Today is Tuesday; 8th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 29th of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1438 lunar hijri; and March 28, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1402 lunar years ago, on this day in 36 AH, according to some historians such as al-Mas’oudi, the Battle of Jamal took place near Basra in southern Iraq in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, with a decisive victory for the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the First Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Other historians have given the 10^th of Jamadi al-Awwal as the date of this decisive battle against a large army of rebels led by a wife of the Prophet named Ayesha, who along with her brother-in-law Zubayr ibn Awam and his close friend Talha ibn Obaidollah, broke the pledge of allegiance to the caliphate of Imam Ali (AS). To be brief, the seditionists refused to heed the voice of reason for reconciliation, on the pretext of avenging the blood of the 3rd caliph, Osman ibn Affan, although it was Ayesha herself who used to openly call for the murder of Osman by declaring him to be an apostate. The Imam had no choice but to confront the seditionists, especially after Ayesha ordered 600 Muslims beheaded, including 40 in the grand mosque of Basra, in addition to looting the treasury. Before the battle, Imam Ali (AS) made a fervent appeal to avoid the shedding of Muslim blood, and although Zubayr heeded the advice and disengaged from the combat, after recalling a famous hadith on the righteousness of Imam Ali (AS), he was killed under suspicious circumstances, since his son Abdullah who instigated his aunt Ayesha to enter the battlefield – seated on a camel (Jamal) – was a sworn enemy of the Prophet's Household. After victory over the seditionists, the Imam magnanimously treated his vanquished enemies by sending the rebellious Ayesha back to Medina under the escort of her brother, Mohammad bin Abu Bakr, who was a loyal follower of Imam Ali (AS).

1394 solar years ago, on this day in 623 AD, Marwan, the 4^th self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad regime, was born in pre-Islamic Mecca in the polytheist Omayyad clan to Hakam ibn Aas – an avowed enemy of Islam and Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). His mother was the promiscuous Amenah al-Kinaniah, who during the annual 2-week long Okaz Fair, used to openly carry on her adulterous affairs with persons coming from different parts of Arabia. Hakam, who on the surrender of Mecca to Muslims, reluctantly paid lip service to Islam but remained a hardcore polytheist as his actions suggest, was exiled with his son Marwan to Ta’ef by the Prophet for mimicking and mocking him. Marwan was not allowed to enter Medina during the rule of the first two caliphs, but when his first-cousin Osman ibn Affan took over the caliphate, this hypocrite was recalled to Medina, wedded to the caliph’s daughter, and given charge of all state affairs. One of the most criminal characters in Islamic history, the tall and lanky Marwan, nicknamed “Khayt-Batil” (thread of evil), plundered the public treasury, and committed atrocities against prominent Muslims that some twelve years later led to the killing of Osman by Muslim revolutionaries from Egypt. In the "Battle of Jamal" that the pledge-breakers led by Ayesha – a wife of the Prophet – had imposed on the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), near Basra in Iraq, Marwan treacherously killed his own leader, Talhah Ibn Obaidollah, with an arrow shot at the unprotected thigh. When the Omayyads seized the caliphate he served as governor of Medina for intermittent periods, and stayed thereafter retirement until Abdullah ibn Zubayr rebelled against Yazid and made the mistake of allowing him and his son Abdul-Malik to leave for Damascus. In Syria, following Yazid’s death and abdication by his son Mu’awiyah II in protest to his father’s crimes against Islam and humanity, including the tragic martyrdom in Karbala of Imam Husain (AS), the Prophet’s grandson, Marwan found himself propelled to the caliphate. After nine months in power, he died at the age of 64 when he was killed by his most recent wife, the tyrant Yazid’s widow, who put a pillow on his face and sat over it till his breath was snuffed out.

1312 lunar years ago, on this day in 126 AH, the Godless Waleed II, the 11^th self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad dynasty, was killed in al-Aghdaf in what is now Jordan, after a reign of a year, two months and ten days, during which he committed many abominable sins, including the cruel martyrdom in Jowzajan in Khorasan, of Yahya ibn Zayd, the grandson of the Prophet’s great-grandson, Imam Zayn al-Abedin (AS). On succeeding his uncle, the tyrant Hesham bin Abdul Malik, he continued his debauched life. He built in his palace a fountain of wine in which he used to take dips. On one occasion he threw the holy Qur’an and riddled it with a volley of arrows. Once, in the state of intoxication and in the act of cohabiting with a drunken concubine, on hearing the call for the Fajr Prayer, he promptly asked the ritually unclean woman to put on his clothes, enter the mosque, and lead the Morning Prayer. Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had foretold in a famous hadith about this ungodly ruler by name, and called him the Pharaoh of the ummah.

1239 lunar years ago, on this day in 199 AH, Mohammed Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Ismail, known popularly as Ibn Tabataba, defeated the Abbasid governor of Kufa, and established his short-lived Islamic state in Iraq. A great-great-grandson of Imam Hasan Mojtaba (AS), the elder grandson of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), he died soon afterwards and the forces of Mamoun the self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime, re-occupied Kufa and its surroundings. Ibn Tabataba’s movement, however, continued after his death, especially in Yemen, where many members of the Tabatabai branch of the Prophet’s descendants ruled and rose to become scholars and jurisprudents.

1186 lunar years ago, on this day in 252 AH, Seyyed Mohammad, the eldest son of Imam Ali an-Naqi al-Hadi (AS), the 10^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), was martyred through poisoning by agents of the usurper Abbasid regime. He was laid to rest in the town of Balad, where his holy shrine is a site of pilgrimage, famous for its miraculous powers and granting of boons. Balad is 80 km north of Baghdad and 50 km south of Samarra. Born in Sarya village near the holy city of Medina around 228 AH, Seyyed Mohammad was on his way to Mecca from Samarra for pilgrimage to the holy Ka’ba, when he was poisoned in Dujail, and after several days of intolerable pain, achieved martyrdom. He was laid to eternal rest by his aggrieved father, Imam Hadi (AS), and grieving younger, the future Imam Hasan al-Askari (AS). Over a century later, the first mausoleum over the tomb of Seyyed Mohammad was built by Adhod od-Dowla Daylami, the ruler of the Iranian Buwaiyhid Dynasty of Iraq, Iran and Oman. Reconstruction was carried out in the subsequent centuries and in 10^th century AH, after the conquest of Baghdad by Shah Ismail Safavi, the Iranian Emperor, the mausoleum was expanded to its present size. Currently, despite bomb blasts and threats by the US-Saudi backed Takfiri terrorists, massive renovation of the holy mausoleum is underway, complete with security points and apparatus. Seyyed Mohammad had several sons, of whom some are buried in Khoy and Salmas in Iran. His progeny continued through two of his sons, Ahmad and Ali.

1172 solar years ago, on this day in 845 AD, Paris was sacked by Viking raiders, under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collected a huge ransom for leaving France.

461 solar years ago, on this day in 1556 AD, corresponding to 963 AH, the Fasli Solar Hijri Calendar was adopted in India by the Mughal Emperor, Mohammad Jalal od-Din Akbar on the basis of the Iranian solar hijri calendar that starts with Nowrouz or the Spring Equinox, and is dated according to the auspicious migration from Mecca to Medina, of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Fasli which means harvest is derived from the Arabic term for division, which in India was applied to the groupings of the seasons. Fasli Calendar was introduced basically for land revenue and records. Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahan, introduced it in 1630 AD to the Deccan or South India. This calendar, which follows all the 12 Iranian months of Farvardin, Ordibehesht, Khordad etc, was continued as the official calendar of the Asef Jahi Dynasty of Hyderabad State, until its annexation to India in 1948. Even after annexation by India, the last Muslim ruler, Osman Ali Khan Asef Jah VII, who died in 1967, used to follow the Fasli Calendar in his official transactions and records in both Persian and Urdu. Currently the governments of the states of Andhra, Telengana, Karnataka and Tamilnadu still follow the Fasli solar hijri year, as per its 12 Iranian months, for all revenue and judiciary purposes.

433 solar years ago, on this day in 1584 AD, Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia, died at the age of 54. He was Grand Prince Ivan IV of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, in which year he crowned himself the Tsar of Russia – the first Russian ruler to assume the title. He launched brutal attacks to conquer the Muslim Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and later Siberia, to transform Christian Russia into a multiethnic and multi-confessional state. In 1552 AD, Kazan, the capital of Tataristan, was occupied after a long siege by Ivan the Terrible, who massacred as many as 110,000 Tartar Muslims, and forcibly converted to Christianity many others, after destroying mosques or turning them into churches. His anti-Muslim policies brought retaliation from a joint army of Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks that attacked Moscow in 1571 and set it on fire, resulting in 80,000 casualties. The next year, Ivan the Terrible managed to defeat another Tatar-Ottoman invasion around Moscow in the Battle of Molodi. He then turned attention to the region beyond the Ural mountains in the east, and through military expeditions, treachery and deceit, took control of the vast land of Siberia that was ruled by Muslim khans, eventually styling himself Tsar of Siberia in 1580. In a fit of rage in 1581, Ivan the Terrible killed his own son Prince Ivan.

163 solar years ago, on this day in 1854 AD, during the crisis in Crimea, France and Britain declared war on Russia in support of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The allied forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russian army in the Battle of Chernaya River, also known as Battle of Traktir Bridge, in which Russia lost seven thousand soldiers. The Crimean War is sometimes considered to be one of the first modern wars as it introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare, including the first tactical use of railways and the telegraph. It is also famous for the work of Florence Nightingale, who pioneered modern nursing practices while caring for wounded British soldiers. The Crimean War was one of the first wars to be documented extensively in written reports and photographs: notably by William Russell (for The Times newspaper of London) and Roger Fenton respectively. News correspondence reaching Britain from the Crimea was the first time the public were kept informed of the day-to-day realities of war.

149 solar years ago, on this day in 1868 AD, the famous Russian author and political activist, Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, known by his penname Maxim Gorky (“Bitter Advice” in Russian), was born in Nizhny Novgorod. The abysmal poverty of his family, forced him to work during his studies. He started writing stories in his youth, and while working at railway workshop at Tbilisi, Georgia, his first story was published in the newspaper. His stories brought him money and fame. He focused on the miserable life of the Russian people and sought solutions to social problems. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday"), which set in motion the abortive Revolution of 1905, made Gorky associate with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He wrote the play “Children of the Sun”, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to contemporary events. He next wrote the famous book “Mother”, in admiration of the struggles of Russian workers and as a result had to leave Russia in 1906. He lived in exile, mostly on the Italian island of Capri until an amnesty granted in 1913 on the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed him to return to Russia, where he continued his social criticism. During World War I and the revolutionary period of 1917, his apartment turned into Bolshevik staff headquarters. These relations became strained after his newspaper “Novaya Zhizn” was subjected to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war. In 1918, Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called “Untimely Thoughts”. The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics. Gorky compared Lenin to the Tsar. He termed Lenin "a cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honour nor the life of the proletariat." He was exiled and spent the period from 1921 to 1928 living abroad, mostly in Sorrento, Italy, where he wrote several successful books. On the personal invitation of Joseph Stalin, he returned to the Soviet Union in 1932, and for a while was officially feted by the dictator for propaganda purposes. With the increase of Stalinist repression, especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, he was placed under house arrest. Two years later after the sudden death of his son, he also suspiciously died at the age of 68. It is believed that he was killed by agents of Stalin.

131 lunar years ago, on this day in 1307 AH, the Persian newssheet “Qanoun” (Law), was published in London during his exile from Iran by Mirza Malkam Khan, an Iranian Armenian who claimed to have converted to Islam. It was banned in Iran since it attacked both the Qajarid Shah and his government and called for reforms and modernization on West European patters. Malkam Khan, who set up societies similar to the Freemasons in Iran 1859, was a controversial person, who was exiled several times, until he was reinstated as ambassador to Italy by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah in 1898 with the title of Nezam od-Dowlah.

78 solar years ago, on this day in 1939 AD, towards the end of the two-years-eight month long Spanish Civil War, the monarchists led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco and supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, seized the capital, Madrid, thereby effectively ending the Second Spanish Republic established in 1931 following the expulsion of King Alfonso XIII to Italy. Four days later on April 1, the Republicans formally surrendered to Franco, who took power as regent and ruled as virtual dictator for the next 36 years until his death in 1975, having chosen Juan Carlos, the grandson of Alfonso XIII to succeed him as king.

76 solar years ago, on this day in 1941 AD, English writer, literary critic and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, committed suicide at the age of 59 by throwing herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex, Britain. Her body was never found. She was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels “Mrs Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse” and “Orlando”, and the book-length essay “A Room of One's Own”.

38 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, a nuclear accident occurred at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Caused by human and mechanical errors, a cooling system malfunctioned and permitted a partial meltdown of the reactor's core. Efforts to re-establish cooling of the reactor took several days. Over 100,000 people fled the area, as radioactivity leaked into the air. It was the worst US nuclear accident. On 21 July 1982, a video camera inspected the damage to the core and revealed a large amount of uranium had spilled and melted to the bottom of the pressure vessel. The US is the world’s most dangerously armed nuclear power with over 110, mostly weapons-producing nuclear plants, whose safety standards are under question since no inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are allowed.

19 solar years ago, on this day in 1998 AD, the prominent jurisprudent, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Hussaini Aal-e Ali Shahroudi, passed away at the age of 69 and was laid to rest in Qom in the holy mausoleum of Hazrat Fatema al-Ma’soumah (SA). Born in holy Najaf, he started his studies under his scholarly father and later attended the classes of leading jurisprudents, especially Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasem Khoie, and Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Shahroudi, whose daughter he married. In 1975, following pressures on Iranians by the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, he migrated to Kuwait, where he continued his religious and welfare activities. In 1991, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he moved to Tehran, and the next year tragedy struck his household when Saddam imprisoned, tortured, and martyred his eldest son, Seyyed Hassan Shahroudi, his son-in-law, Seyyed Habib Hussainiyan, and two grandsons (daughter’s sons), Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Hussainiyan and Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Hussainiyan. Nonetheless, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Shahroudi continued his religious and welfare activities in Iran and built in Tehran the technologically advanced Payambaraan Hospital. He groomed many scholars and wrote several books including “Imam Mahdi (AS) and his Reappearance”, and “Man through the Six Stages of Existence” that starts with the soul created by God and its passing through the loins of the father, the womb of the mother, birth, death and the intermediary period called Barzakh, and finally resurrection on the Day of Judgement for the reward of paradise or the punishment of hell.

AS/ME