Today is Monday; 20th of the Iranian month of Shahrivar 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Zi’l-Hijjah 1438 lunar hijri; and September 11, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1134 solar years ago, on this day in 883 AD, the famous Greek Muslim admiral, Damian of Tarsus, known by his Islamic name of Ghulam Yazman al-Khadim, decisively routed a large Byzantine invasion army by a carrying out a lightening night attack at Bab Qalamyah, some 12 km from Tarsus that resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Roman soldiers, including their commander-in-chief, Kesta Styppiotes – an ethnic Slav who had recently replaced Andrew the Scythian on his defeat by Muslim armies. For a decade Yazman was a thorn in the Byzantine side, and won several land and sea battles against the Christians, sometimes in alliance with another valourous Greek convert to Islam, Cleo or Rasheeq al-Wardami, who is famous for besieging the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, and briefly taking over Thessalonica, the second largest city. According to the historian al-Mas’udi, his fame was such that he was among the ten illustrious Muslims whose portraits were hung in Byzantine churches in recognition of their valour. Yazman died in 891 during the siege of the Byzantine fortress of Salandu in what is now southwestern Turkey, as a result of a catapult wound. His troops carried him to his seat of power Tarsus, and buried him there.

720 solar years ago, on this day in 1297 AD, Battle of Stirling Bridge, during the First War of Scottish Independence resulted in a decisive defeat for the English by the Scots jointly-led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray.

452 solar years ago, on this day in 1565 AD, Ottoman forces lifted the Great Siege of the Island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea during the period when the Mediterranean Sea had virtually turned into a Turkish Lake. The Turks, however, continued to raid Malta and coast of Italy and Spain in order to check the ambitions of Christian powers.

408 solar years ago, on this day in 1609 AD, Philip III issued expulsion order for the Moriscos of Valencia, at the instigation of the Duke of Lerma and the Viceroy of Valencia, Archbishop Juan de Ribera. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish who under compulsion outwardly appeared as Catholics but inwardly were Muslims, had to leave Valencia in hundreds of thousands. This was the beginning of the expulsion of all Moriscos from Spain by the year 1614, and led to the migration of over a one million Spanish Muslims to North Africa. They were ordered to depart "under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels or bills of exchange... just what they could carry." The charge against them was that they were secretly planning to facilitate the invasion of Spain by the Ottoman Turks from the sea and by the Huguenots or Protestant Christians of France from the northern land route.

320 solar years ago, on this day in 1697 AD, the Battle of Zenta was fought in Serbia, on the east side of the Tisa River, resulting in a victory for the Austrians and decisive defeat for the Ottoman Turks. While the Ottoman army was in the process of crossing the river, the Austrians launched a surprise attack and massacred at least 30,000 Turkish Muslims. As a result, the Ottoman Empire lost control over Bosnia, and so demoralized was Sultan Mustafa II that he signed the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, giving away large parts of Central Europe including Hungary.

225 solar years ago, on this day in 1792 AD, the Hope Diamond was stolen along with other French crown jewels when six men broke into the house where they were stored. It is a large, 45.52-carat deep-blue diamond, now housed in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. It is valued at 250 million US dollars. Ever since its discovery in the 17th century in Guntur, southern India, in what was then the Qutb-Shahi Kingdom of Iranian origin of Golkandeh, it has changed hands numerous times on its way from India to France to Britain and eventually to the United States.

222 solar years ago, on this day in 1795 AD, in the Battle of Krtsanisi in the Caucasus, the Iranian army demolished the joint forces of the Kartl-Kakheti kingdoms, as Heraclius II of Georgia fled and Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar took possession of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. The cause of the war was the alliance of Heraclius with the Russian Empire, despite the fact that for the past two millenniums Georgia had intermittently been part of the various Iran-based empires. Since 1555 Eastern Georgia, which had been under Safavid suzerainty, asserted its independence in 1747 on the death of Nader Shah Afshar. After his triumph in Georgia, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar subdued all rivals by 1796 and crowned himself king of Iran to formally establish the Qajarid dynasty. The next year he died issueless and was succeeded by his pleasure-loving nephew, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, who during his long reign lost much of Iranian territory in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

214 solar years ago, on this day in 1803 AD, the British troops decisively defeated the Marathas in the Battle of Delhi, thereby strengthening their rising control over India.

109 lunar years ago, on this day in 1329 AH, Ayatollah Akhound Mullah Mohammad Kazem Khorasani, one of the prominent ulema and pioneers of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, passed away. He was a product of famous Islamic seminary of holy Najaf, in Iraq, and his teachers included the celebrated Ayatollah Sheikh Morteza Ansari Dezfuli. His famous work “Kifayat al-Osoul” on principles of jurisprudence is still taught at Islamic seminaries in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

69 solar years ago, on this day in 1948 AD, the Founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, passed away in his hometown Karachi. Born in an Ismaili Shi'ite Muslim family, later in life, he became an Ithna Ash'ari or Twelver Shi'ite. Educated in London and a lawyer by profession, he was a brilliant orator who was one of the founders of the Muslim League of India for the struggle against colonialism and a separate homeland for Muslims of the Subcontinent, after being dissatisfied with the Hindu-oriented policy of the Indian National Congress, of which he was initially a member. For this reason, he was affectionately called all over India, and later after the birth of Pakistan, as Qa'ed-e Azam or the Great Leader. Following the birth of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, he became Governor-General.

44 solar years ago, on this day in 1973 AD, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile was used by the notorious US spying agency, CIA, to topple the legal and elected government of President Salvador Allende, three years after this Secretary-General of the Chilean Socialist Party was voted by the people to power. Allende's plan to nationalize banks, mines, and industries meant the end of the vested interests of US companies in Chile, and to sabotage his policies, the CIA engineered the coup and killed him. Pinochet was subsequently put in charge of Chile and suppressed the people for the next 25 years. Despite handing power to an elected civilian cabinet in 1990, he continued to terrorize the Chilean people until ill health forced him to relinquish military power in 1998. The families of tens of thousands of his victims called for prosecution, but because of US support, Pinochet and his cohorts were never brought to trial. He died in 2006.

36 solar years ago, on this day in 1981 AD, the prominent scholar, Ayatollah Seyyed Asadollah Madani, was martyred by MKO terrorists in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz, while leading the Friday Prayer at the age of 67. He completed his studies at the Qom and Najaf Seminaries, and attained the status of Ijtehad. He was active in the struggle against the despotic British-installed and US-backed Pahlavi regime, revealing the evil nature of the Shah during the 15th Khordad Uprising of June 4, 1963. As a result, he suffered imprisonment and banishment to remote areas of the country. Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, he was appointed Friday Prayer Leader of Tabriz by the Founder of Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini (RA).

23 solar years ago, on this day in 1994 AD, Iranian researcher and Qur'anic scholar, Dr. Mohammad Ramyar, passed away. Born in the holy city of Mashhad, after mastering Islamic sciences, he studied law and travelled to Britain, where he obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. On his return to Iran, he served as Dean of Faculty of Theology and Islamic Teachings of Tehran University, grooming numerous students. Among his books, mention can be made of "History of Qur'an", and "Kashf al-Mataleb".

19 lunar years ago, on this day in 1419 AH, the Gnostic, Ayatollah Seyyed Abdul-Karim Kashmiri, passed away in holy Qom at the age of 72. Born in holy Najaf, Iraq, he was a prodigy, who attained the status of Ijtehad at a young age, while studying under Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qassim Khoei. His other teachers included the famous scholars, Seyyed Abdul-A’ala Sabzewari and Seyyed Abdul-Hadi Shirazi. A prolific teacher, he used to give lessons on a wide variety of subjects every day, such as jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, and Arabic literature. In addition, he was an outstanding researcher as well as a Gnostic, renowned for his spiritual qualities. Because of the persecution of ulema and Iraq’s Shi’a Muslim majority by Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime, he migrated to Iran and settled in Qom. On the border, the Ba’thist forces seized his scholarly diaries which contained his valuable researches. 

16 solar years ago, on this day in 2001 AD, two US aircraft plowed through the twin-towers of the 110-storey World Trade Center in New York. The huge building collapsed, not as a result of the impact of the supposedly hijacked aircraft but through implosions, because of the explosives planted in their basement by FBI and Mossad agents. The US blamed its own agent, Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda, for what it called "terrorist" attacks, when in fact the real terrorist was the US regime itself. As things turned out, the Twin-Tower incidents were part of an elaborate plot by the US to let loose a wave of Islamophobia in the West and to attack and occupy one of the weakest and most backward Muslim countries, that is, Afghanistan. Later in 2003 on the same pretext, the US invaded and occupied Iraq, where over the next few years it directly or indirectly killed 1.2 million men, women, and children. At the same time, the US has used the 9/11/2001 incidents as a pretext to suppress civil liberties at home, especially the rights of the fast growing Muslim community, while increasing its military budget to terrorize the free world.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, Russia tested the largest conventional weapon ever, the Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power (ATBIP), nicknamed the Father of All Bombs. It is bomber-delivered weapon of massive power, which is supposed to evaporate all living things within its radius. The ATBIP is reportedly four times as powerful as the US military's GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (whose official military acronym "MOAB" is often colloquially called the "Mother of All Bombs").The thermobaric device yields the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT using about seven tons of a new type of high explosive. Because of this, the bomb's blast and pressure wave have a similar effect to a small tactical nuclear weapon, although on a smaller scale. The bomb works by detonating in mid-air. Most damage is inflicted by a supersonic shockwave and extremely high temperatures. Thermobaric weapons differ from conventional explosive weapons in that they generate a longer, more sustained blast wave with greater temperatures. In doing so, they produce more damage over a larger area than a conventional weapon of similar mass.

4 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, Iran’s Islamic scholar Abdul-Mohammad Ayati, mostly known for his translations of the Holy Qur’an and the Nahj-ul-Balagha, passed away in Tehran at the age of 87. Born in Boroujerd, he was attached to Islamic issues since high school, and in 1946 came to the capital and started studying philosophy at Tehran University. He later began a teaching career that continued for over 30 years. He was a member of the Iranian Academy of Persian Language and Literature. He wrote many books and articles on Persian literature and philosophy.

AS/MG