Today is Saturday, 25th of the Iranian month of Shahrivar 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 25th of the Islamic month of Zi’l-Hijjah 1438 lunar hijri; and September 16, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

Some 1429 lunar years ago, on this day God Almighty revealed ayahs 5 to 22 of Surah Dahr of the holy Qur'an in praise of the Ahl al-Bayt or Blessed Family of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny) when in fulfillment of a vow, his daughter Hazrat Fatema Zahra, along with her husband Imam Ali and her two sons Imam Hasan and Imam Husain, as well as her African maid Fizza (peace upon them) had fasted for three consecutive days, but on each night gave away for the sake of God whatever meagre food they had, when a destitute, an orphan, and a freed prisoner, happened to knock on their door. This day is observed in the Islamic Republic of Iran as the day of Family.

1403 lunar years ago, on this day in 35 AH, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the divinely-designated heir of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny), formally started his rule of social justice when the caliphate came begging at his door, after usurpers had deprived of him of his right to be political head of the Islamic state for a quarter century. A week earlier on the 18th of Zi’l-Hijjah, incidentally the 25th anniversary of the Prophet’s historic proclamation of his God-given Wilayah or authority, the Muslims had begged him to take up the caliphate following the killing of Osman Ibn Affan on that day. The Imam reluctantly agreed on condition that he would rule only on the basis of God's Revealed Word, the holy Qur'an, and the Prophet’s Sunnah. Imam Ali (AS), knew that whether or not he was given political authority, he was the righteous divinely-appointed heir of the Prophet in all affairs, as per the historic proclamation at Ghadeer-Khom in 10 AH, as is evident by ayah 67 of Surah al-Ma'edah. The Imam's four-year and nine-month rule of justice has never been equaled to this date, and serves till this day as a model for all seekers of justice and human rights.

519 solar years ago, on this day in 1498 AD the notorious Tomas de Torquemada, who as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, imprisoned, tortured, killed and forcibly converted to the Catholic sect of Christianity, tens of thousands of Moriscos or Spanish Muslims, as well as Marranos or Jews pretending to be Christians in public but practicing Judaism in their homes, died a humiliating death in Avila, Spain, after a prolonged illness. He is such a hated figure in Spanish history that his tomb was ransacked in 1832 – two years before the Inquisition was officially disbanded. His bones were dug out and ritually incinerated, in the same manner as he used to burn people alive at the stake. Of Jewish ancestry, as a close confidante of the bigotedly murderous Queen Isabella of Castile, he was the chief supporter of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 that violated the terms of the Treaty of Granada concluded the year before with the Nasrid Emir at the final surrender of the Muslim state of al-Andalus mandating protection of religious rights of the remaining Muslim population.

281 solar years ago, on this day in 1736 AD, German-Dutch physicist and inventor of the thermometer, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, died at the age of 50. He lived in Holland most of his life, and in 1714 invented the mercury thermometer by developing the Fahrenheit temperature scale. For the zero of his scale he used the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture; 30° for the freezing point of water; and 90° for normal body temperature. Later, he adjusted to 32° for the freezing point of water and 212° for the boiling point of water, the interval between the two being divided into 180 parts.

207 solar years ago, on this day in 1810 AD, Mexicans publicly called for the end of Spanish rule. Mexican Independence Day celebrates this event. Mexico’s revolt against Spain, started with from meetings of the literary and social club of Queretaro (now a central state of Mexico), which included the priest, the mayor of the town, and a local military captain named Ignacio Allende. They believed that New Spain should be governed by the Creoles or the locally born citizens of Spanish ancestry rather than those sent by Spain to head the administration.

122 solar years ago, on this day in 1895 AD, Malaysian scholar Zain al-Abedin Ahmad was born. He modernized the Malay language with the publication of a series of grammar books entitled “Pelita Bahasa” in 1936. The book modernized the structure of the classical Malay language and became the basis for Malayo that is in use today. The most important change was in syntax, from the classical passive form to the modern active form.

86 solar years ago, on this day in 1931 AD, the leader of the Libyan people's struggles against colonial rule, Omar al-Mukhtar, was executed by his Italian captors at the age of 72, after 23 years of armed resistance against the European invaders. Born in the village of Janzour, near Tobruk in eastern Barqa, in Tripolitania Province of the Ottoman Empire, he was orphaned as a child and was adopted by Sharif al-Ghariani, a member of the political-religious Senussi Sufi Movement. After early education at the mosque, he studied for eight years at the Senussi University at Jaghbub, and in 1899 was sent to Chad to assist Rabih az-Zubayr against the French. In October 1911, during the Italian-Turkish War, an Italian naval force appeared on the shores of Libya and demanded the surrender of the country. The Turks and their Libyan allies withdrew to the countryside instead of surrendering, and the Italians bombarded the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi for three days, marking the beginning of a series of battles with the Libyan people of Cyrenaica led by Omar Mukhtar. Skilled in desert warfare, he was a thorn in the side of the Italians until he was ambushed, wounded and captured on 11th September 1931. Five days later the terrified Italian occupiers, having failed to subdue the Islamic spirit of this scholar of the holy Qur’an, hanged him.

85 solar years ago, on this day in 1932 AD, British physician Ronald Ross, who located the malarial parasite in the gut of the Anopheles mosquito died in London at the age 75. Born in Almora in northern India, he made a key breakthrough when he discovered malaria parasites while dissecting a mosquito in the Secunderabad suburb of Haiderabad in the Muslim kingdom of the Deccan (southern India). After two years of research failure, in July 1897, he managed to culture 20 adult “brown” mosquitoes from collected larvae. He successfully infected the mosquitoes from a patient named Hussain Khan. After blood-feeding, he dissected the mosquito and found an "almost perfectly circular" cell from the gut, which was certainly not of the mosquito. On 20 August he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito, which he named "dappled-wings" and which later turned out to be species of the genus Anopheles. He thus managed to save millions of people worldwide. In later work, in West Africa, he also determined the mosquito species carrying the deadly African fever.

76 solar years ago, on this day in 1941 AD, the British removed their agent Reza Khan Pahlavi from the Peacock Throne of Iran and replaced him with his 21-year son Mohammad Reza, because of showing sympathies with Germany. An illiterate soldier, Reza Khan was promoted rapidly by the British to become head of the Cossack Brigade, before being imposed on Ahmad Shah Qajar as prime minister. In 1925, he was formally installed as king after abolishment of the Qajar Dynasty, and instructed to impose decadent western values on the Iranian Muslim people, including the forced unveiling of women, and banning of the traditional Persian dress of men. The British took him to Mauritius, then to Durban, and thence to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he died on 26 July 1944. His son, Mohammad Reza, fled Iran in January 1979 after his barbaric measures failed to crush the Islamic Revolution, thereby bringing the curtain down on 54-years of the despotic and corrupt Pahlavi Dynasty. 

54 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, Malaysia was formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak, with Tunku Abdur-Rahman as prime minister. Singapore, however, soon left this new country. The establishment of Malaysia was bitterly opposed by Indonesia, which refused to recognize the country and waged a guerrilla war against it.

42 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, Papua-New Guinea gained independence. The first Europeans to occupy it were the Dutch, followed by the British. Half of this large Pacific island was handed over to Australia in 1906 by Britain while the other half came under German occupation, until the Nazi defeat in War 2 when it was placed under the UN.

40 lunar years ago, on this day in 1398 AH, the prominent jurisprudent, Ayatollah Mohammad Gharavi Kashani passed away at the age of 85. Born in Kashan, after studying under his scholarly father, Allamah Shaikh Mohammad Hussain Mojtahed Natanzi Kashani, he left for Iraq for higher studies at the famous seminary of Najaf, where his teachers were Ayatollah Mirza Hussain Na’ini, Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Hassan Isfahani, and Ayatollah Zia od-Din Iraqi. After attaining the status of Ijtehad, he returned to Iran, and took up residence in Tehran, where he groomed a number of scholars in various branches of Islamic sciences. He was socially active and campaigned against corruption and un-Islamic practices of the Pahlavi regime.  

39 solar years ago, on this day in 1978 AD, a 7.7-magnitude quake jolted northeastern Iran and destroyed the city of Tabas and its environs in eastern Iran, killing more than 25,000 people and leaving tens of thousands of others injured. This trembler hit Iran at a time when the people had risen against the tyrannical regime of the Shah, which tried to exploit public sentiments in regard in a bid to undermine the Islamic Movement. The Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), in a message to Iranian nation, emphasized on assistance to the quake victims and called for people’s vigilance and continuation of their struggles against the dictatorship.

35 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, the illegal Zionist entity, along with its Phalangist agents in Lebanon, massacred over 5,000 old men, women and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in southern Lebanon. The evil mind behind the bloodcurdling slaughter was Israeli war minister, Ariel Sharon. An ethnic German, born to Lithuanian parents illegally residing in Palestine, his crimes against humanity got him the post of prime minister of the usurper state of Israel. In January 2006, divine wrath struck him in the form of a brain stroke, and for eight years he lay in coma, with most of the brain becoming fluid, before his death.

24 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, prominent Iranian literary figure, researcher and political activist, Seyyed Abu’l-Qassim Injavi Shirazi, passed away at the age of 72. Born in Shiraz, he became a journalist in 1948 at the age of 27 and was arrested and banished to remote areas by the British-installed Pahlavi regime for writing critical analysis of the country’s situation. During the oil nationalization campaign, he became part of the administration of Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, on whose overthrow by the CIA, he was imprisoned. On his release, he busied himself in collecting documents of the cultural heritage of the nation. After victory of the Islamic Revolution he joined the national radio and launched the popular programme “People’s Culture”, the result of which was publishing of ten volumes on this valuable heritage.

10 solar years ago, in 2007 AD, the International Ozone Day was celebrated on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol, following the designation of September 16 as the International Day for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, by the UN. By 2007, 191 countries had signed the environmental protocol, under which there was to be a phase out of the production and consumption of ozone depleting chemicals.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, American terrorists working for the notorious Blackwater Company shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, and injured scores of others. Following outrage in Iraq and the Muslim World, a kangaroo trial was held in the US but soon all criminal charges against the killers were dropped and they were freed.

10 lunar years ago, on this day in 1328 AH, the famous researcher, author and religious scholar, Allamah Seyyed Morteza Sharif Askari, passed away at the age 96 in Tehran and was laid to rest in the holy mausoleum of Hazrat Fatema Masouma (SA) in Qom. Born in Samarra in a family of scholars who mostly held the title of “Shaikh al-Islam” during the Safavid era and were active in Sabzevar and Saveh, guiding masses towards the School of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt, after initial studies in his hometown he came to Qom for higher studies, because the British-installed dictator Reza Khan Pahlavi had stopped transfer of money to Iranian students in Iraq. He benefited from the classes of Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Haeri, and on his return to Samarra, studied other branches of science, such as philosophy, history, and exegesis of the holy Qur’an. In Iraq, during the 1950s he found that the young generation was being attracted to the secular universities, and this made him embark on an ambitious project to establish the Islamic University in Baghdad where along with modern sciences, religious courses and exegesis of the holy Qur’an were taught. This university was closed during the 1970s by the repressive Ba’th minority regime which persecuted him, forcing him to move to Iran, where he continued his research and teaching activities till the end of his fruitful life. He authored several valuable books, shedding light on the facts of Islamic history and refuting the baseless accusations of ignorant minds against Shi’a Muslims. Some of his works are: “Abdullah ibn Saba and Other Historical Legends”, and “150 So-Called Companions”. The latter work is a thorough research of primary Islamic books of hadith and history to expose as fictitious some 150 persons who never existed but were unfortunately regarded as companions of the Prophet and spurious accounts of the Prophet’s life narrated from them, in order to mislead Muslims and keep them ignorant of the divinely-decreed rights of the Ahl al-Bayt.

AS/ME