Today is Monday; 27th of the Iranian month of Shahrivar 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 27th of the Islamic month of Zi’l-Hijjah 1438 lunar hijri; and September 18, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1964 solar years ago, on this day in 53 AD, Roman Emperor Trajan was born in an Italian family in Spain in what was then the city of Italica (now on the outskirts of Seville). In 98, he was declared emperor on the death of his patron, Emperor Nerva. He died in 117 at the age of 64 in Selinus in Cilicia in what is now the southeastern coastal region of Turkey, after a reign of 19 years, while fleeing from the counterattacks of Iran’s Parthian Empire, following his invasion of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and retreat. He pursued an aggressive military policy to expand the Roman Empire, including breaking of 50 years of peace with the Parthian Empire in 110 by attacking Armenia which was a province of the Iranian Empire. After two years, the Iranians liberated Armenia and drove out the Romans. Trajan again invaded Armenia and tried to infiltrate Gilan, and then in 115 he launched a surprise attack on Mesopotamia that saw Roman armies reach for the first time the shores of the Persian Gulf in what is now Kuwait. So elated was Trajan by this unexpected success that in 116 he prematurely sent a laurelled letter to the Senate in Rome, boosting of what he called the conquest of the Parthian Empire. However, as he left the Persian Gulf for Babylon, the Iranians led by Sanatrukes, the nephew of their Emperor, Osroes I, imperiled Roman positions in both Mesopotamia and Armenia, forcing Trajan to withdraw his troops that had penetrated Khuzestan. Although Sanatrukes was killed in the battle that the Iranians lost at Seleucia and their capital Ctesiphon (Mada’en near modern Baghdad) was temporarily occupied by the Romans, Trajan's deteriorating health started to fail him. Following the heat stroke he suffered during the unsuccessful Roman attempt to capture the fortress city of Hatra on the Tigris near Mosul in what was then the Iranian province of Khavaran, and coupled with the renewed uprising of the people of Mesopotamia, Trajan was forced to retreat. His claim of being the conqueror of Parthian Empire turned out to be hollow as he succumbed to his worsening health.

1306 lunar years ago, on this day in 132 AH, on this day in 750 AD, the 13th and last self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad regime, Marwan II, titled “al-Hemar” (or the Donkey), was caught and killed in Egypt at the age of 62 after a 6-year rule while fleeing through Syria, Palestine, and North Africa, following defeat in the Battle of Zab on the banks of the river of the same name in northern Iraq at the hands of the Abbasids on January 25 the same year. Thus ended the 91-year Godless rule of the Omayyads established in 41AH on the seizure of the Islamic realm by Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan through a dubious treaty imposed upon Imam Hasan Mojtaba (AS), the elder grandson of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Prior to the decisive Battle of Zab, the hated Omayyads had suffered a series of defeats all the way from Iran to Iraq by the combined forces of the Abbasids, Shi’ite Muslims, and Iranians. At Zab, Marwan assembled a vast army made up of many veterans of earlier Omayyad campaigns against the Byzantine Empire, but the zeal of the opponents demoralized his forces and they fled in the face of determined attack. Marwan escaped the battlefield and was relentless pursued by the Abbasids, who cornered him in Abusir in Nile delta and executed him. Marwan had ruled for 6 years from Damascus after being governor of Armenia and Azarbaijan for 12 years during which he terrorized the people of the Caucasus and devastated cities in Georgia.

1218 lunar years ago, on this day in 220 AH, Ali al-Uraidhi, the son of Imam Ja’far Sadeq (AS), passed away at the ripe old age of a hundred years. He lived in an area called Uraidh, some 6 km from Medina, hence his epithet al-Uraidhi. He was a great scholar and transmitter of Hadith from his father, brother Imam Musa Kazem (AS) and nephew Imam Reza (AS). Once when he was preaching in the mosque, Imam Mohammad at-Taqi (AS), who was still beardless boy entered, and on seeing him, he quickly sprang to his feet without adjusting the cloak and without wearing the slipper he came forward to greet him. When his companions chided him for behaving in such respectable manner to a boy who was the grandson of his brother, he replied that since God has granted the Divine Trust of imamate to the young boy it is incumbent upon all others to hold him in reverence. Both Shi’a and Sunni scholars have transmitted hadith from Ali al-Uraidhi, and there is a compilation known as “Musnad Ali ibn Ja’far” attributed to him.

747 lunar years ago, on this day in 691 AH, the world-acclaimed Persian poet of Iran, Shaikh Moslehoddin Sa’di, passed away in his hometown Shiraz. He left at a young age for Baghdad where he studied at the famous Nizamiyyah Academy, excelling in Islamic Sciences, law, governance, history, Arabic literature and theology. The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Iran led him to wander for 30 years through Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Anatolia or what is now Turkey. He also refers in his works about his travels in Sindh or present day Pakistan, as well as India and Central Asia. Sa'di performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Even during his travels he composed beautiful Persian and Arabic poems. On return to his hometown, Shiraz, he composed his two famous masterpieces, the “Bustan” or the Orchard and the “Golestan” or the Rose Garden. The poems in Bustan speak of such topics as justice, love, kindness, modesty, contentment, education, repentance, and prayers. The next year he completed the “Golestan”, which is in prose, and also contains his Arabic and Persian poems, in addition to moral and social anecdotes in 8 chapters. His collection of poems also includes odes and quatrains. The tomb of Sa’di in Shiraz is a frequently visited site.

489 solar years ago, on this day in 1528 AD, the Iranian historian, Ghiyas od-Din Mohammad Khwandamir, arrived from his hometown Herat in Khorasan at the court of India’s First Mughal Emperor, Zaheer od-Din Mohammad Babar, in Agra. He was the maternal grandson of the famous Iranian historian of the Timurid era, Mir-Khwand, and completed volumes 7th and 8th of his grandfather’s monumental universal history “Rawzat as-Safa” (Garden of Purity). Years earlier in his native Herat, Khwandamir had authored his own valuable historical work “Habeeb os-Siyar” in several volumes on the instructions of the famous Timurid minister and scholar Ali-Shir Navaei. He died in India and during the reign of the 2nd Mughal Emperor, Humayun Shah, wrote another valuable Persian work titled “Qanoun-e Humayuni” on rules and observances.

463 solar years ago, on this day in 1554 AD, Haydar Ali Mirza, who declared himself the 3rd Shah of the Safavid Empire of Iran, was born. In 1576, immediately after the death of his father Shah Tahmasp I, who ruled for a record 54 years, he ascended the throne in Qazvin, but was soon killed because of dissension among the powerful Qizilbash clans. Although he had the support of the Ustalju and Shaykhavand clans, as well as the Georgians (his mother was a Georgian lady), the Rumlu, Afshar, and the Qajar clans favored his imprisoned brother Ismail Mirza, who twenty years earlier had been incarcerated in the Qahqaheh fortress for plotting to seize the throne from his father. Ismail was brought out and declared the Shah. It was a fatal mistake for which his supporters paid dearly, since Ismail II, known in Iranian history as “murtad” or the apostate, indulged in fratricide and killing of the Qizilbash chiefs, until he was killed himself after only 15-months as ruler and replaced by his ailing brother Khodabandah –  the father of Shah Abbas the Great. Haydar’s tutor was the great scholar, Mir Mohammad Momin Astarabadi who sensing the gravity of the situation left Iran for the holy cities of Iraq and thence to the Deccan in southern India, where he became Prime Minister of the Qotb-Shahi Dynasty of Iranian origin of Golkandah and helped found the city of Haiderabad.

307 solar years ago, on this day in 1709 AD, the creator of the first dictionary of the English language, Samuel Johnson, was born in England. He made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. After nine years of efforts, his work titled “A Dictionary of the English Language” was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on modern English, and until the completion of the “Oxford English Dictionary”150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent English dictionary.

278 solar years ago, on this day in 1739 AD, the Ottoman and the Austrian Empires signed a peace treaty according to which Belgrade was returned to the Turks after 22 years of occupation. Turkish Muslims who had first liberated Belgrade in 1521 had built it as an Islamic city, complete with baths, public fountains, libraries, mosques, and bazaars. The city was occupied by the Serbs in 1807 and became capital of Serbia in 1841. The Christians have erased much of the Islamic features of Belgrade. 

258 solar years ago, on this day in 1759 AD, Quebec in Canada, surrendered to the British after a battle which saw the deaths of both James Wolfe and Louis Montcalm, the British and French commanders. The people of Quebec still speak French and resent the domination of the English speakers. Separatist tendencies are rife in this Canadian province.

234 solar years ago, on this day in 1783 AD, Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler died at the age of 76. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation. He is also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory. Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest mathematicians to have ever lived. At age 28, he blinded one eye by staring at the sun while working to invent a new way of measuring time. He spent most of his adult life in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia.

207 solar years ago, on this day in 1810 AD, the first Government Junta took power in Chile. Though supposed to rule only in the absence of the king, it was in fact the first step towards independence from Spain, and is commemorated as such. Spain conquered and colonized Chile in the mid-16th century, replacing Inca rule in northern and central Chile, but failing to conquer the independent Mapuche that inhabited south-central Chile. After declaring its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile emerged in the 1830s as a relatively stable authoritarian republic. In the 19th century, it saw significant economic and territorial growth, ending Mapuche resistance in the 1880s and gaining its current northern territory in the War of the Pacific (1879–83) after defeating Peru and Bolivia. In the 1960s and 1970s the country experienced severe left-right political polarization and turmoil. This development culminated with the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically-elected government and instituted a 16-year-long right-wing military dictatorship that left thousands of people dead or missing. The regime, headed by Augusto Pinochet, ended in 1990 after it lost a referendum in 1988 and was succeeded by a center-left coalition which ruled through four presidencies until 2010. Chile is today one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations.

86 solar years ago, on this day in 1931 AD, Manchuria in northeast China was occupied by the Japanese army, which installed the puppet Manchukuo regime. Following its defeat in World War 2, Japan was forced to evacuate the more than a million square km of Chinese territory it had occupied.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1961 AD, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden died in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the war-torn Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the age of 56. He served two terms as the UN Chief and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

36 solar years ago, on this day in 1981 AD, the city of Susangerd and its surrounding areas in southwestern Iran, were liberated by Iran’s Muslim combatants from Ba’thist occupation. Some 750 Ba’thist occupation soldiers were either killed or injured, while 40 tanks and personnel carriers of the enemy were destroyed. Several tanks and personnel carriers and a large amount of ammunition and communication equipment were captured by the Iranian soldiers.

35 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, Lebanon’s Phalangist Christian militia mercilessly slaughtered at least 600 Palestinians in southern Lebanon during the civil war, as part of the US-Israeli plan to weaken and terrorize Muslims.

AS/MG