Today is Monday; 12th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 1st of the Islamic month of Moharram 1438 lunar hijri; and October 3, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

Several thousand years ago, on this day, Prophet Idris was raised to the heavens on completion of his mission to restore monotheism to mankind after people had deviated from the worship of the One and Only God, and taken to weird forms of polytheism including fire-worship. His name was Anoukh (Enoch in the Bible) and he is believed to be 7th in line of descent from the Father of the human race, Adam. The reason he was called Idris is because of possessing great wisdom and knowledge, which he used to teach others. According to exegesis he taught to mankind the art of weaving cloth and sewing garments, since in those days people used to wear animal skins. He was the first to invent writing and use the pen, as well as being the first to record and measure the movement of the stars and set up scientific weights and measures. He was the great-grandfather of Prophet Noah and his house was the Sahla Mosque that lies outside the city of Kufa in Iraq. Idris is often called the "Prophet of the Philosophers" and several works are attributed to him. He built many cities including monuments in western Egypt. Interestingly, the Sahla Mosque will be the home of Imam Mahdi (AS), the 12th and Last Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) who will establish the global government of peace, prosperity and justice.

1444 lunar years ago, on this day, in the 6th year before Hijra, the pagan Arab leaders of Mecca, fearful of the spread of the monotheistic liberating creed of Islam, signed an accord to impose economic-social sanctions on Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), thereby banning all trade ties and any relations with the fledgling Muslim community. The Prophet's uncle and guardian, Abu Taleb (AS) took the Muslims under his care and retired to a gorge outside Mecca which still bears his name as Sh'eb Abi Taleb. During this 3-year period, the Muslims suffered acute hardships, and in order to ease their economic plight, the Prophet's wife, Omm al-Momineen Khadija (SA), spent all her vast wealth on their basic needs, to the extent that she passed away in poverty for the sake of Islam. It was the duty of the Prophet's young cousin and ward, Imam Ali (AS) to procure grains for the besieged Muslims by risking his life and limbs. As the sanctions and boycott failed to have their effect, the frustrated Arab pagans lifted the siege three years later, and when they unlocked the box containing the accord, they were surprised to see that all its contents, except the Name of God, had been eaten by termites. Sadly, just before the lifting of the siege and sanctions, the Prophet became a widower as his one and only wife of twenty-five long years, the Mother of all True Believers, Hazrat Khadija (SA) passed away, leaving as orphan her young daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA).

1418 lunar years ago, on this day in 20 AH, the ancient land of Egypt was liberated by Muslim forces from the oppressive rule of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. The Egyptian people welcomed the Muslims as liberators, and most of them by renouncing Christianity, accepted Islam.

1357 lunar years ago, on this day in 81 AH, Mohammad al-Hanafiyya passed away at the age of 66. He was a son of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), while his mother was Khowla, whom the Imam had married a couple of years after the martyrdom of his beloved wife, the Prophet's daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA). Known for his piety, courage and rectitude; during his father's caliphate he was one of the four chief lieutenants, and distinguished himself in the Battles of Jamal and Siffin. Due to ill health he did not accompany his brother, the Prophet’s younger grandson, Imam Husain (AS), to Karbala, and after the tragedy, he was considered head of the House of Imam Ali (AS), since his nephew Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) preferred to keep a low profile. It was in Mohammad al-Hanafiyya's name that Mukhtar Ibn Abu Obaida launched the uprising in Kufa to avenge the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS).

1116 solar years ago, on this day in 900 AD, the Alawid Emir of Tabaristan, Mohammad Ibn Zayd, known as “ad-Da’i as-Sagheer” (the Younger Missionary), attained martyrdom, a day after he was mortally wounded in battle near Gorgan, while defending his realm of the Caspian Sea coast of Iran against the Samanid invaders. He was 6th in line of descent from Imam Hasan Mojtaba (AS), the elder grandson and 2nd Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). The Samanid army decapitated his corpse and took his head to Bukhara, while the body was buried at the gate of Gorgan and soon became a centre of pilgrimage. His death ended the 36-year rule of the First Alawid state established in what are now the provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Golestan by his elder brother Hassan Ibn Zayd, known as “ad-Da’i al-Kabeer” (the Elder Missionary), who was invited by the people of northern Iran to lead them against the Abbasid regime. Mohammad, who ruled for 16 years, had served as governor and commander during the 20-year rule of his elder brother when the Alawid realm was constantly invaded by the Abbasids and their local agents. A cultured figure, who appreciated poetry and composed poems of his own, his welfare policies increased popularity of his rule amongst the Iranians, whom he enlightened with the teachings of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. He rebuilt the holy shrines of Najaf and Karbala – of Imam Ali (AS) and Imam Husain (AS) – that were destroyed some forty years earlier by the Godless Abbasid tyrant Mutawakkel. In 914, the Alawid state of Tabaristan was revived by Seyyed Hassan al-Utrush (5th in line of descent from the Prophet’s 4^th Infallible Heir, Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS). He soundly defeated the Samanid occupiers at Burdidah on the River Burroud, west of Chalous. He had survived Mohammad Ibn Zayd’s defeat and martyrdom in the Battle of Gorgan 14 years earlier. He passed away in 917, the Alawid State lasted till 931.

806 lunar years ago, on this day in 632 AH, the Iranian Shafei mystic, Shehab od-Din Omar Ibn Mohammad Suhravardi, passed away. Born in the village of Suhravard, near Zanjan, 300 km northwest of Tehran, in a family that traced its descent to Martyr Mohammad Ibn Abu Bakr – an adopted son and governor of Egypt of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb (AS) – he expanded the Suhravardiyya Sufi order founded by his paternal uncle, Abu Najib Suhravardi. He wrote the mystical work, “Awaref al-Ma’aref” (Gifts of Deep Knowledge) and among his disciples was the famous Iranian poet, Shaikh Sa’di Shirazi. It is worth noting that Qamar od-Din Khan Asef Jah Nizam ul-Mulk the Founder of the Asef Jahi Dynasty of Haiderabad-Deccan in India, was a direct descendent of Shehab od-Din Suhravardi the Mystic – not be confused with his namesake, compatriot and contemporary, the philosopher of the Illuminationist School.

571 solar years ago, on this day in 1445 AD, the Egyptian Sunni scholar Abdur-Rahman Jalal od-Din as-Suyuti was born in a family of Persian origin that had migrated from Iran during the Mamluk period and settled in Asyut, in Upper Egypt from where it derived the family name as-Suyuti. A follower of the Shafe’i School, he was an expert in jurisprudence, hadith, history, exegesis of the Holy Qur'an, and Arabic grammar and literature. His books are still taught today in Islamic seminaries. In his exegesis titled "ad-Dur al-Manthour" (Scattered Pearls), he has pointed to the ayahs revealed by God Almighty on the outstanding merits of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, i.e. Hazrat Fatema Zahra, Imam Ali, Imam Hasan and Imam Husain (peace upon them). He also wrote a separate book on the Merits of the Ahl al-Bayt.

427 lunar years ago, on this day in 1011 AH, Shaikh Hassan Ibn Zain od-Din, passed away at the age of 52 in his homeland Lebanon. Son of the famous “Shaheed Thani” (Second Martyr), he was a product of the Najaf Seminary in Iraq. He wrote the famous book “Ma’alem al-Usoul”. In Lebanon he groomed numerous students.

277 solar years ago, on this day in 1739 AD, the Treaty of Nis was signed in Eastern Serbia by the Ottoman and Russian Empires to end the 4-year Russo-Turkish War, which was the result of the Russian effort to gain Azov and Crimea on the Black Sea coast in what is now Ukraine. Austria entered the war in 1737 on the Russian side, but was forced to make peace with the Ottomans in the separate Treaty of Belgrade, surrendering Northern Serbia, Northern Bosnia and Oltenia. As a result, Russia was compelled to give up claim to Crimea and Moldavia, although the Ottomans allowed it to build a port at Azov without fortifications and without a fleet in the Black Sea.

150 solar years ago, on this day in 1866 AD, the Vienna Treaty was signed between Austrian Empire and Italian city states, ending Austrian interference and paving the way for the unity of Italy in 1870.

86 solar years ago, on this day in 1930 AD, the Orientalist and Iranist, Friedrich Carl Andreas, died in Germany. Born in Batavia, Java, Indonesia, he was of mixed Armenian, German, and Malayan descent. After education in Hamburg and Geneva, he pursued Iranian and other Oriental studies at Göttingen, Halle, and Leipzig universities, before completing his graduate work in Copenhagen and Kiel. Between 1875 and 1881, he conducted field work in India with the Parsees or Zoroastrians of Iranian origin, and later in southern Iran. His research in Europe focused on the languages and music of the Iranic region of Ossetia in the Caucasus and the Indo-Afghan borderlands. From 1903 till his death in 1930, he was professor of Western Asiatic Philology at Göttingen. The works of several Iranologists, such as Kaj Barr, Arthur Christensen, Bernhard Geiger, Walter Bruno Henning, Paul Horn, Wolfgang Lentz, Herman Lommel, and Oskar Mann, are clearly influences by him. Among his fundamental insights was the recognition that the difference between “Arsacid” (i.e., Parthian) and “Sasanian” (i.e., southwestern) Middle Iranian Language is essentially one of dialect, rather than of time sequence. Working with the Manichean fragments from Turfan in Xingjian, he isolated the texts written in Parthian (which he called the “northern dialect”) and identified another “Pahlavi dialect” as the Sogdian or the eastern Iranian language of what is now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

84 solar years ago, on this day in 1932 AD, Iraq was granted independence by Britain, although London continued to keep close control of affairs of the country it had created after World War I. In 1958, the monarchy installed in Baghdad by the British who imported Faisal I from the Hijaz – the son of their agent Sharif Hussein. The land of Iraq is the cradle of human civilization, and it is here the Father of the human race, Adam, as well as Prophet Noah repose in eternal peace. Throughout history Bayn an-Nahrayn or Mesopotamia as the Land of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates was known, saw the rise and fall of great civilizations that contributed to the scientific progress of mankind, such as the Sumerian, the Akkadian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean, and the Babylonian. In 539 BC, the emerging Achaemenian Empire of Iran, under Cyrus the Great, took control of Iraq, which remained in Persian hands for two centuries until defeat by Alexander of Macedon in 331 BC in the Battle of Gaugamela near Mosul. In 247 BC, the Parthians defeated the Seleucid successors of Alexander to revive Iranian independence and a century later drove the Greeks out of Iraq, where they built their new capital, Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad). The Parthians were replaced in 224 AD by the Sassanid Dynasty which also maintained its capital in Ctesiphon till its fall to the Muslim Arabs in 637 AD, which means that for almost 8 hundred years this city in Iraq, also known as Mada'en was the capital of Iranian empires, until the advent of Islam. The greatest glory for Iraq, however, was the shifting of the Islamic capital from Medina to Kufa in 36 AH (657 AD) by the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), whose martyrdom in this land after over four years of the only instance in history of the model government of social justice further increased its significance. Iraq is also the place where the Prophet’s grandson, Imam Husain (AS), attained immortal martyrdom in Karbala in 61 AH (680 AD). In 132 AH (749 AD), after the end of the 90-odd years of tyranny of the Damascus-based Omayyad dynasty, Iraq once again became the centre of the Islamic world, with the shifting of the capital to Hirah by the equally oppressive Abbasid caliphs, who built Baghdad in 145 AH (762 AD) on the Iranian model as the new capital. With the weakening of Abbasid rule, Iraq became part of the empire of the Iranian Buwaihid dynasty in 945 AD, and 110 years later in 1055 AD it became part of the Iran-based Seljuqid Empire. In 1258 AD Baghdad was sacked by the Mongol hordes of Hulagu Khan and along with the rest of Iraq was part of the Iran-based Ilkhanid Empire for the next century. Thereafter, it was contested by the Iran-based Turkic dynasties such as the Timurids, the Qara Qoyounlu, and the Aq Qoyounlu, until the emergence of the Safavids of Iran who made it part of the Persian Empire once again, before Shah Tahmasb lost it to the Ottoman Turks of Sultan Sulayman. Shah Abbas I retook Iraq, while his successor lost it to the Turks. It was hotly contested by the Iranians and the Ottomans and the last Iranian king to hold Iraq was Nader Shah until his assassination in 1747. In 1917, with the Ottoman defeat in World War I it passed into British hands. Today, after the end of the 35-year reign of terror of the tyrannical Ba'th minority regime, Iraq is once again independent under an elected government, supported by the majority of people. Modern Iraq shares borders with Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that according to Islamic prophecies, in the end times, Kufa in Iraq, will be the seat of the global government of the Prophet’s 12th and Last Infallible Heir, Imam Mahdi (AS).

43 lunar years ago, on this day in 1395 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Hassan Rafi’i Qazvini, passed away at the age of 85 in his hometown Qazvin and was laid to rest in Qom in the mausoleum of Hazrat Ma’souma (SA). A student of Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Ha’eri, the Reviver of the Qom Seminary, he was in turn the teacher of such famous figures as Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, Ayatollah Hassan Hassanzadeh Amoli and the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). He belonged to a family with a long line of Mujtaheds and Gnostic ancestors. In the last thirty years of his life, he settled in his hometown and revived the Qazvin seminary.

38 lunar years ago, on this day in 1400 AH, some 300 men, led by Juhaiman al-Otaiba seized Islam's holiest site, the Masjid al-Haraam or Sacred Mosque that houses the holy Ka'ba in Mecca, as part of their uprising against the British-created Saudi regime. The Wahhabi minority regime refused to listen to the demands for reforms by the group and after besieging them for two weeks in the Masjid al-Haraam it sacrilegiously stormed this holiest site with the assistance of non-Muslim French troops, resulting in a great bloodbath around the holy Ka'ba. At least 244 people were massacred. The captured were never brought before public or given a fair trial. Over a year-and-a-half later, 36 more people were beheaded by the Saudi regime.

33 lunar years ago, on this day in 1405 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abdullah Musavi Shirazi, passed away in holy Mashhad at the age of 92 and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS), the 8^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Born in Shiraz, he was 15 years old when he accompanied his father, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Tahir Shirazi, into banishment to remote areas for opposing the Qajarid dynasty’s subservience to British colonial rule. In 1914, Abdullah Shirazi went to Iraq to study advanced jurisprudence at the seminary of holy Najaf, under Ayatollah Mirza Mohammad Hussain Na’eni. On his return to Iran, he became active against the anti-Islamic rule of Reza Khan Pahlavi, and following the Gowharshad Mosque protests of 1935 against the forcible unveiling of women, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. After his release, he went back to Najaf, and soon became one of the leading Marja or Source of Emulation. In 1975, he returned to Iran and joined the movement of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA) against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, until the regime was overthrown in 1979. He was socially active, both inside and outside Iran, and wrote several books, such as “Umdat-il Wasa'il fil Hashiyat ila ar-Rasa'il” (on writings of Shaikh Morteza Ansari, in 4 volumes); “Azahat ush-Shubahat fi Hukm il-Afaaq al-Muttahidah wa’l Mottafiqah” (Jurisprudential Rules on Observation of the Moon for Calculations of the Solar Calendar); “At-Tuhfat ol-Kadhimiyah fi Qatl al-Hayawanat bil-Alaat al-Kahruba'iyah”  (Jurisprudential Rules concerning Slaughtering of Farm Animals with Electric Devices); “Al-Ihtejajaat al-Ashra” (Discussion on the Sunni-Shi'a Debate – translated into Persian, English, Urdu, and Gujarati, and published several times); and “Imam wa Imamat” (in Persian on the topic of Imamate in Islam). Ayatollah Abdullah Shirazi founded over 180 institutes, including hospitals, schools, and libraries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, and African countries.

26 solar years ago, on this day in 1990 AD, the re-unification of Germany took place and the German Democratic Republic or Socialist East Germany ceased to exist on being merged into the Federal Republic or West Germany, after 45 years of division as a result of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s defeat in the Second World War in 1945.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, Iranian author, translator, and university lecturer, Dr. Morteza As’adi, passed away. He was an authority on translation of literary and Islamic texts and was completely fluent in Arabic and English languages. He wrote numerous books and articles, which were used by researchers. Among his books, mention can be made of “Crusades”, and “World of Islam”. He also translated several books, including “Political Philosophy”, and “Bayt al-Moqaddas”.

4 solar years ago, on this day in 2012 AD, Indian Islamic scholar, Dr. Mohammad Abdul Haq Ansari, passed away in Aligarh at the age of 81. Born in Tamkohi in what is now Uttar Pradesh State, he completed Islamic studies from Darsgah-e Islami, Rampur in 1953, did bachelors in Arabic in 1957, M.A. in philosophy in 1959, PhD in 1962 from Aligarh Muslim University, and M.T.S in Comparative Religion and Theology from Harvard University, USA in 1972. He served as Professor and Head of the Department of Arabic, Persian and Islamic Studies, Vishwa Bharti University, Shantiniketan, Bengal, from 1965 to 1978. He was the president of Jamaat-e-Islami-e Hind (JIH) from 2003 to 2007. He was also the Chancellor of Jamia Islamia, Shantapuram, Kerala. His book “Learning the Language of Qur’an” is considered as one of the best English guides for beginners of Qur'anic studies. Among his works, before he taught at universities in Saudi Arabia, are well-researched books on two of the Iranian philosophers, titled “The Ethical Philosophy of Miskawaih” (1964), and “The Moral Philosophy of al-Farabi” (1965). He died in October 2012.

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