Today is Sunday; 5th of the Iranian month of Shahrivar 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 5th of the Islamic month of Zil-Hijjah 1438 lunar hijri; and August 27, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2496 solar years ago, on this day in 479 BC, Persian forces led by Mardonius, the Iranian governor of Greece and Macedonia and son-in-law of Emperor Darius 1, were routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea, which marked a turning point in the Greek-Persian Wars. The battle was fought near Plataea in the Peloponnese Peninsula, between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Megara, against the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I. The previous year the Iranian army, led by the emperor in person, had scored victories at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium and conquered Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica. However, at Salamis, the allied Greek navy won an unlikely victory, preventing the conquest of the Peloponnesus. Xerxes then returned to Iran with much of his army, leaving his brother-in-law, General Mardonius, to finish off the Greeks the following year. It is said that the rashness of Mardonius was the cause of the loss of the battle and his own loss of life, despite the fact that in the past twenty years he had been a key element of Iranian domination over the Greeks.

1268 solar years ago, on this day in 749 AD, the Abbasid general Qahtaba Ibn Shabib-at-Ta'i, who played a leading role in uprooting of the Omayyad caliphate, died in battle near Kufa. He was a Khorasani, belonging to the Yemeni tribal confederation that formed the bulk of the local Muslim population. While on a visit to Mecca he met Ibrahim Ibn Mohammad Abbasi who appointed him military leader for the simmering anti-Omayyad uprising in Khorasan, where popular sentiments of the Iranian people for the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt were being deceitfully exploited by the Abbasids for their own nefarious goals. This appointment was accepted by the main Abbasid leader and propagandist in Khorasan, the Iranian general, Behzadaan Pour-Vandaad, known as Abu Muslim Khorasani. Following the fall of Marv to the Khorasanis in February 748, Qahtaba took charge of the Abbasid forces that chased the Omayyad governor of Khorasan, Nasr ibn Sayyar. His army took Naishapur, where Nasr had sought refuge, defeated a 10,000-strong Omayyad force at Gorgan in August and subsequently took Rayy near modern Tehran. In March 749 he defeated a larger Omayyad army near Isfahan and then captured Nahavand after a siege, before moving towards Iraq. Qahtaba's army advanced swiftly with the aim of taking Kufa, but was confronted by the Omayyad governor, Yazid ibn Hubayra. Qahtaba was able to launch a surprise night attack on the enemy camp forcing the Omayyad troops to flee to Waset. Qahtaba lost his life in this battle, but his son Hassan assumed command and took possession of Kufa on September 2. Both Hassan and his brother, Humayd, were important military leaders in the early decades of the Abbasid regime. Humayd Ibn Qahtaba was given by the Abbasids the estate of Sanabad, where the Prophet’s 8th Infallible Heir, Imam Reza (AS), was destined to be laid to rest on his martyrdom and which is now the sprawling holy shrine of Mashhad.

483 solar years ago, on this day in 1534 AD, Ismail Adel Shah, the 2nd king of the dynasty of Iranian origin of Bijapur in southwest India, died at the age of 36 after a reign of 24 years, while on a campaign against the neighbouring sultanate of Golkandah, ruled by the Qutb Shahi dynasty – also of Iranian origin. In the footsteps of his father, Yusuf Adel Shah, the founder of the dynasty who was from Saveh in Iran, he was a devout follower of the school of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). He patronized ulema, scholars, poets, physicians and even soldiers migrating from Iran to the Deccan. He never lost a battle, and his artillery units were considered formidable. The kingdom of Bijapur that lasted for 187 years until its annexation by Moghal Emperor Aurangzeb of Hindustan (northern subcontinent) was a Persianate state. It is worth noting that Yusuf Adel Shah had declared Shi’a Islam as the state religion almost a decade before Shah Ismail I founded the Safavid Dynasty in Iran and decreed Shi’a Islam as state religion.

247 solar years ago, on this day in 1770 AD, German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, was born. On France’s occupation of Germany in 1806, he was influenced by the characteristics of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Hegel divided history into several phases and believed that its course is determined by God. He wrote several books including “The Phenomenology of Spirit”, “Science of Logic”, and “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences”. He died in 1831.

121 solar years ago, on this day in 1896 AD, the shortest war in world history took place between Britain and Zanzibar, lasting only 40 minutes from 09:05 hours local time to 09:45 hours. The cause of the war was the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini two days earlier and the subsequent succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British authorities preferred Hamoud bin Mohammed, who was more favourable to British interests, as sultan.

103 lunar years ago, on this day in 1335 AH, Egyptian scholar Mohammad Ghazali as-Saqqa was born in the small town of Nikla al-Enab (نكلا العنب), southeast of the seaport of Alexandria. He graduated from al-Azhar University in 1941. The author of 94 books, he attracted a following with works that sought to interpret Islam and the holy Qur’an, in a modern light. He is credited with contributing to a revival of Islamic faith in Egypt. He was, however, close to the Egyptian government, and was expelled by the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1990 he became a member of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. He established contacts with the Islamic Republic of Iran to procure the release of 149 Egyptian prisoners of war, captured while fighting as mercenaries for Saddam’s repressive Ba’th minority regime.

77 lunar years ago, on this day in 1361 AH, the prominent Iranian religious scholar and Gnostic, Allamah Mohammad Hussain Gharavi Isfahani, popular as Kompani, passed away in the holy city of Najaf at the age of 65 years. He was born in the holy city of Kazemain near Baghdad and was well-versed in philosophy, Gnosticism, history, geography, poetry, and literature. His sharp mind and power of speech made him a prominent figure. He has left behind a large number of articles and journals. He has also left behind a collection of poems in praise of Prophet and the Infallible Ahl al-Bayt.

72 solar years ago, on this day in 1945 AD, the English oriental scholar, Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, died at the age of 77. He started as a language lecturer at Cambridge University, and conducted extensive research on Persian and Arabic literature. He was a great admirer of the acclaimed Iranian poet and mystic, Mowlana Jalal od-Din Rumi, whose famous “Mathnavi” he translated into English in several volumes, along with a detailed commentary – the result of his 25-year long research. Nicholson, as a teacher of the great poet-philosopher of the Subcontinent, Muhammad Iqbal Lahori, translated the latrer’s first philosophical Persian poetry book “Asrar-e Khudi” into English as “The Secrets of the Self”. He also wrote the book “A Literary History of the Arabs”. Another prominent student of Nicholson was Arthur John Arberry, an Arabic-Persian expert and a Rumi admirer, who completed an academic English translation of the holy Qur’an as well as translation of Iqbal’s long ode in Persian “The Javid-Namah”.

54 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, the prominent Islamic scholar, political theorist, and brilliant mathematician of the Subcontinent, Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, who founded the Khaksaar Movement against British colonial rule, passed away at the age of 75 in Lahore, Pakistan. Born in Amritsar in undivided India in a prominent Rajput Muslim family influenced by such luminaries as Sir Seyyed Ahmad Khan of Aligarh and the famous Iranian pan-Islamicist, Seyyed Jamal od-Din Asadabadi, he showed a passion for mathematics from his childhood. At the age of 19 he obtained Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Punjab. He went to London for higher studies and excelled there as well. On his return to India, he declined the offer of the post of prime minister of the princely state of Alwar, preferring to join the education department and becoming Under Secretary to the Government of India in this sector in October 1917. In 1924, at the age of 36, he completed the first volume of his exegesis of the holy Qur’an in the light of science, titled “at-Tadhkirah” and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. In 1932 he resigned, settled down in Ichhra, Lahore, and devoted his time to the Khaksaar Movement which he had founded two years earlier. He played a role in directing the Muslims towards the independence of British India, for which he was repeatedly imprisoned. He brought out the Urdu weekly “al-Islah”, and after partition, continued his political activities in Pakistan, where he was imprisoned several times before his death.

27 solar years ago, on this day in 1990 AD, the prominent Iranian calligrapher, Ali Akbar Kaveh, passed away at the age of 98. Born in Shiraz, he was a student of renowned masters such as Mirza Taher Kateb and Homayoun Hamedani. He was a member of Tehran’s Iran Calligraphy Association

26 solar years ago, on this day in 1991 AD, Moldova in Eastern Europe gained independence after centuries of domination by Ukraine, the Ottoman Turks, Russia, Romania, Germany and the Soviet Union. It fell to the Soviets during World War 2 and was turned into a socialist republic. In the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was breaking apart, certain currents in Moldova, called for union with Romania, but the Russian and Ukrainian minorities strongly rejected the call. Following a referendum in which the majority rejected merger with Romania, Moldova emerged as an independent country.

11 solar years ago, on this day in 2006 AD, Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile in the Persian Gulf. The long-range missile, called “Thaqeb” or Saturn, exiting the water and hitting a target on the water's surface.

6 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, The Islamic Republic of Iran inaugurated a plant for producing carbon fiber, which it is banned from importing by the illegal sanctions imposed by the US through UN.

5 solar years ago, on this day in 2012 AD, the Islamic Republic of Iran opened in Tehran the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), attended by heads of state, foreign ministers and senior delegates of 120 member countries and 17 nations with observer status. This was a slap at the US and a handful West European states that dominate the UN and manipulate the Security Council to dictate terms to the free world, and illegally impose sanctions on independent countries, such as Iran.

5^th Shahrivar of the Iranian Calendar: is commemorated every year in the Islamic Republic as "Mohammad ibn Zakariya Raazi Day" and consequently "Pharmacology Day" in honour of this great Iranian-Islamic physician (854-925 AD) who was known as "Rhazes" to medieval Europe and who made fundamental and enduring contributions to various fields of medicine and related sciences, which he recorded in over 200 books and treatises. Among his important books on medicine is “al-Hawi al-Kabeer” on ways of leading a sound and healthy life. This monumental medical encyclopedia in nine volumes is also known as “Jame’ al-Kabir". He also wrote a home medical (remedial) novel for the general public titled “Man La Yahzuruhu at-Ṭabeeb”, (“Who has no Physician to Attend Him”). Later in our programme, you will listen to a special feature on Zakariya Raazi.

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