Today is Monday; 10th of the Iranian month of Aban 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 29th of the Islamic month of Muharram 1438 lunar hijri; and October 31, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1333 solar years ago, on this day in 683 AD, during the Siege of Mecca by the forces of the Godless Yazid Ibn Mu’awiyyah, the holy Ka’ba was attacked with flaming projectiles, caught fire, and was damaged. The Omayyad forces were led by Haseen Ibn Numayr, one of the notorious culprits of the tragedy of Karbala who desecrated the sanctity of the sacred Ka'ba. A month earlier on the 28th of Zil-Hijja, this very same Omayyad army led by the blasphemous general, Muslim bin Uqba al-Marri, had pillaged Medina, desecrated the Prophet's shrine, massacred some 10,000 persons in the Battle of Harrah including several hundred companions of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), and for three days mass-raped the women of the city, resulting in the birth of thousands of illegitimate children who had no clue about their fathers. Ibn Numayr took command of the ungodly Omayyad army when while proceeding for the attack on Mecca Muslim bin Uqba suddenly died and ended up in the bowels of hell. The siege of Mecca ended and bloodshed in the sacred precincts of Masjid al-Haraam halted, over a month-and-a-half later when news reached of the ignominious death in Syria of the tyrant Yazid. Thus, during his 3-and-a-half-year reign the ungodly Yazid committed three of the most sacrilegious acts – the killing of the Prophet's grandson Imam Husain (AS) at Karbala, the sack of Medina, and the storming of the holy Ka'ba.

535 lunar years ago, on this day in 903 AH, the Iranian historian, Mohammad bin Khwandshah, popularly known as Mirkhwand, passed away in Herat, which was then part of Khorasan and is now in present day Afghanistan. He was from a well-known Seyyed family of Bukhara that traced its descent to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Spending most of his life in Herat in the court of the last Timurid sultan, Hussain Bayqarah, Mirkhwand enjoyed the patronage of the renowned minister, Ali Shir Nava’i, a celebrated writer and poet himself. At the request of his patron, he wrote the general history titled "Rowzat os-Safa" (Garden of Purity). The work is composed of seven large volumes and a geographic appendix, sometimes considered an 8th volume. The history begins with the pre-Islamic Persian kings and surveys the major Muslim rulers of Iran up to his times. Mirkhwand’s maternal grandson, the historian Khwandamir, wrote a sequel to it, and in the 19th century the Iranian scholar Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat wrote a supplement to this work. Mirkhwand is often criticized for his highly embellished and bombastic style and for his uncritical approach to the sources, but his history preserves sections from earlier works that have since been lost. Volumes 5 and 6 are particularly reliable, for they utilize the abundant historiographic materials of the Mongol and Timurid periods and furnish independent information on events contemporary or near contemporary to the author’s lifetime.

236 solar years ago, on this day in 1780 AD, the Muslim principality of Arcot in southern India was overrun by the army of Nawab Haidar Ali Khan of Mysore and the fort surrendered on November 3. Haidar’s attack was provoked by British seditions in the Deccan, as well as the breach of promise by the Nawab of the Carnatic to handover Trichinopoly to him. Nawab Mohammad Ali Khan Walajah of Carnatic, whose mother was a niece of Seyyed Ali Khan Safavi Musawi of Iran, allied himself with the Nizam of Haiderabad and with British help, regained control of his dominions.

153 solar years ago, on this day in 1863 AD, the Maori Wars resumed as British forces in New Zealand led by General Duncan Cameron invaded Waikato on North Island. The British killed over 40,000 Maoris in the 19th century during which period, because of diseases spread by the European invaders, more than 40 percent of the native population died and their lands were seized by the white occupiers, who forcibly Christianized the survivors.

140 solar years ago, on this day in 1876 AD, a monster cyclone from the Bay of Bengal ravaged India, over the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers in what is now Bangladesh. At least 220,000 people were killed and immense loss of crops and property was inflicted.

102 solar years ago, on this day in 1914 AD, during World War I, the Iranian government announced neutrality. The political fragility of the Qajarid dynasty and the chaotic state of internal affairs, coupled with the bellicose and expansionist policies of the world powers, however, dragged Iran into the war. It was invaded by the British, Russian, and Ottoman forces, and major damages were inflicted upon the country.

78 lunar years ago, on this day in 1360 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, passed away. A product of the seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, on his return home, he was active in the northwestern parts of Iran. He groomed many scholars, including his son, Seyyed Mohammad Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, who was a Marja’ or Source of Emulation of his times.

60 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, Britain and France joined together to bomb Egypt two days after the illegal Zionist entity had invaded Sinai, in a bid to force the reopening of the Suez Canal which President Jamal Abdun-Nassher had nationalized. On November 5, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. The Egyptian forces were defeated, but they did block the canal to all shipping. It became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack had been planned beforehand by the three countries. The Canal was now useless to shipping, and heavy pressure from the United States and the USSR forced the three countries to withdraw after a ten-day aggression.

54 solar years ago, on this day in 1962 AD, French Orientalist, Louis Massignon, died at the age of 79. He was profoundly influenced by Arabic and Islamic culture as a result of his sojourn in Algeria and later obtained a PhD in Arabic literature. As a fluent speaker of Arabic, from 1922 till 1954 he was entitled the Chair of Muslim Sociology created in 1902 at the College de France. He conducted valuable researches and concluded that in view of their common origin in Prophet Abraham (AS), Christians should always approach Muslims as brothers "united by the same spirit of faith and sacrifice". He opposed colonial policies such as oppression of the Algerians by France, and the displacement of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland by the influx of European Jews, considering the Balfour Declaration as a betrayal of Palestinians. Influenced by Sufism, his major works include “Annuaire du Monde Musulman” and the 4-volume “La passion de Hussayn Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj” – the last one on the Iranian mystic Hallaj who was executed by the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad on charges of heresy. Among his students were many scholarly luminaries, such as Professor Henry Corbin, whom he directed towards his major study of the Iranian Islamic Philosopher of Illumination, Shehab od-Din Suhrawardi (Shaikh al-Ishraq), and Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, who converted to Islam and became an authority on the Iranian Islamic Gnostic Poet, Mowlana Jalal od- Din Balkhi Roumi. Other students included Abdur-Rahman Badawi, the Egyptian scholar of Islamic philosophy and Abdul-Halim Mahmud, the Grand Shaikh of Cairo’s al-Azhar University. The Late Iranian sociologist, Dr. Ali Shari’ati, who met Massignon many times, was also highly influenced by him.

37 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, the prominent religious scholar, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Ali Qazi Tabatabaei, was martyred by the Forqan terrorist outfit in his hometown Tabriz, northwestern Iran. He was initially taught by his father, before joining the seminary to study under the prominent ulema, including the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). During his political struggles against the Shah’s despotic regime, he was imprisoned and banished to remote areas several times. After victory of the Islamic Revolution, he was appointed as Imam Khomeini’s representative and the Friday Prayer leader of Tabriz.

36 solar years ago, on this day in 1980 AD, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s oil minister, Mohammad Javad Tondgouyan, along with several oil ministry officials, while on an inspection visit to oil installations in the southwestern parts of the country, was abducted by the invading Iraqi forces, a month after Saddam's launching of the unprovoked war on Iran at the behest of the US. Initially, Saddam’s Ba’th minority regime denied the abduction, but finally it claimed he had committed suicide in captivity. Medical examinations of the corpse coupled with eyewitness accounts of Iranian POWs proved that the Iranian oil minister was martyred under torture by the Ba’thists.

32 solar years ago, on this day in 1984 AD, Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi of India was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards at the age of 67. She was killed in revenge for launching of Operation Blue Star on the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab State, to clear it of US-British-backed armed separatists calling for formation of an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. She was the daughter of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and was elected premier in 1966, two years after her father’s demise, following the sudden death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri during India-Pakistan peace talks in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She was an independent-minded and staunchly nationalist politician who strongly resisted the US bid to interfere in India's affairs. Her surname should not be confused with that of M.K. Gandhi, the leader of India’s freedom struggle against British rule, but was adopted when she married Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi or Zoroastrian Indian citizen of Iranian ancestry. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, was elected prime minister after her, before losing the next elections, and was assassinated by a Tamil separatist of Sri Lanka during re-election bid. His widow, Italian born Sonia, is president of the Congress Party and the power behind the present government.

24 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, Vatican, the seat of the Catholic sect of Christianity, finally admitted its erring for over 359 years in condemning Italian scientist Galileo Galilei for disclosing scientific truths discovered centuries earlier by Islamic scientists, such as Iran’s Abu Rayhan Berouni that the Earth revolves around the sun. After 13 years of inquiry, the Pope's commission of historic, scientific and theological scholars sheepishly admitted that Galileo was unjustly condemned and persecuted by the Church. In 1633, at the age 69, Galileo was forced by the Roman Inquisition to repent and spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2006 AD, Iran awarded the top prize in an international cartoon contest on the alleged holocaust in Europe during World War 2, to a Moroccan artist for his depiction of the illegal Zionist entity’s apartheid wall in the West Bank of River Jordan with a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp on it. It suggests that the Israeli repression of Palestinians is worse than Nazi Germany’s supposed suppression of Jews.

5 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, the global population of human beings reached seven billion. The United Nations calls it the “Seven Billion Day”.

AS/SS