbasid governor Yaqut. Mardavij's appearance, however, forced him to abandon Isfahan. Ali now took Arrajan, between Fars and Khuzestan, and after a series of battles, entered Shiraz. Mardavij continued to pose a threat but before he could invade Khuzestan, he was assassinated. Bolstered by many of Mardavij's Turkish mercenaries that had joined him, as well as the collapse of Ziyarid control over central Iran, Ali decided that Isfahan should be taken and sent his brother Hassan to accomplish this. After Hassan took Isfahan, Ali sent his other brother Ahmad to take Kerman. Ali next sent Ahmad to Khuzestan, from where he entered Iraq, and finally Baghdad. The Abbasid caliph conferred upon him the title of Mo'iz ad-Dowla, while Ali and Hassan were given the titles of Emad ad-Dowla and Rokn ad-Dowla, respectively. The Buwaiyhid dynasty ruled Iran, Iraq and Oman for 110 years, and were patrons of learning and literature, both Arabic and Persian. They encouraged the development of science and technology, and built many architectural monuments, including hospitals, bridges, dams, mosques, and the holy shrines of the Infallible Imams and Imamzadehs.

971 solar years ago, on this day in 1049 AD, Iranian mystic and poet, Abu-Sa’eed Abi’l-Khair, passed away at the age of 81 in Naishapur, in Khorasan. Born in Mihne, near Torbat-e Haidarieh, he was an expert on exegesis of the Holy Qur’an, hadith, and jurisprudence, and was devoted to the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. The details of his thoughts and life are known from the book “Asrar at-Tawhid” (Mysteries of Monotheism) written by his grandson, Mohammad Ibn Munawwar. Abu Sa’eed was also an accomplished poet, and mostly composed quatrains in Persian. During his life his fame spread throughout the Islamic world including Spain. He was the first Sufi writer to widely use ordinary love poems as way to express mysticism, and as such he played a major role in foundation of Persian Sufi poetry. Abu Sa’eed records several meetings with the famous multisided Iranian-Islamic genius Abu Ali ibn Sina.

781 lunar years ago, on this day in 660 AH, famous scholar, Izz od-Din Abdul-Aziz Ibn Abdus-Salaam, passed away in Cairo at the age of 83, spending his last 21 years in Egypt. Born in Damascus, his expertise in Islamic jurisprudence made him the Friday Prayer Leader of the Omayyad Mosque, from where he delivered scathing sermons forbidding the selling of weaponry to the Crusaders with whom the Ayyubid ruler of Syria was openly dealing, despite the fact that these arms were being used against Muslims. As a result, he was dismissed and left for Egypt where he was welcomed, but got into controversies in Cairo as well.

466 solar years ago, on this day in 1554 AD, Bayinnaung Kyawhtin Nawrahta, who would go on to build the largest empire in Southeast Asia, was crowned King of Burma. During his 31-year reign, he expanded his empire – often by recruiting Muslim soldiers equipped with firearms. His empire included much of modern-day Myanmar, Thailand, the Chinese Shan states, and Manipur in northeast India. Although he is best remembered for his empire building, Bayinnaung's greatest legacy was his integration of the Shan states into the Irrawaddy-valley-based kingdoms that eliminated the threat of Shan raids into Upper Burma, an overhanging concern since the late 13th century. His Shan policy was followed by Burmese kings right up to the final fall of the kingdom to the British in 1885.

355 solar years ago, on this day in 1665 AD, French mathematician and presenter of the theory of numbers and possibilities, Pierre de Fermat, the author of “About Maximums and Minimums,” died at the age of 64. The West claims he was founder of differential calculus and analysis despite the fact he greatly benefited from the works of Islamic scientists. Although the concept of a derivative in the sense of a tangent line is a very old one, familiar to Greek geometers such as Euclid and Archimedes, this science developed in ancient India as well, where, around 500 AD, the astronomer-mathematician Aryabhata used infinitesimals to study the motion of the moon. In the heyday of Islamic civilization, Ibn al-Haytham greatly developed this science, which in the 12th century was borrowed and improved upon by India's Bhaskara, in whose works differential calculus can be found. It was left to the Iranian Islamic scientist Sharaf od-Din Tousi to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials and his “Treatise on Equations” developed concepts related to differential calculus, such as the derivative function and the maxima and minima of curves.

144 solar years ago, on this day in 1876 AD, US author, journalist, and social activist, Jack London, was born in San Francisco. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to obtain fame worldwide and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He wrote 50 books, produced 200 short stories, 400 nonfiction articles and 20 novels. Some of his famous works are “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang”, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, and the wolves in the area. His short stories include “To Build a Fire”, and “An Odyssey of the North”. He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as “The Pearls of Parlay” and “The Heathen”, and of the San Francisco Bay area in “The Sea Wolf”. A passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers, he wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel “The Iron Heel”, his non-fiction exposé “The People of the Abyss”, and “The War of the Classes”. As a war correspondent, London was sent to Korea to cover the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 for the daily San Francisco Examiner. He died in Glen Ellen, California, at the age of 40, of a kidney disease, gastrointestinal uremic poisoning.

123 solar years ago, on this day in 1897 AD, Isaac Pitman, the inventor of the Phonetic Shorthand System, died at the age of 84. His shorthand has been adapted for such diverse languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Latin, Persian, Welsh, and Tamil. In 1837, he set forth a shorthand system based on phonetic rather than orthographic principles.

114 solar years ago, on this day in 1906 AD, Mozaffar od-Din Shah Qajar, had to issue a decree for setting up of the first official Court of Justice in Iran with its nationwide branches, following public pressure led by the ulema on the dictatorial Qajarid Dynasty. The Court of Justice was first proposed by Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Tabatabaie, who along with Ayatollah Seyyed Abdullah Behbahani had staged the month-long sit-in protest at the shrine in Rayy of Seyyed Abdul-Azim Hassani (AS), with the support of several thousand people of Tehran.

85 solar years ago, on this day in 1935 AD, scholar and renowned orator, Seyyed Abu’l-Qassim Dehkordi, passed away in Isfahan at the age of 79. After initial studies in Isfahan, he left for Iraq to complete his higher religious studies at the famous seminary of holy Najaf. On his return to Iran, he settled in Isfahan where he groomed at least 300 scholars.  His discourses from the pulpit would draw in large crowds. He wrote several books including “Jannat al-Maawa” on ethics, and annotation of Fayz Kashani’s “Tafsir Saafi” on ayahs of the holy Qur’an.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1964 AD, a revolution overthrew the Sultan of Zanzibar and his Arab-Omani government. An ethnically diverse Muslim state consisting of several islands off the east coast of Africa, Zanzibar was granted independence by Britain in 1963. Thereafter a series of parliamentary elections resulted in the Arab-Omani minority retaining the hold on power it had inherited from Zanzibar's former existence as an overseas territory of the Sultanate of Oman. Frustrated by under-representation in parliament despite winning 54% of the vote in the July 1963 election, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) allied itself with the left-wing Umma Party, and mobilised around 600-to-800 activists. Having overrun the police force and appropriated their weaponry, the insurgents proceeded to Zanzibar Town where they overthrew the Sultan. Reprisals against Arab and South Asian civilians followed; the resulting death toll is disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to 20,000. ASP leader Obeid Karume became the new president, and positions of power were granted to Umma party members. In April the same year, the ASP joined Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the Republic of Tanzania. Islam had been brought over a thousand years ago to Eeast Africa by Iranians from Shiraz, whose descendants are still found in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and Kenya.

50 solar years ago, on this day in 1970 AD, the 30-month civil war ended in Nigeria, as forces of the secessionist state Biafra, surrendered after nearly a million ethnic Igbos died mostly of hunger and disease. Emeka Ojukwu had led some 40 million Igbos in secession.

41 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, during the most sensitive phase of Iran’s Islamic Movement, when the US was making feverish efforts to maintain the British-installed Pahlavi regime, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), ordered formation of the Revolutionary Council. Its main duties were to coordinate the people’s struggles against the Shah and set the stage for formation of the interim government after the regime's downfall. Imam Khomeini emphasized not just the ouster of the Shah, but establishment of the Islamic system for guaranteeing people’s freedom, Iran’s independence, and administration of social justice. After the Shah’s ouster, the Revolutionary Council also acted as a lawmaking body until the formation of the elected Majlis (parliament).

23 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, the scholar Ayatollah Qodratollah Vejdani Fakhr passed away. During almost 40 years of teaching, he groomed thousands of students. He would travel around Iran and visit other countries during the annual seminary holidays to enlighten people of the dynamism of Islam. As a disciple of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), he stood beside the people against the oppression of the Pahlavi regime. He authored several books such as “Ethical Norms in Islam” and the 16-volume “al-Fakhriyya” on jurisprudence.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 2000 AD, scientists claimed that temperatures of the Earth's surface have risen 0.7-to-1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and that the Planet Earth has been warming for the past 300 years.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2010 AD, Professor Mas’oud Ali Mohammadi, Iran’s nuclear physicist was martyred when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home in Tehran. The assassins were hirelings of the US and the Zionist entity. The next year, on capture and trial, one of the principal assassins, Majid Jamali Fashi confessed that he was an operative of Mossad and had visited the usurper state of Israel.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2010 AD, a 7-degree earthquake jolted Haiti in the Caribbean Sea, killing over 300,000 people, destroying most of the infrastructure and installations, and making hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

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