Today is Tuesday; 13th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 2nd of the Islamic month of Moharram 1438 lunar hijri; and October 4, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1993 solar years ago, on this day in 23 AD, rebels captured and sacked the Chinese capital Chang'an during a peasant rebellion. They killed and decapitated the emperor, Wang Mang, two days later.

1406 solar years ago, on this day in 610 AD, Heraclius arrived by ship in Constantinople from Africa, overthrew Byzantine Emperor Phocas and declared himself Emperor in the midst of the ongoing war against Iran's Sassanid Empire. Born into an Armenian family he was the son of Heraclius the Elder, who had served as governor of the province of North Africa and was a veteran general of the Byzantine wars against Bahram Chobin the usurper of the Persian Empire. The year he came to power, the Byzantine Empire was threatened on multiple fronts. He immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Sassanid Empire. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Greeks as the Iranian army fought its way to the Bosporus and besieged the capital Constantinople, which because of impenetrable walls was able to avoid total defeat. Soon Heraclius rebuilt the military and managed to drive the Persians out of Asia Minor. He pushed deep into Iranian territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh in Iraq. Soon the Sassanid Emperor, Khosrow II, was assassinated and peace was restored to the two deeply strained empires. However, shortly after his victory, Heraclius, who some years earlier had received a letter of invitation to Islam from Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), faced Arab armies in Syria, where he was defeated and withdrew, as the Muslims swept across the Levant, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, before the crestfallen Byzantine Emperor died in 641 after a 31-year reign that saw him lose half the Empire.

1377 lunar years ago, on this day in 61 AH, Imam Husain (AS), the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny), stepped on the fateful field of Karbala where he was to be martyred on the 10th of Moharram by the enemies of humanity. Invited by the people of Kufa to help them against the tyrannical rule of the Godless Yazid, he was met with a battalion of troops led by the regime’s general, Horr, on entering the land of Iraq from Arabia. The Imam pitched his camp besides the fresh flowing waters of the River Euphrates, from which place he was evicted with the arrival of more enemy forces. The Prophet's grandson refused to endorse the illegitimate rule of Yazid and preferred martyrdom in unequal combat for the cause of justice and humanitarian values, which has immortalized his movement.

833 lunar years ago, on this day, in 605 AH, the noted scholar Shaikh Warram ibn Abi Farres passed away in his hometown Hillah in Iraq. He was a descendent of the celebrated Islamic general, Malik Ashtar, whom the Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali (AS) had appointed as governor of Egypt and written for him the famous epistle on the most efficient way of governance, which is regarded till this day as the finest ever charter of human rights. Shaikh Warram is the author of the book "Tanbihat al-Khawater" and was the maternal grandfather of the renowned scholar Seyyed ibn Tawous.

789 solar years ago, on this day in 1227 AD, the self-styled al-Muwahhedeen caliph of Morocco and Islamic Spain, Abdullah al-Adel, was assassinated. He had seized power through a coup three years earlier, plunging the realm into instability that lasted well beyond his death. He is often regarded as one of the most disastrous rulers. His coup divided the dynasty and set in motion the loss of Andalusia or Islamic Spain, and the eventual collapse of the al-Muwahhedeen state.

753 solar years ago, on this day in 1363 AD, the Battle of Lake Poyang ended; the Chinese rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang defeated the rival Chen Youliang, in one of the largest naval battles in history. Following this victory, Zhu emerged as the strongest of warlords fighting for supremacy in China, and in 1367 he defeated Zhang Shicheng's Kingdom of Dazhou, which granted him authority over the lands north and south of the Yangtze River. The other major warlords surrendered to him and on 20 January 1368, Zhu proclaimed himself the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in Nanjing and adopted the title "Hongwu". His dynasty's mission was to drive away the Mongols and restore Han Chinese rule in China. The Hongwu Emperor ruled for 30 years, and although born a Buddhist, he embraced the Confucian doctrine and showed inclination towards Islam. He ordered the construction of several mosques in Nanjing, Yunnan, Guangdong, Xijing and Fujian, and had inscriptions placed in them in praises of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He rebuilt the Jinjue Mosque in his capital Nanjing, and large numbers of the Muslim Hui people moved to the city during his rule. He had some ten Muslim generals in his military, including Chang Yuchun, Lan Yu, Ding Dexing, Mu Ying, Feng Sheng and Hu Dahai. He personally wrote the 100-word praise known as ‘baizizan’ on Islam, Allah and the Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).

414 solar years ago, on this day in 1582 AD, Thursday was the last day of the use of the Julian calendar in Italy and the three other Catholic countries of Spain, Portugal, and Poland. The next day Friday instead of being October 5 became October 15, as per the new Gregorian calendar established by Pope Gregory XIII. Ten days had thus been skipped to realign the calendar, and Easter, with the equinoxes. The Julian calendar, and its leap years as introduced by the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar, did not quite fit the solar year. An error of one day accumulated for each 128 years. Britain resisted this Catholic change until 2^nd September 1752, while Russia until 31 January 1918. The Islamic solar hijri calendar which starts on the exact time of the spring equinox and is in use in Iran, Afghanistan and the peoples of neighbouring countries, is far more perfect than the Gregorian calendar that was imposed by the colonial powers on the rest of the world after World War I.

347 solar years ago, on this day in 1669 AD, Dutch painter and illustrator, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, died at the age of 63. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important in Dutch history.

221 solar years ago, on this day in 1795 AD, Napoleon Bonaparte first rose to national prominence with a "Whiff of Grapeshot", using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).

186 solar years ago, on this day in 1830 AD, a new country called Belgium was created as a kingdom after separation of the southern parts of the Netherlands. The area used to be under the control of Austria before its seizure by France in the late 18th century. In 1815, it formed a union with Holland and this union did not last long because of the difference between the Catholics and Protestants. Leopold was chosen as the first king of Belgium, which today has a constitutional monarchy. It covers an area of more than 30,000 sq km, and shares borders with France, Germany, Holland, and Luxemburg.

163 solar years ago, on this day in 1853 AD the disastrous Crimean conflict started on the Black Sea coast of what is now Ukraine, with the declaration of war against the expansionist Russian Empire by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, supported by France and Britain. The Crimean War, which lasted three years without any tangible results on either side, was one of the first wars to be documented extensively in written reports and photographs. News correspondence reaching Britain from the Crimea was the first time the public were kept informed of the day-to-day realities of war. It was also the first war in which railways and the electric telegraph were used. The Russian navy in the Black Sea was totally destroyed, but the Turks failed to restore the rights and sovereignty of the Tartar Muslims in Crimea.

59 solar years ago, on this day in 1957 AD, the first spacecraft was launched into space by Soviet scientists. It was named Sputnik 1, and orbited round the Earth 1400 times in 92 days, telecommunicating radio messages from space for the first time. It weighed 83 kg and was equipped with two radio transmitters.

53 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, Hurricane Flora devastated Cuba and Haiti killing at least 6,000 people. Its speed was 150 km per hour.

51 solar years ago, on this day in 1965 AD, The Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), after 11 months in the Turkish city of Bursa, following his exile from Iran by the British-installed and US-supported Pahlavi regime, left for Iraq. He first arrived in Samarra to a warm welcome by the Iraqi people and paid his respects at the holy shrines of Imam Ali Naqi and Imam Hasan Askari (peace be upon them) – the 10^th and 11^th Infallible Heirs of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He then went to holy Karbala, to a grand welcome from the ulema and the people, and after a week’s stay and pilgrimage to the holy shrine of the Chief of Martyrs, Imam Husain (AS), he left for his rendezvous, holy Najaf. The next 14 years, he lived in the proximity of the blessed shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), providing guidelines to the people of Iran for the eventual victory of the Islamic Revolution. On February 2, after a 4-month stay near Paris on a visit visa to France, he returned to Iran on February 1, 1979, and was welcomed home by millions of people. 

50 solar years ago, on this day in 1966 AD, Lesotho gained independence from British colonial rule. Prior to independence it was known as Basutoland, and had become a British colony in 1884. Lesotho covers an area of 30355 sq km. This landlocked country is situated in southern Africa.

38 solar years ago, on this day in 1978 AD, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), left Iraq for Paris on a visit visa, following the refusal of the Kuwaiti authorities to allow him entry despite his holding of valid visa. Both the repressive Ba'th minority regime of Baghdad and Kuwait were under pressure from the despotic regime of the Shah to prevent the Imam from carrying out his revolutionary activities. His arrival in Paris proved a blessing in disguise as the world media became more easily accessible to him and his declarations. Less than four months later, the Imam arrived in Tehran after 14 years in exile, to a grand unprecedented welcome to mark the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the end of the Pahlavi regime.

15 lunar years ago, on this day in 1423 AH, Ayatollah Shaikh Abu’l-Hassan Ayazi, passed away at the age of 72 in his hometown Rustom-Kala, Behshahr in Mazandaran Province. After preliminary religious studies in the seminaries of Mazandaran, he moved to Holy Qom, where for a dozen years he studied under the leading scholars, especially Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi, before travelling to Holy Najaf in Iraq for higher studies. At the holy shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), he beseeched him to enlighten his mind with knowledge and wisdom, as he had imparted to his prominent disciple, Kumayl, in view of the famous saying of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny): “I am the City of Knowledge and Ali is its Gateway.” Having reached the status of ijtehad, he accepted the request of people and scholars of his hometown to return to Rustom-Kala and Behshahr to educate the people. Soon a seminary was established and students from all over Mazandaran came to acquire the bezels of wisdom from this great scholar who lived a simple, strictly ethical life. Ayatollah Ayazi, as a staunch follower of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), encouraged his students to mobilize people for the warfronts on the start of the 8-year long US imposed war through Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad. He personally visited the warfronts to inspire the Muslim combatants, and felt honoured that some fifty of his students had achieved martyrdom.

13 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, in Somalia a group of US invasion troops committed a heinous war crime in the Bakara Market in Mogadishu by indiscriminately firing on unsuspecting shoppers and massacring over 500 men, women and children, besides injuring over a thousand others, before fleeing. One US soldier was caught and killed by the Somalis, who dragged the body of this war criminal in jubilation through the streets of the capital.

5 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, a kangaroo court set up by the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime in Bahrain, sentenced 26 peaceful protestors to prison, raising to 60 the total number of persons imprisoned in the sham trial. The overwhelming majority of the people of Bahrain are continuing their peaceful protests for freedom of the Persian Gulf island state that was occupied in the early 19^th century by the Aal-e Khalifa pirates, with British help, at a time when Qajarid Iran had become weak. The aspiration of the Bahraini people for democracy has faced the torture of the regime, which with the assistance of the equally tyrannical Aal-e Saud regime has destroyed mosques and husseiniyahs, and desecrated copies of the holy Qur’an.

AS/SS