Today is Wednesday; 3rd of the Iranian month of Azar 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 23rd of the Islamic month of Safar 1438 lunar hijri; and November 23, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1915 solar years ago, on this day in the year 101 AD, present day Romania was occupied by the Roman Empire. This land was ruled by the Romans until its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Meanwhile, parts of Romania were also occupied by Austria for a while till the year 1877, in which Romania emerged as independent. Romania covers an area of 237500 sq km. Its capital is Bucharest.

842 solar years ago, on this day in 1174 AD, the Kurdish adventurer, Salah od-Din Ayyubi, entered Damascus, six months after the death of his former benefactor Noor od-Din Zangi, removed his young son, and declared himself Sultan of Syria and Egypt. He had seized Egypt three years earlier after resorting to deceit, treachery, and bloodshed, to overthrow the Fatemid Shi’a Muslim caliphate.

795 solar years ago, on this day in 1221 AD, King Alfonso X of Castile was born in the occupied Islamic city of Toledo in Spain, and succeeded his father, Ferdinand III to the throne in 1252. During his 32-year rule, although he was successful against Portugal, and occupied the Muslim regions of Murcia and Cadiz, he suffered shattering defeats at the hands of Spanish Muslims when he tried to invade the Nasirid emirate of Granada. Twice his armies were defeated, especially in the Battle of Ecija in 1275, and he lost his sons in combat. The important work undertaken by him was the study and translation of Arabic scientific books into the Castilian and Latin languages, in order to acquire knowledge from Muslims and break out from the dark ages into which the Christian Church had plunged Europe.

768 solar years ago, on this day in 1248 AD, the Islamic city of al-Ishbiliya in southern Spain was occupied by European Christian mercenaries of King Ferdinand III of Castile and renamed Seville, marking the end of over five centuries of glorious Islamic culture. Until 1228, twenty years before its fall, it had served as the capital of the last great Spanish Muslim dynasty, the al-Muwahhedun. The city, which produced leading Spanish Muslim scholars and scientists, still contains specimens of exquisite Islamic architecture. 

638 lunar years ago, on this day in 800 AH, Taj od-Din Ferouz Shah ascended the Turquoise Throne in Gulbarga, as the 8th ruler of the Bahmani Dynasty of Iranian origin of the Deccan in South India by deposing the boy-king Shams ud-Din Daud Shah II, installed five months earlier as the puppet ruler by the Turkic slave-commander Tughalchin, who had blinded and dethroned the elder brother, Ghiyas od-Din Tahmatan Shah, only two months after the 17-year old had succeeded his father Mahmoud Shah. Ferouz, the son-in-law of Mahmoud Shah and a grandson of Ala od-Din Bahman Shah, the founder of the kingdom, ruled for 25 years. He was the most learned and cultured ruler, and besides his native Persian, was well versed in the Arabic, Turkic, Telugu, Kanada and Marathi languages. A poet, mathematician, and calligrapher, writing under the pennames "Uruji" and "Ferouzi", he patronized art and literature and kept the company of scholars and religious figures. Among the public works undertaken by him was an observatory on the chain of hills near Dowlatabad. His prime minister was the Iranian migrant scholar-statesman Mir Fazlullah Inju of Shiraz, who earlier in the reign of Mahmoud Shah had invited the renowned Iranian poet, Khwaja Hafez Shirazi to the Deccan. Ferouz was inclined towards the school of the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt.

505 solar years ago, on this day in 1511 AD, Sultan Mahmoud Shah I of Gujarat, western India, died after a reign of 43 years. Popularly known as Begadha, for conquering two cities named Junagadh and Pavagadh, he was the most prominent sultan of Gujarat, and the great-grandson of Ahmad Shah I, the founder of the Muzaffarid dynasty and of the city of Ahmadabad. He contacted the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultan of Cairo to form a naval alliance against Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, and it was during his reign the famous Battle of Diu took place against the European marauders. Sultan Begadha undertook great many public works in his kingdom, and built a magnificent Jama Mosque in Champaner, which ranks amongst the finest architectural edifices in Gujarat. It is an imposing structure on a high plinth with two tall minarets 30 m tall, 172 pillars and seven mihrabs. Topped with a central dome, the balconies and carved entrance gates have fine lattice work in stone.

463 solar years ago, on this day in 1553 AD, Italian physician and botanist, Prospero Alpini, was born in Marostica, in the Republic of Venice. He served for a time in the army of the state of Milan, studied medicine in Padua, and then took up the study of botany. To increase his plant knowledge he travelled to Egypt in 1580 as physician at the Venetian consulate in Cairo. During his 3-year stay in Egypt, he seems to have benefitted from the botanical works of the early Islamic scientists. He was taught by the local Muslims the sexual difference of plants which was later adopted by the Europeans as the foundation of the Linnaean taxonomy system. He was also taught and observed how the female date-trees or palms do not bear fruit unless the branches of the male and female plants are mixed together; or, as is generally done, unless the dust found in the male sheath or male flowers is sprinkled over the female flowers. On his return, he resided for some time in Genoa, and later served as professor of botany at Padua. His best-known works “De Medicina Egyptiorum” and “De Plantis Aegypti liber” (published in his native Venice in 1591 & 1592) are said to contain the first account of the coffee plant published in Europe. The same work introduced the banana and baobab to Europeans from the Muslim world. Another of his famous works “De Plantis Exoticis” was published in 1629 after his death. The genus Alpinia, belonging to the order “Zingiberaceae” (Ginger Family), was named after him by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. He died in Padua at the age of 64.

372 solar years ago, on this day in 1644 AD, English poet, scholar, and polemical author, John Milton, published “Areopagitica”, a pamphlet decrying censorship. “Areopagitica” is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. Many of its expressed principles form the basis for modern justifications of that right.

351 solar years ago, on this day in 1665 AD, Charles II of England commissioned Abraham Shipman to formally take over Mumbai (Bombay) from the Portuguese, following orders issued earlier on August 16 by the King of Portugal, Alfonso VI, to his viceroy in India to cede the seven-island archipelago as part of the dowry of his sister, Catherine of Braganza, who was married to the English monarch in 1661. Known as Heptanesia (Cluster of Seven Islands) to the Greek geographer Ptolemy in 150 CE, the islands were ruled by successive indigenous dynasties before becoming part of the Khalji Sultanate of Delhi and subsequently the Muzaffaird Sultanate of Gujarat. From 1429 onwards, the islands were a source of contention between Gujarat and the Bahmani Sultanate of Iranian origin of the Deccan. In 1535 they were given to Portuguese, and following the British takeover were the target of constant raids by the Abyssinian Muslim admirals of the Mughals and then the Marathas. By 1845, the seven islands coalesced into a single landmass by the Hornby Vellard Project via large scale land reclamation. On 16 April 1853 India's first passenger railway line was established in Bombay. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 transformed Bombay into one of the largest seaports on the Arabian Sea. Today, it is the commercial capital of India and has evolved into a global financial hub, in addition to being the seat of the thriving Bollywood film industry. It has a population of 14 million of which 25 percent are Muslims. The city is also home to the largest population of Zoroastrians in the world, numbering about 80,000, who are known as Parsi and whose ancestors had migrated from Iran. This cosmopolitan city is also home to hundreds of thousands of Muslims of Iranian origin, including the Yazdis who came last century and run the restaurant and tea business.

283 solar years ago, on this day in 1733 AD, start the “Slave Insurrection” on St. John (presently US-controlled Virgin Islands) in what was then the Danish West Indies. Some 150 Africans from Akwamu (in present-day Ghana), who had been kidnapped and enslaved in the New World, revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. Lasting several months into August 1734, the rebellion was one of the earliest and longest of the so-called slave revolts in the Americas. The Africans captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own control, but the white planters regained control by the end of May 1734, after defeating them with the help of several hundred better-armed French and Swiss troops sent in April from Martinique, a French colony. The militia continued to hunt down Africans and finally crushed it by late August 1734.

185 lunar years ago, on this day in 1253 AH, the Treaty of Tafna was forced by the French occupiers on Algerian leader, Seyyed Abdul-Qader al-Hassani al-Jaza'eri, resulting in the occupation of a third of this country including Oran and Algiers. Two years later, the French breached the clauses of their own imposed treaty and gradually occupied the whole of Algeria. Abdul-Qader was taken prisoner and sent to Paris. Years later he was released, but not allowed to go back to Algeria. He went to Syria and stayed there till he died. Algeria in 1961 became independent after the French had killed at least a million Algerian Muslims.

143 solar years ago, on this day in 1873 AD, Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, was occupied by French forces, following the loss of Tonkin to the European invaders, who used to refer to Vietnam as Annam. The French troops suffered a humiliating defeat in 1954 and before withdrawing from Vietnam mischievously involved the meddling Americans in the unwanted war that continued to devastate this southeastern Asian country, until the disgraceful exit of the US forces in 1975.

137 lunar years ago, on this day in 1301 AH, the prominent Iranian religious scholar, Shaikh Mohammad Baqer Aqa Najafi Isfahani, passed away at the age of 67. After preliminary studies in Isfahan, he went to Iraq for higher studies at the famous seminary of the holy city of Najaf. On returning to Iran, he taught at the Isfahan seminary, grooming students and writing books. He wielded wide social influence and attached paramount importance to promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. His books include “Lobb al-Fiqh”, and “Lobb al-Osoul”.

110 solar years ago, on this day in 1906 AD, the publication of the eight-page Persian daily “Majlis” started in Tehran. In addition to publishing domestic and foreign news, the paper reflected the debates in the Iranian parliament. Adib ul-Mamalek Farahani, one of the acclaimed authors, was the editor-in-chief.

79 solar years ago, on this day in 1937 AD, Indian physicist and plant physiologist, Jagadish Chandra Bose, died at the age of 78. He was born near Dhaka from what is now Bangladesh. He investigated the properties of very short radio waves, wireless telegraphy, and radiation-induced fatigue in inorganic materials. His physiological work involved comparative measurements of the responses of plants exposed to stress. His invention of highly sensitive instruments for the detection of minute responses by living organisms to external stimuli enabled him to anticipate the parallelism between animal and plant tissues noted by later biophysicists. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour.

48 solar years ago, on this day in 1968 AD, the contemporary Iranian scholar and lexicographer, Hameed Hassani, was born in Saqqez, Kurdistan Province.  Based in Tehran since 1987, he concentrates on Persian lexicography and linguistics, and is also an expert on Persian, Arabic, and Kurdish prosody. He has published 7 books and more than 80 papers on Persian, Arabic, and Kurdish language and literature. His books include “Persian Beginner's Dictionary”, (Farhang-e Zaban-Amuz-e Farsi), “Arabic Poetry: Prosody and Rhyme” (Aruz-o Qafiyeh Arabi), and “A Glossary of Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran”. Hassani has also published with extensive annotations, Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat’s “Madarej ol-Balaghah” on Rhetoric, and the “Tazkere-e Meraat ol-Khayaal”, which is a Who's Who of poets and poetesses, compiled in 1690 in India by Shir Ali Khan Lodhi during Aurangzeb’s rule. Among the books under preparation by Hassani is the “Bank-e Zaban-e Farsi” or The Persian Word Bank, which is a one-hundred-million-word corpus.

40 solar years ago, on this day in 1976 AD, French author, Andre Malraux, died in his hometown Paris at the age of 75. During his youth, he traveled to French Indochina, where he helped freedom-fighters struggling for independence from colonialist rule. This French author also defended the Republicans during Spain’s civil war, and was twice imprisoned by Nazi forces in World War II but on both occasions he managed to break out of jail. He later served as France’s minister of culture. He was against war and bloodshed and defended the freedom of human societies. He interpreted arts as a rebellion against death and destruction and believed that the destiny of arts is the destiny of mankind. He has left behind a large number of books including Mankind’s Hope.

32 solar years ago, on this day in 1984 AD, the Iranian veteran singer, Mahmoud Karimi, died. His father taught him to play the violin. His sudden death obstructed his efforts to present his latest masterpiece, ‘Avaz-e Nay’, to lovers of music.

24 solar years ago, on this day in 1992 AD, Iran added the first submarine to its navy, becoming the first country in West Asia to field a submarine. Iran’s first submarine was Russian-built, but since then Iran has been building its own underwater fleet. Today its navy is equipped with scores of advanced submarines.

16 solar years ago, on this day in 2000 AD, prominent theologian, Ayatollah Seyyed Mahdi Rouhani, passed away in his hometown holy Qom at the age of 76. A product of the famous seminary of holy Najaf, he returned to Iran after an 8-year stay in Iraq where he attained the level of Ijtehad. A firm supporter of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), he was an expert on various religions and sects. He has written some interesting books on the history and seditions of the Salafis and how they distort Islam to deceive others.

AS/ME