Today is Tuesday; 28th of the Iranian month of Ordibehesht 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 10th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1437 lunar hijri; and May 17, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1425 lunar years ago, on this day in 12 AH, the Arab Muslim army under the command of Qa'qa Ibn Amr at-Tamimi defeated a combined force of Persians and Christian Arabs led by the Sassanid general, Rouzbeh, in the Battle of al-Hussaid in Iraq that resulted in many Arabs and Iranians of Iraq embracing the truth of Islam.

1015 lunar years ago, on this day in 422 AH, the Arabic poet Abdullah Abdul-Baqi, passed away in Baghdad. He was a scholar as well, and an expert in Hadith and Islamic sciences.

683 lunar years ago, on this day in 754 AH, the renowned Islamic scholar Seyyed Amid od-Din Abu’l-Fawaris Abdul Muttalib ibn Mohammad ibn Ali al-A'arj, passed away. He was the son of the nephew of the celebrated scholar Allamah Hilli, and an expert in jurisprudence, theology, exegesis of the holy Qur’an, Hadith, and Arabic literature. He wrote several books on various Islamic sciences, including "Sharh Tahzib al-Osoul" and “Kanz al-Fawa’ed”.

476 solar years ago, on this day in 1540 AD, the Battle of Bilgram near the town of the same name in northern India led to the resounding defeat of Mughal Emperor, Naseer od-Din Humayun, by the Afghan warlord Sher Khan Suri, who now became the master of Delhi and Agra and assumed the title of Sher Shah. Humayun, who could not use his artillery during the surprise attack because of heavy rains, barely escaped with his life and became a fugitive, finally fleeing to Iran to the court of Shah Tahmasp Safavi. Later, with Iranian military help, he returned to the Subcontinent and on the death of Sher Shah reclaimed the throne of Delhi.

337 lunar years ago, on this day in 1100 AH, Tartar Muslim commander of Crimea, Spem Giray, who was an ally of the Ottoman Empire, defeated a huge Russian army of 300,000 soldiers in what is now Ukraine. The Tartars, who for several centuries were a major power in the northern Black Sea region, were later conquered by the Russians, brutally suppressed and deported to other lands.

267 solar years ago, on this day in 1749 AD, English physician and surgeon, Edward Jenner, who discovered vaccination for smallpox, was born. There was a common story among farmers that if a person contracted a relatively mild and harmless disease of cattle called cowpox, immunity to smallpox would result. On 14 May 1796, he removed the fluid of cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy, proving the theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin words “vacca”, meaning cow, and “vaccinia”, meaning cowpox. Jenner also introduced into English the word “virus”.

211 solar years ago, on this day in 1805 AD, the Albanian general, Mohammad Ali Pasha, who was dispatched to Egypt by the Ottoman Sultan, following the withdrawal of Napoleon Bonaparte and his occupying French forces in 1801, officially proclaimed himself the “Khedive” (Persian for Viceroy or Ruler) of Egypt and Sudan by eliminating all rivals. During his almost half-a-century rule he transformed Egypt into a regional power which he saw as the natural successor to the decaying Ottoman Empire. He initiated wide ranging reforms and established for the first time a professional bureaucracy. In the 1820s, he sent the first educational mission of Egyptian students to Europe. This contact resulted in the birth of literature that is considered the dawn of the Arabic literary renaissance, known as the “an-Nahdha”. To support the modernization of the industry and the military, Mohammad Ali set up a number of schools in various fields where French texts were studied. Rifa'a at-Tahtawi supervised translations from French to Arabic on topics ranging from sociology and history to military technology. In 1835, Mohammad Ali Pasha founded the first indigenous press in the Arab World, the Bulaq Press, which published the official gazette of the government. Bulaq also published rare old Arabic books, as well as Persian and Turkish. He pursued military campaigns initially on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmoud II, in Arabia and Greece (capturing Athens in 1827 before the combined attack of the British-French forced him to retreat). Later he came into open conflict with the Ottoman Empire, because of his personal ambitions, which brought Syria under his control for ten years and made him advance as far as Konya in 1832. He launched the expedition into the Hijaz to liberate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from desert brigands of the Najd led by Abdullah ibn Saud, who followed the heretical Wahhabi cult and had desecrated the holy shrines. After purging the Hijaz of the Wahhabis, Mohammad Ali Pasha sent his son, Ibrahim, in 1812, to completely destroy and rout out the Aal-e Saud from Najd itself. After a two-year campaign, the Aal-e Saud clan was crushed and most of them captured. The leader, Abdullah ibn Saud, was sent to Istanbul, and executed for having desecrated the holy shrine of Imam Husain (AS) in Karbala, before his sacrilegious attack on the Hijaz. In short, Mohammad Ali established the dynasty that lasted till the military coup of 1952 and the ouster of King Farouq by General Mohammad Najib and Colonel Jamal Abd an-Nasser.

151 solar years ago, on this day in 1865 AD, in the presence of representatives of twenty countries in Paris and following the conclusion of first international contract in the domain of communications, the International Telegraph Union was founded and its international bylaw was prepared and approved. For this reason, this day is named as the International Communications Day. In 1932, according to decisions of the Madrid Conference, the International Telegraph Union was renamed International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and all its bylaws were reviewed. In 1947, ITU became a UN affiliate.

132 lunar years ago, on this day in 1305 AH, the literary scholar Seyyed Ismail ibn Radhi ibn Ismail al-Hussaini ash-Shirazi, passed away in Iraq.

108 lunar years ago, on this day in 1329 AH, Azarbaijani philosopher and renowned poet of the Caucasus region, Mirza Ali Akbar Zain ol-Abedin Taherzadeh, known by his penname Saber, was born in the city of Shervan in what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan, which before the Russian occupation in the first half of 19th century was an integral part of Iran. He was fluent with the Azeri, Persian, Arabic, and Russian languages, and wrote many ghazals in imitations of Persian poets, particularly Nizami Ganjavi. In 1885, he embarked on a tour of several cities of Iran and Central Asia. Political satire was an important part of his work, and the butt of his satire ranged from Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany to Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar of Iran, and from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid to the defeat of Russian armies by Japan as well as the scenes of social and domestic life at home. Part of Saber’s life coincided with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and his vibrant and biting political satire was recited by the Constitutionalists in the trenches of Tabriz. He also made a fine verse translation of some passages of Ferdowsi’s “Shahnamah” into Azeri. Many of Saber’s poems are in admiration of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and the Infallible Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt.

107 solar years ago, on this day in 1909 AD, Dutch orientalist, Michael Jan de Goeje, died at the age of 73 after half-a-century of research and publication of several valuable Arabic works of Islamic geographers and historiographers, such as Seyyed Mohammad al-Hasani al-Idrisi of Sicily, and the Iranians Abu’l-Qasim Ibn Khordadbeh and Abu Ja’far Tabari. Born in Dronrijp, Friesland, he devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic. From 1860 to his death in 1909 he devoted himself to the edition – alone or in collaboration – of twenty Arabic texts, all with extensive indexes and Arabic-Latin glossaries. He also contributed to the work of other orientalists by careful proofreading and by revising books like William Wright’s “Grammar of the Arabic Language” and his edition of the “Reḥla” or “Travels of Ibn Jobayr”. At the age of seventy-one, de Goeje accepted the editorship of the first edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam but was soon forced to resign owing to ill health; he did not live to see the first volume in print.

77 solar years ago, on this day in 1939 AD, the British occupation authorities of Palestine released a so-called White Paper on the threshold of World War II for illegally settling 100,000 more European Zionists, as a prelude to the planting of the usurper state of Israel. The Palestinians rejected the plan, which they sensed was a prelude for complete occupation of their homeland. In 1942, in a conference held in the US, European Zionists formally called for the establishment of a usurper Jewish state in Palestine called Israel.

29 solar years ago, on this day in 1987, during the 8-year war imposed by the US on Islamic Iran through Saddam, Iraqi jetfighters fired missiles at the US Warship “Stark” killing 37 American soldiers and wounding scores of others. The Ba'th minority regime of Baghdad immediately offered apology to the US, and Washington which was in league with Saddam against Iran, quickly responded by calling the attack and the death of its soldiers as a case of mistaken identity. Experts believe Iraq’s missile attack on the USS Stark and the death of US personnel was preplanned by both Washington and Baghdad to portray the Persian Gulf region as unsafe so as to enable the US send more warships for intimidating the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ordibehesht 28, is commemorated every year in the Islamic Republic of Iran as National Day for the prominent Iranian Muslim scientist and poet, Omar Khayyam, who was born in 439 AH (corresponding to 1048 AD). In June 2009, Iran donated a pavilion to the United Nations Office in Vienna which is placed in the central Memorial Plaza of the Vienna International Centre. Named “The Persian Scholars Pavilion”, it highlights Iranian architectural features, and is adorned with the statues of four prominent Iranian-Islamic scientists: Zakariya Razi (Rhazes), Abu Ali Sina (Avicenna), Abu Rayhan Biruni, and Omar Khayyam.

AS/ME