Today is Tuesday; 12th of the Iranian month of Mordad 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 28th of the Islamic month of Shawwal 1437 lunar hijri; and August 2, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2231 solar years ago, on this day in 216 BC during the Second Punic War, the numerically superior Roman army was defeated at the Battle of Cannae by the Carthaginian forces led by the famous general, Hannibal.

1117 lunar years ago, on this day in 320 AH, the 34-year old Abu Mansur Mohammad was installed as the 19^th caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime in Baghdad with the title “al-Qaher-Billah” by the Turkic slave-guards, who a day earlier had killed his step-brother, Muqtadir-Billah, after a depraved 25-year reign spent in wine, women, music, and singing. He turned out to be more inefficient and cruel than his predecessor. He had his young nephew (a son of Muqtadir) walled up alive, and tortured to death his own step-mother (mother of Muqtadir) in such a cruel manner that she was hanged from her legs with her urine dripping on her face. His tyranny made the Turkic guards remove him after a reign of a year-and-a-half. At night when the caliph was as usual heavily drunk with wine, they burst into his chamber, and when he refused to abdicate, they blinded him, threw him into prison, and set up his nephew, Raadhi (son of Muqtadir) as the new caliph. Eleven years later and after two more caliphs were deposed, he was freed, and till his death 8 years later at the age of 54, he was seen in rags and wooden sandals begging for alms on the streets of Baghdad.

970 lunar years ago, on this day in 467 AH, the renowned Persian poet and mystic, Majd od-Din ibn Adam Sana'i Ghaznavi, was born in Ghazni in what is now Afghanistan. He was connected with the court of the Ghaznavid king, Bahram Shah, who ruled for 35 years. When accompanying the king on a military campaign to India, Sana'i met the Sufi teacher Lai-Khur, and immediately quit royal service as a court poet even though he was promised wealth and the king's daughter in marriage. He started serving the people and criticized the unjust and corrupt rulers in his poems. He was a trend-setter in the style of Persian poetry. His most important work is “Hadiqat-al-Haqiqah” (Walled Garden of Truth), which is in the form of odes, reflecting his ethical and Gnostic thoughts. Among his other works, one can mention “Ilahi Namah” and “Tareeq at-Tahqeeq”. He has written some excellent panegyrics in praise of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the First Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). For the past nine centuries Sana'i has had a tremendous influence on Persian literature, and along with Shaikh Farid od-Din Attar, was regarded by Mowlana Jalal od-Din Rumi as an inspiration.

739 solar years ago, on this day in 1277 AD, Iranian statesman, Mo'in od-Din Sulaiman Pervane, who served as Chancellor and Regent of the Persianized Seljuq Sultanate of Roum, was killed by Abaqa Khan, the ruler of the Iran-based Ilkhanid Empire during the invasion of Anatolia (present-day Turkey), on suspicion of betrayal of Mongol interests. Son of Muhazzab od-Din Ali Dailami, an Iranian from Kashan, who served as the vizier to the Seljuq Sultan Kaykhosrow II in 1243 at the time of the Battle of Kose Dagh that resulted in the Seljuqs becoming Mongol vassals, he received a good education and became commander of Tokat and later of Erzinjan. Through influence of Mongol commander Bayju he was made chamberlain to the Konya palace of Kaykhosrow on whose death in 1246 he married the sultan’s widow, Gurju Khatun, and earned reputation as “Master of Intrigues”. In the dispute among the sultan’s sons for the throne, Pervane supported Qilij Arslan IV and declared him successor. He then captured the port of Sinop on the Black Sea and twelve surrounding castles from the Christian Empire of Trebizond. Apprehensive that the sultan might eliminate him, he had Qilij Arsalan IV strangled to death in Aksaray in 1265, and placed the latter’s minor son as Kaykhosrow III (1265-1283) on the throne. In the last 16 years of his life Pervane was the undisputed player in Anatolian politics involving the Seljuqs, the Mongols and the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt-Syria under Sultan Baybars. During the Mamluk-Ilkhanid Wars, his policy was characterized by multiple allegiances to keep all options open. In 1275, when Baybars was in Syria, Pervane played a pivotal role in dissuading him from his planned invasion of the Anatolian heartland and directed him towards raids in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. In 1277 Baybars entered the Seljuq sultanate and on 18 March defeated the Mongol army in Elbistan, while Pervane, who was in command of the Seljuq contingent expected by both Baybars and the Mongols, took flight to Tokat along with the young sultan. At the news of his troops' defeat, Abaqa hastened to Anatolia (July 1277) and savagely punished the Seljuq Turks, massacring tens of thousands of people. Deeming him responsible for Baybars's foray into Anatolia, Abaqa had Pervane killed. Pervane built several monuments that survive today such as the Ala od-Din Jame’ Mosque in Sinop, and the nearby Alaiye Madrasah, also called the Pervane Madrasah. In Tokat he built the Gok Madrasah in 1277. Originally founded as a hospital and medical school, it now houses a museum.

639 solar years, ago, on this day in 1377 AD, a huge Russian army led by Knyaz Ivan Dmitriyevich was defeated in the Battle of Pyana River by the small forces of the Blue Horde Khan, Arab-Shah Muzaffar. Dmitriyevich, who was drunk, was drowned along with several of his commanders – hence the river's name “Pyana”, which means "drunken" in Russian.  Arab-Shah was then able to reach Niznhy Novgorod.

218 solar years ago, on this day in 1798 AD, the Battle of the Nile ended in Egypt with the victory of the British navy over the French.

167 solar years ago, on this day in 1849 AD, the Founder of the Khedive Dynasty of Egypt, Mohammad Ali Pasha, died in Cairo at the age of 80 after ruling for 45 years as a nominal governor of the Ottoman Empire, but in fact the virtual ruler, who at times challenged the Grande Porte and even waged war against his overlords, as far as the interior of Anatolia (modern Turkey). An ethnic Albanian Muslim, he was dispatched to Egypt by the Ottoman Sultan, following the withdrawal of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French forces in 1801. In 1805, he proclaimed himself the “Khedive” (Persian for Viceroy or Ruler) of Egypt and Sudan by eliminating all rivals. He transformed Egypt into a regional power. 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, he set up several schools in various fields. In 1835, he 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 Qonya in 1832. He launched the expedition into Hijaz to liberate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from desert brigands of the Najd led by Abdullah ibn Saud of the heretical Wahhabi cult who had desecrated the holy shrines. After purging the Hijaz of the Wahhabis, Mohammad Ali sent his son, Ibrahim Pasha, in 1812, to completely destroy and rout out the Aal-e Saud from Najd. After a two-year campaign, the Aal-e Saud clan was crushed and most of its members 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 Abdun-Nasser.

94 solar years ago, on this day in 1922 AD, the Scottish-American inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, died at the age of 75. Bell's career was influenced by his grandfather (who published The Practical Elocutionist and Stammering and Other Impediments of Speech), his father (whose interest was the mechanics and methods of vocal communication) and his mother (who was deaf). As a teenager, Alexander was intrigued by the writings of German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz, “On the Sensations of Tone”. At age 23 he moved to Canada. In 1871, Bell began giving instructions in Visible Speech at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes that set his course in developing the transmission of voice over wires. He cofounded Bell Telephone Co in 1877.

79 lunar years ago, on this day in 1358 AH, the jurisprudent/philosopher, Ayatollah Seyyed Hassan Badkoubei, passed away in holy Najaf at the age of 65. Born in the Russian occupied Iranian city of Baku (capital of the current Republic of Azerbaijan), after initial studies under his scholarly father, he came to Tehran, where he stayed for seven years learning jurisprudence and philosophy. He then went to holy Najaf in Iraq, where for four fruitful decades, he groomed scholars and wrote books.

52 solar years ago, on this day in 1964 AD, the US staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident by using gunboats camouflaged with North Vietnamese markings to fire on the US destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy, in order to find a pretext for American involvement in the Vietnamese War. The US is notorious for its lies, deceit, and terror tactics. In 1898, in order to find a pretext to wage war against Spain and seize part of its colonial possession, the US had destroyed its own ship, USS Maine, in the harbour of Havana and then blamed it on the Spanish as justification for the 4-year 1898-1902 War during which it occupied Cuba, Guam Island and the Philippines. The latest such examples of US deceit and terror were the 9th September 2001 incidents in New York of the supposedly hijacked aircraft that brought down the twin towers of the 110-storey high World Trade Center, as a pretext to whip up anti-Islamic sentiments in order to start the present crusade against Muslims and attack and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

27 solar years ago, on this day in 1989 AD, Indian Peace Keeping Forces in Sri Lanka carried a massacre of 64 ethnic Tamil civilians. This policy of discrimination against the ethnic Indian migrants to Sri Lanka turned the Tamils against the Indian government and resulted in the assassination of former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who earlier during a state visit to Colombo was almost hit on the neck by the butt of a gun of a Tamil soldier during the ceremonial inspection of the guard of honour.

26 solar years ago, on this day in 1990 AD, Saddam, the tyrannical ruler of the repressive Ba'th minority regime of Iraq, occupied Kuwait, on getting a green signal from the US through its ambassador in Baghdad, April Gillespie. Soon the US denied any involvement and assembled an international military force to drive out Saddam after some seven months of his occupation of Kuwait. When Iraq’s long-suppressed Shi’ite Arab majority, rose to rid the country of the Ba’th minority regime, the US ordered Saddam to massacre the masses and desecrate the holy shrines of Najaf and Karbala.

3 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, Iranian master of Naqqali or art of storytelling with actions, Valiollah Torabi Sefidabi died in Tehran at the age of 77.

Popular as “Morshed Torabi”, he was born in Sefidab, a village near the town of Tafresh in Central Province into a family acquainted with the stage art. His father was a performer of the Ta’zieh which is a traditional Iranian drama depicting the tragic martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS), the younger grandson and 3^rd Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Torabi performed many programmes at numerous Iranian and international events. Dating back to the Safavid Dynasty, Naqqali is performed in verse or prose with the Naqqal being a single person who plays the roles of all characters with a special tone and expression, sometimes accompanied by instrumental music and scrolls. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) registered Naqqali, as the oldest form of dramatic performance in Iran, on its World Intangible Cultural Heritage List in November, 2011. Naqqali was formerly performed in teahouses, tents of nomads, and historical venues such as caravansaries.

AS/ME