Today is Friday; 26th of the Iranian month of Shahrivar 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 14th of the Islamic month of Zi’l-Hijjah 1437 lunar hijri; and September 16, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

Over 1441 lunar years ago, on the eve of this day, the full moon miraculously split in two as Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) prayed to God and pointed his finger towards the sky, when some pagan Arabs led by Abu Jahl along with a group of Israelites demanded that if he is really the Messenger of God he should make the moon split. The first two ayahs of Surah al-Qamar refer to this fact as follows:

"The Hour has drawn near and the moon is split.

"If they see a sign, they turn away, and say, ‘An incessant magic!"

As is clear from the ayahs, the Arab pagans tried to deny this manifest miracle that was produced on their demand, by calling it magic or sorcery, while the Jew immediately accepted Islam, since he had read in the Torah how God made the sun and the moon stand still for Prophet Joshua the successor of Prophet Moses (peace upon them). According to eyewitness accounts, before rejoining, the two parts of the split moon were clearly seen on the horizon on either side of Mount Noor in Mecca. This miracle is supported by documented evidence from India, where the King of the Malabar region in the south, Chakrawati Farmas also known as Cheraman Perumel, witnessed this strange sight of the moon splitting in the sky, and on learning that the Last Prophet had appeared in the Arabian Peninsula, he made a journey to Mecca and became a Muslim. A scientific proof of this miracle is the deep scar or rift discovered on the Moon and photographed by NASA astronomers in the US which is further proof of such a phenomenon occurring in the past. The Indian king’s sighting of the miracle is mentioned in an ancient manuscript currently kept in London’s India Office Library, where other details of the journey are mentioned including the king’s death in Yemen on his way back to India.

1081 lunar years ago, on this day in 356 AH, Abu’l-Faraj Isfahani, the famous master of Arabic prose, historian with sociological interests, poet, and musicologist, passed away in Baghdad at the age of 73. Born in Isfahan, and named Ali by his father Hussain Ibn Mohammad, he spent most of his life in Baghdad where he settled after visiting different lands. He is best known for his encyclopedic 25-volume work “Kitab al-Aghani” that took him fifty years to compile, and which contains valuable information on poets, poetry, philology, rhythms, instruments, Arabic literature and genealogy, from the ancient times till his own days. He travelled to Aleppo, Syria to present this book to the Hamdanid Shi’ite Muslim ruler, Saif od-Dowla. In Rayy, the famous Iranian statesman and scholar, Saheb Ibn Abbad Ismail Taleqani, greatly valued this book. Although a direct descendent of the last Omayyad caliph, Marwan II, he was a follower of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and a strong critic of his own Godless ancestors. He thus wrote the valuable work “Maqatel at-Talibiyeen”, comprising short biographies of the descendants of Imam Ali (AS) – mostly the Prophet’s progeny – martyred by the Omayyad and Abbasid caliphs till the year 313 AH.

518 solar years ago, on this day in 1498 AD the notorious Tomas de Torquemada, who as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, imprisoned, tortured, killed and forcibly converted to the Catholic sect of Christianity, tens of thousands of Moriscos or Spanish Muslims, as well as Marranos or Jews pretending to be Christians in public but practicing Judaism in their homes, died a humiliating death in Avila, Spain, after a prolonged illness. He is such a hated figure in Spanish history that his tomb was ransacked in 1832 – two years before the Inquisition was officially disbanded. His bones were dug out and ritually incinerated, in the same manner as he used to burn people alive at the stake. Of Jewish ancestry, as a close confidante of the bigotedly murderous Queen Isabella of Castile, he was the chief supporter of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 that violated the terms of the Treaty of Granada concluded the year before with the Nasrid Emir at the final surrender of the Muslim state of al-Andalus mandating protection of religious rights of the remaining Muslim population.

280 solar years ago, on this day in 1736 AD, German-Dutch physicist and inventor of the thermometer, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, died at the age of 50. He lived in Holland most of his life, and in 1714 invented the mercury thermometer by developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale. For the zero of his scale he used the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture; 30° for the freezing point of water; and 90° for normal body temperature. Later, he adjusted to 32° for the freezing point of water and 212° for the boiling point of water, the interval between the two being divided into 180 parts.

206 solar years ago, on this day in 1810 AD, Mexicans publicly called for the end of Spanish rule. Mexican Independence Day celebrates this event. Mexico’s revolt against Spain, started with meetings of the literary and social club of Queretaro (now a central state of Mexico), which included the priest, the mayor of the town, and a local military captain named Ignacio Allende. They believed that New Spain should be governed by the Creoles or the locally born citizens of Spanish ancestry rather than those sent by Spain to head the administration.

121 solar years ago, on this day in 1895 AD, Malaysian scholar Zain al-Abedin Ahmad was born. He modernized the Malay language with the publication of a series of grammar books entitled “Pelita Bahasa” in 1936. The book modernized the structure of the classical Malay language and became the basis for Malayo that is in use today. The most important change was in syntax, from the classical passive form to the modern active form.

103 lunar years ago, on this day in 1334 AH, Ayatollah Morteza Ha’eri Yazdi was born in Arak to the famous Reviver of the Islamic seminary of holy Qom, Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Ha’eri Yazdi. After initial studies under his father, he attended the classes of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani, Seyyed Mohammad Mohaqqeq Damad, and the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). In turn he was the teacher of the prominent scholar and hadith researcher, Ayatollah Mohammad Reyshahri, and of Ayatollah Mohammad Momin, a member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts. He passed away in Jamadi al-Akher 1406 in Qom and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Hazrat Ma’soumah (SA).

94 solar years ago, on this day in 1932 AD, British physician Ronald Ross, who located the malarial parasite in the gut of the Anopheles mosquito died in London at the age 75. Born in Almora in northern India, he made a key breakthrough when he discovered malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquito in the Secunderabad suburb of Haiderabad in the Muslim kingdom of the Deccan (southern India). After two years of research failure, in July 1897, he managed to culture 20 adult “brown” mosquitoes from collected larvae. He successfully infected the mosquitoes from a patient named Hussain Khan. After blood-feeding, he dissected the mosquito and found an "almost perfectly circular" cell from the gut, which was certainly not of the mosquito. On 20 August he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito, which he "dappled-wings" and which later turned out to be species of the genus Anopheles. He thus managed to save millions of people worldwide. In later work, in West Africa, he also determined the mosquito species carrying the deadly African fever.

85 solar years ago, on this day in 1931 AD, the leader of the Libyan people's struggles against colonial rule, Omar al-Mukhtar, was executed by his Italian captors at the age of 72, after 23 years of armed resistance against the European invaders. Born in the village of Janzour, near Tobruk in eastern Barqa, in Tripolitania Province of the Ottoman Empire, he was orphaned as a child and was adopted by Sharif al-Ghariani, a member of the political-religious Senussi Sufi Movement. After early education at the mosque, he studied for eight years at the Senussi University at Jaghbub, and in 1899 was sent to Chad to assist Rabih az-Zubayr against the French. In October 1911, during the Italian-Turkish War, an Italian naval force appeared on the shores of Libya and demanded the surrender of the country. The Turks and their Libyan allies withdrew to the countryside instead of surrendering, and the Italians bombarded the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi for three days, marking the beginning of a series of battles with the Libyan people of Cyrenaica led by Omar Mukhtar. Skilled in desert warfare, he was a thorn in the side of the Italians until he was ambushed, wounded and captured on 11th September 1931. Five days later the terrified Italian occupiers, having failed to subdue the Islamic spirit of this scholar of the holy Qur’an, hanged him.

77 lunar years ago, on this day in 1360 AH, Ayatollah Sheikh Fayyaz Zanjani, passed away at the age of 75, Born near the city of Zanjan. He was an erudite scholar and he wrote several books, including “Zakha’er al-Ummah”.

53 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, Malaysia was formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak, with Tunku Abdur-Rahman as prime minister. Singapore, however, soon left this new country. The establishment of Malaysia was bitterly opposed by Indonesia, which refused to recognize the country and waged a guerrilla war against it.

41 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, Papua-New Guinea gained independence. The first Europeans to occupy it were the Dutch, followed by the British. Half of this large Pacific island was handed over to Australia in 1906 by Britain while the other half came under German occupation, until the Nazi defeat in World War 2 when it was placed under the UN.

34 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, the illegal Zionist entity, along with its Phalangist agents in Lebanon, massacred over 5,000 old men, women and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in southern Lebanon. The evil mind behind the bloodcurdling slaughter was Israeli war minister, Ariel Sharon. An ethnic German, born to Lithuanian parents illegally residing in Palestine, his crimes against humanity got him the post of prime minister of the usurper state of Israel. In January 2006, divine wrath struck him in the form of a brain stroke, and for eight years he lay in coma, with most of the brain becoming fluid, before his death.

9 solar years ago, in 2007 AD, the International Ozone Day was celebrated on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol, following the designation of September 16 as the International Day for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, by the UN. By 2007, 191 countries had signed the environmental protocol, under which there was to be a phase out of the production and consumption of ozone depleting chemicals.

9 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, American terrorists working for the notorious Blackwater Company shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, and injured scores of others. Following outrage in Iraq and the Muslim World, a kangaroo trial was held in the US but soon all criminal charges against the killers were dropped and they were freed.

AS/ME