Today is Friday; 6th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 15th of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1437 lunar hijri; and March 25, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1364 lunar years ago, on this day in 73 AH, Abdullah ibn Zubayr, the claimant to the caliphate, was killed in Mecca. He was seditious and crafty and misinterpreted and misused religion for worldly ambitions. He had intense hatred for the Ahl al-Bayt or progeny of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), and was among the main perpetrators of the first “fitna” (or sedition) in Islamic history. It was his killing of innocent Muslims that resulted in the Battle of Jamal near Basra, Iraq, in 36 AH against the Commander of the Faithful, the Prophet’s righteous successor, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS). The Imam won the battle and magnanimously treated his fallen foes, allowing them to return peacefully to Medina. Abdullah never opposed the misrule of Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan, but in 61 AH, when the Prophet’s grandson Imam Husain (AS) came to Mecca following his refusal to acknowledge the Godless rule of Yazid, he did not support him. Yazid’s forces after perpetrating the heartrending tragedy of Karbala, plundered and massacred the people of Medina and then attacked Mecca, where Abdullah had taken refuge. Yazid’s sudden death halted the campaign, and Abdullah began to consolidate his power in Hijaz as the self-styled caliph. He, however, made the folly of allowing the Omayyad governor Marwan ibn Hakam and the latter’s son, Abdul-Malik, to leave the Hijaz for Syria, where after Yazid, father and son seized the caliphate and poses a serious challenge to Abdullah. For almost a decade, the Muslim realm was split between two self-styled caliphs – Abdullah in the Hijaz and Abdul-Malek in Syria. The two fought each other for control of Egypt, Iraq, and Iran, but because of the uprising of Mukhtar ibn Abu Obayda to avenge the blood of Imam Husain (AS), Iraq and the eastern lands were out of their control. Abdullah again erred by refusing Mukhtar’s invitation to join forces against the Omayyads, who were on the verge of being wiped out. He instead imprisoned members of the Prophet’s Hashemite clan with the intention of burning them alive. His plan was foiled by the timely arrival of a force sent by Mukhtar to free the Hashemites. The spiteful Abdullah in 67 AH sent an army under his brother, Mus’ab, to kill Mukhtar and take control of Iraq. Mus’ab succeeded, but a year later, he was defeated and killed by Abdul-Malik bin Marwan. Five years later, Abdullah ibn Zubayr was defeated, killed and crucified by Hajjaj bin Yousuf, who went on to destroy the holy Ka’ba

763 solar years ago, on this day in the year 1253 AD, the prominent Persian poet and chronicler of the Subcontinent, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi, was born in northwestern India. An ethnic Turk who was highly skilled in Iranian and Indian literature and music, he was also familiar with Arabic and Turkish languages. It was, however, in Persian poetry and prose that he excelled. Amir Khosrow was a student of the famous Delhi Gnostic, Nizam od-Din Awliya, and is regarded as the "Father of Qawwali" (a devotional music form of the Sufis in the Subcontinent on chanting praises of God, Prophet Mohammad [SAWA] and Imam Ali [AS]). He is also credited with introducing Persian, Arabic and Turkish elements into Indian classical music and was the originator of the “khayal” and “tarana” styles of music. Amir Khosrow was an expert in many styles of Persian poetry which were developed in medieval Iran, from Khaqani Shirvani’s “qasidas” (panegyrics) to Nizami Ganajavi’s “khamsa” (five long odes). He has written in many verse forms including “ghazal” (lyrics), “mathnavi” (ode), “qata” (fragment), “rubai” (quatrain), “do-baiti” (couplet), and “tarkib-band” (composite-tie). The “Khamsa-e Khosrow” depicts in verse five classical romances: “Hasht-Behesht”, “Matla’ ul-Anwaar”, “Sheerin-Khosrow”, Majnun-Laila and Aaina-Sikandari. Among his prose works is “Tughluq-Namah”, a history of the reign on Tughlaq Dynasty.

666 lunar years ago, on this day in 771 AH, the prominent scholar, Fakhr al-Muhaqqaqin Mohammad ibn Hassan al-Hilli, passed away at the age of 89. He was the son of the celebrated Allamah Hilli, under whose guidance he attained the status of Ijtehad. He wrote prolifically on a wide variety of topics including exegesis of the holy Qur'an, theology, jurisprudence, and philosophy. Among his books are “al-Kafiya”, and “Tahsil an-Najaat”.

342 lunar years ago, on this day in 1094 AH, an Ottoman Turkish army led by Hussein Pasha conquered Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia in Europe, with the crown of the Austrian emperor being among the spoils of war.

195 solar years ago, on this day in 1821 AD, following years of sedition by European Christian powers amongst the Greek-speaking subjects of the declining Ottoman Empire the Province of “Yunanistan” declared itself independent and adopted the name ancient name of “Greece” that was no longer in use for over a millennium. The Ottomans immediately suppressed the revolt that sporadically raged in different parts, but was crushed in 1825 by Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mohammad Ali Pasha, the Albanian Ottoman governor of Egypt. At this stage Britain, France and Russia, decided to intervene militarily and the defeat of Ibrahim Pasha by the combined British-French-Russian navies, separated the Peloponnese Peninsula from Ottoman rule, resulting in the establishment of the kingdom of Greece in 1830. The Greek Christians immediately launched a general massacre of Greek Muslims, expelled them, destroyed mosques or converted them into churches, in order to remove all influence of Turkish rule. Over the next decades, as the Ottoman Empire became more weak, other Greek-speaking provinces were detached and added to Greece by the chief European powers. It should be noted that the ancient land of Greece was among the cradles of civilizations. Made up of city-states, it was part of the Iranian Achaemenian Empire 2,500 years ago, until its emergence under Alexander of Macedonia as a powerful empire itself. For almost two centuries Greece controlled parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, until it ceased to exist as an independent political entity on the world map in 146 BC with its conquest by the Roman Empire. Some five centuries later the region became centre of the Eastern Roman Empire and after Christianization was called Byzantine. Since the 13th century, it gradually came under the rule of the Muslim Turks of Anatolia and was incorporated in the rising power of the Ottoman Muslim Empire, which finally ended the existence of Byzantine in 1453 AD. Today, Greece, which is grappling with an acute financial, economic and political crisis, is among the weakest states of Europe. It covers an area of 132,000 sq km and shares borders with Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, and Macedonia.

59 solar years ago, on this day in 1957 AD, the treaty for establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC or the Common Market), was signed in the Italian capital, Rome. The goal was to form a customs union among member states to get rid of tariffs to freely facilitate exchange of goods, labour force, investment and services. In 1992, EEC was renamed the European Union (EU) and expanded to include the former socialist states.

45 solar years ago, on this day in 1971 AD, Iranian zoologist and the first Iranian planarialogist, Behzad Qorbani was born. He graduated from the University of Tehran and Martyr Beheshti University. In 1997, he identified two new species of fish (Dugesia Iranica and Dugesia Persica), that were found in the Karaj River.

45 solar years ago, on this day in 1971 AD, the Bangladesh Liberation War practically began following the launching of a military attack by the armed forces of West Pakistan on the Bengali-speaking civilians of East Pakistan. Tens of thousands of Bengali Muslims were killed by the Punjabi-Pakhtoun army, resulting in war with India in December that led to dismemberment of Pakistan, and the birth of Bangladesh as an independent Muslim country.

41 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, King Faisal Ibn Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed at point blank range by his US-trained nephew, Faisal Ibn Musaid, at the age of 69 after a 11-year reign, less than two years after he led the oil embargo against the West during the Israeli war, thereby crippling the economy of the West. The CIA was behind the assassination, since the king, in addition to taking the decisive step of oil embargo, was a broad-minded person, aware of the criminal nature of his own father, Abdul-Aziz, who with British help had occupied much of the Arabian Peninsula and named it Saudi Arabia. Faisal thus acknowledged the religious and cultural diversity of the land, including the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim oil-rich region of the east, the Asir in the southwest that along with the Shi’ite Ismaili regions of Najran and Jizan was seized from Yemen, and the old Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz, with its capital Mecca. He included non-Wahhabi, cosmopolitan Sunni Hejazis from Mecca and Jeddah in his government, and when the great Shi’ite Muslim Marja’, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakeem, came on Hajj pilgrimage, Faisal allowed him to hold the congregational prayers at the holy Ka’ba in the Masjid al-Haraam. The Wahhabi minority wanted to remove him, and after his assassination, discrimination based on sect, tribe, region and gender became the order of the day and has remained as such until today.

22 solar years ago, on this day in 1994 AD, US troops, which had entered Somalia in December 1992 under the pretext of ending unrests in this African country, were forced to leave. In 1991, Somali opposition groups had toppled Dictator Mohammad Ziad Bareh, but failed to agree on formation of a coalition government and this political deadlock sparked a civil war, thereby providing a pretext for the US to deploy its troops within the framework of UN peacekeeping forces. The Somalis resented foreign intervention and despite suffering hundreds of fatalities, killed over a hundred US occupation forces and finally forced them out.

2 solar years ago, on this day in 2014 AD, Iranian scholar and historian, Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim Bastani Parizi, passed away at the age of 89. Born near Sirjan in Kerman Province, southeastern Iran, he came to Tehran for higher studies and obtained his doctorate in history, after which he joined Tehran University as lecturer. Since youth he took up composing poems and writing essays. An avid researcher, he wrote a great many articles for different Iranian journals, and translated into Persian from Arabic and French. He authored several books such as “History of Kerman”, “Quest for Independence”, and “Zu’l-Qarnain or Cyrus the Great”.