Today is Monday; 3rd of the Iranian month of Khordad 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 16th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1437 lunar hijri; and May 23, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1172 solar years ago, on this day in 844 AD is the spurious date of the fictional Battle of Clavijo in northern Spain between Muslims and Christian that never took place. Stories invented centuries later claimed it saw the victory of Ramiro I of Asturias over the Emir of Cordoba. In this myth, Saint James Matamoros, suddenly appeared and helped a vastly outnumbered Christian army to gain victory. Aspects of the historical Battle of Monte Laturce (859) were incorporated into this fiction. The myth, as it survives, was first fabricated about 300 years after the supposed battle on a spurious charter. A forged grant to the Church of Santiago de Compostela by which Ramiro reportedly surrendered a part of the annual tribute owed him by all the Christians of Spain also dates from the mid-twelfth century. The history of the cult of Saint James is rich in such frauds. Such myths were coined to instill a false sense of religiosity amongst the Spanish Christians to make them rise against Spanish Muslims. Modern Spanish scholarship has noted the heavy borrowings from the historical Battle of Monte Laturce that led to the defeat of Musa Ibn Musa, of the Islamicized Bani Qasi (descendents of the Hispano-Visigoth nobleman Cassius). After Monte Laturce, which was the result of family feud between Spanish Christians and Spanish Muslims, Musa was forced to fully submit to the Emir of Cordoba, who taking advantage of his weakness, removed him as Wali or Governor of the Upper March, initiating a decade-long eclipse of the Banu Qasi. 

1002 lunar years ago, on this day in 435 AH, Abu Taher Jalal od-Dowla, the Iranian Buwaiyhid ruler of Iraq, passed away at the age of 51 after a reign of 17 years. He was the son of Baha od-Dowla, and was appointed governor of Basra by his elder brother, Sultan od-Dowla, who was the senior Buwaiyhid ruler of both Iraq and Fars. Jalal od-Dowla retained governorship of Basra when his youngest brother, Musharraf od-Dowla, with the help of the Turkic guards seized power in Baghdad and declared himself king of Iraq and later Shahanshah. On Musharraf’s death a succession crisis occurred and it took the army more than two years to choose Jalal od-Dowla as successor. He subsequently became involved in a bitter fight with his nephew Abu Kalijar (son of the deceased Sultan od-Dowla), who controlled Fars and Kerman. The two were not always enemies; for example, Jalal od-Dowla provided support to Abu Kalijar when the Ghaznavids invaded Kerman in 1033. Jalal od-Dowla was also forced to deal with problems in his own realm, which consisted of little more than Baghdad and Waset following Abu Kalijar's seizure of Basra. His army was continually hostile. A mutiny led by a Turk named Barstoghan occurred and provided Abu Kalijar an opportunity to invade Iraq. He failed to take Baghdad, but gained his uncle Jalal od-Dowla's allegiance. The latter, however, had the support of the Uqailid amir of Mosul and the Arab tribe of the Asadids, and he was soon restored to full power as an independent ruler. Jalal od-Dawla continued his rule in Iraq until his death in 1044, following which Abu Kalijar managed to gain control of Iraq.

849 lunar years ago, on this day in 588 AH, the theologian, exegete of the Holy Qur’an, and hadith scholar, Mohammad Ibn Ali Ibn Shahr Ashoub, passed away at the ripe old age of 99. Born in Mazandaran, northern Iran, in a Sunni Muslim family, he memorized the Holy Qur’an at the age of 8. His scholarly mind made him research and master hadith, and he was permitted by the prominent ulema of his day, such as Zamakhshari, Ghazali, and Khateeb Khwarezmi, to quote hadith. He also wrote beautiful poems in both Arabic and his native Persian. His quest for truth made him turn into a staunch follower of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, whose unsurpassed merits he has collected in a 4-volume work titled: “Manaqeb Aal-e Abi Taleb”. Among the several valuable works of this Muslim theologian and hadith scholar, is “Ma’alem al-Ulema”, a biography of prominent scholars.

825 lunar years ago, on this day in 612 AH, the Arabic poet and scholar, Abdullah ibn ad-Dahhan Shafe’i, passed away in Baghdad. He was from the city of Mosul and was an expert in the sciences of his day, such as theology, exegesis of the Holy Qur’an, medicine, and astronomy, and wrote beautiful poems. Besides Arabic, he was fluent in Persian, Turkish, Roman, Sanskrit, and Armenian, and whenever his non-Arab students did not understand him, he spoke to them in their own language. He went blind in his last years.

492 solar years ago, on this day in 1524 AD, Shah Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid Dynasty of Iran, passed away at the age of 37 after a reign of 24 years, and was succeeding by his young son, Shah Tahmasp I. To Ismail and the Safavids goes the credit of giving Iran its present political, cultural, religious, and national identity, although in terms of geography many of the areas of the Safavid Empire were lost to the aggressors and colonialists by the subsequent dynasties. Ismail I was devoted to the teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Born in Ardabil to the head of the Safaviyya Sufi order, Shah Haidar, and his wife Martha, the daughter of the Aq Qoyounlu ruler, Uzun Hassan, by his Greek wife Theodora, better known as Despina Khatun, he was the direct descendant of the famous mystic, Safi od-Din Ardabeli, and hence traced lineage to the Prophet’s 7th Infallible Heir, Imam Musa Kazem (AS). At the age of 13, Ismail launched his campaign in Erzinjan (presently in Turkey), and with the help of a 7,000 force of Qizl-Bash (literally ‘Red-Heads’ from the colour of their caps) Turkic tribes of Rumlu, Shamlu, Ustajlu, Qajar, Afshar, Zul-Qadr, Tekulu, and Varsak, he defeated the Shirvan-Shah, took control of Baku (presently in the Republic of Azerbaijan) and crowned himself as King of Azarbaijan in Tabriz. By 1509, he unified all of Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, and western Afghanistan, and took the title of Shah of Persia. He was an adventurous personality and the dynasty founded by him lasted 235 years, reviving Iran's Islamic glories in science, art, architecture, philosophy, culture, and literature. Hence he wielded spiritual influence outside Iran as well amongst the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt in Iraq, Syria, Anatolia (modern Turkey), the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Deccan Plateau of India. The Timurid prince, Babar, who later founded the Mughal Empire in northern India, regarded Shah Ismail as his suzerain, and so did the Deccan Sultanates of Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur and Sultan Quli Qutb Shah of Golconda. For this reason, the Ottomans and Uzbeks were his mortal enemies, whose political ambitions, he decisively checked despite the setback he suffered in the Battle of Chaldiran against the former. Shah Ismail I was an accomplished poet in both Persian and his native Azeri Turkish, and wrote under the penname of "Khatai".

398 solar years ago, on this day in 1618 AD, the 30-year sectarian war started in Europe between the Catholic and Protestant sects, and involved almost all major countries. Europe has a history of gory sectarian and ethnic wars among the various sects that make up Christianity. These senseless wars have claimed millions of life.

379 lunar years ago, on this day in 1048 AH, Ottoman Grand Vizier, Tayyar Mohammed Pasha was killed by a bullet fired by Iranian defenders during the siege of Baghdad. Tayyar was the fourth Ottoman Grand Vizier to be killed on the battlefield. Incidentally, his father Ogar Mustafa Pasha had also lost his life near Baghdad during the Ottoman-Safavid battle over the city, which was won by the Iranians. For over two hundred years the Ottomans and the Safavids fought over Iraq, which exchanged hands many times.

193 lunar years ago, on this day in 1244 AH, the famous Urdu and Persian poet of India, Amir Ahmad Meenai, was born in Lucknow. He started writing poems as of the age of 15 years. He had studied logic, law, geography, mathematics, medicine, history, religion, music, philosophy and wrote some 50 books in Urdu and Persian. His works in prose and verse are simple and delicate. He joined the court of Wajed Ali Shah of Oudh, and after the British overthrew the dynasty of Iranian Naishapuri origin, he moved to the court of the Nawab of Rampur, where lived the rest of the life, before travelling to Haiderabad-Deccan in the south where he died at the age of 76. Meenai helped popularise the na’t genre in Urdu poetry and the popularity of his poems in this fields in praise of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) proved to be a trend-setter among other poets. His works “Khayaban-e Aafrinish”, “Noor-e Tajalli” and “Abr-e Tajalli” deal with the birth and life of the Prophet in both poetry and prose. His ghazals and mathnawis were published in two volumes titled “Miraat-ul Ghaib” and “Sanam Khana-e- Ishq”.

71 solar years ago, on this day in 1945 AD, Heinrich Himmler, Chief of Nazi Germany's notorious intelligence agency, Gestapo, committed suicide while being held in prison by the Allied Powers, a few hours prior to his execution.

34 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, the southwestern Iranian city of Khorramshahr was liberated from the yoke of the Ba'thist invaders by Iran's Muslim combatants in the heroic Bayt al-Moqaddas Operations, after a year and 8 months of occupation. It was a decisive victory that completely turned the tide of the imposed war against Saddam, thereby shattering the equations of his backers in the West and the East, including the Arab reactionary regimes of the Persian Gulf, which had bankrolled his aggression on Islamic Iran. This historic event is marked every year as “The Day of Resistance and Victory”.

25 solar years ago, on this day in 1991 AD, almost worldwide demonstrations were staged by Muslims against Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, in protest to his desecration of the holy shrines in Karbala and Najaf, coupled with the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Shi’a Muslims, on the orders of the US and Arab regimes, when the popular uprising of the people of Iraq was about to topple him.

11 solar years ago, on this day in 2005 AD, Iranian poet Mohammad Reza Aqasi, passed away at the age of 46. Born in Tehran, he is famous for his long ode (Mathnavi) on the history of the Shi’a Muslim Creed. He also wrote excellent poetry on the heroics of Iran’s Muslim combatants on the battlefields of the 8-year war imposed by the US on the Islamic Republic through Saddam of Iraq’s repressive Ba’th minority regime.

4 solar years ago, on this day in 2012 AD, Iran's navy, as a humanitarian gesture and efforts to safeguard international waters, saved the US-flagged Maersk Texas cargo ship that was being attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Oman.