Today is Friday; 10th of the Iranian month of Azar 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 12th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1439 lunar hijri; and December 1, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1492 lunar year ago, on this day in the year 53 prior to the Hijra, (570 AD, the year Abraha, the Abyssinian governor of Yemen, was struck by divine wrath, along with his elephant-led hordes while trying to attack the holy Ka’ba), according to some accounts Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) was born in Mecca. As per the narrations of the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt, he was born on the 17th of this same month. Thus, in order to bridge this 5-day gap, the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), initiated the Islamic Unity Week, which over the past three decades has fostered solidarity between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.

1439 lunar years ago, a few days after hijrah, the first mosque in Islam was built on the instructions of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) at a village called Qoba near Yathreb (Medina), following his migration from Mecca on God's commandments on the 1st of Rabi al-Awwal. He stayed here for several days, awaiting the arrival of his dear cousin, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), who had agreed to sleep on his bed the night of Hijra so that he could migrate undetected from the assassins hovering around the abode of divine revelation. The Prophet had also instructed the Imam to return to the Meccans the things they used to keep as safe-custody with him as “Amin” (Trustworthy). After three days the Imam, for whose selfless risking of life on the night of Hijra God revealed to the Prophet ayah 207 of Surah Baqarah, left Mecca and a few days later arrived in Qoba, along with the ladies of the Bani Hashem clan, including his mother, Fatema bint Asad (SA), and his future wife, the Prophet's Immaculate daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA). The mosque of Qoba is thus a sanctified place where it is highly recommended to perform prayers. The first public Friday Prayer was held at this place by the Prophet before he entered Medina.

1212 lunar years ago, on this day in 227 AH, Mu’tasim-Billah, the 8th self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime, died at the age of 49 after a reign of nine years, and was succeeded by his son, Watheq-Billah – born to Greek concubine Qaratis. Mu’tasim, son of the tyrant Haroun Rashid’s Turkic concubine – a singing-dancing slave-girl named Marida – had taken over the caliphate on the death of his step-brother, Mamoun. He favoured the Turks and gave them all authority, to the resentment of the Iranian and Arab Muslims. He opposed the Mu’tazallite doctrine of his predecessor. It was on his orders that “Ijtihad” was forbidden, and of the several jurisprudential schools of the newly designated sect called “Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah”, only four, i.e. Hanafi, Maleki, Shafei, and Hanbali, were decreed as official. Mu’tasim earned lasting damnation for martyring through poison, Imam Mohammad at-Taqi (AS), the 9^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA).

1198 lunar years ago, on this day in 241 AH, the jurisprudent, Ahmad Ibn Mohammad Ibn Hanbal ash-Shaybani, passed away in his hometown Baghdad at the age of 79. His father was an army officer of the Abbasid regime in Khorasan. After studying under Mohammad Ibn Idris Shafei, and Abu Yusuf – a student of the Iranian jurist, Abu Hanifa – he travelled through Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, to collect hadith, before returning to Baghdad, where he was not welcomed because of his views against the Mu’tazalites. He was imprisoned by Ma'moun; flogged by his successor, Mu'tasim; and banished from Baghdad by Watheq. It was only when the tyrant Mutawakkil assumed power that he was welcomed back in Baghdad. Ibn Hanbal is the founder of one of the four court-sanctioned schools of Sunni jurisprudence, named after him as Hanbali. His principal work is a collection of hadith, known as “al-Musnad”, in which he has also included hadith on the unrivalled merits of Imam Ali (AS) and the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Perhaps for political reasons, he failed to have direct contact with the Infallible Imams of his time, such as Imam Ali ar-Reza (AS), Imam Mohammad at-Taqi (AS), and Imam Ali an-Naqi (AS) – respectively the 8th, 9th and 10th Infallible Heirs of the Prophet (SAWA) – for recourse to authentic hadith from the right sources, although he has cited in his collection the famous hadith "Whoever dies without cognition of the Imam of the Age, dies the death of ignorance."

1081 lunar years ago, on this day in 358 AH, Hassan Ibn Abdullah Naser od-Dowla Hamdani, the Emir of Mosul, died under detention by his son, two years after the death in Aleppo of his younger and more famous brother, Ali Sayf od-Dowla. They were sons of Abdullah Abi’l-Hayja, the ruler of Mosul and there was deep affection between the two brothers, to the extent that the elder lost all interest in life and state affairs when the younger died, and was consequently put under detention by his son. The Hamdanids belonged to the Banu Taghlib Arab tribe and were staunch followers of the school of the Ahl al-Bayt of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). For a brief period, Naser od-Dowla taking advantage of the weakness of the Abbasid caliph, took over Baghdad, but had to quit the city and leave for Mosul because of opposition by the powerful faction of Turkic slave-soldiers.

682 solar years ago, on this day in 1335 AD, Abu Sa’eed Bahador Khan, the last ruler of the Iran-based Ilkhanid Empire that included Iraq and parts of Turkey, Central Asia and Afghanistan, died at the age of 30, without an heir, and with him the dynasty founded in 1255 by Hulagu Khan, the grandson of the fearsome Chingiz Khan, disintegrated. He was the son of Sultan Oljaitu Khodabandeh who had declared the School of the Ahl al-Bayt as the official creed, and who is buried in the famous mausoleum of Sultaniyeh near Zanjan in northwestern Iran. Although, Abu Sa’eed, during his 19-year reign patronized poets and scholars, he was a weak administrator, who committed many excesses, even executing able ministers, such as Rashid od-Din Fazlollah – author of the famous history, “Jame’ at-Tawarikh”. His death split the empire into several principalities, such as the Jalayarids in Iraq, the Chupanids in Azarbaijan- South-eastern Turkey, the Sarbedaran in Khorasan, and the Kartids in what is western Afghanistan. The great voyager Ibn Battuta was amazed at discovering, on his return to Persia, that what had seemed to be such a mighty realm only twenty years before had dissolved so quickly.

391 solar years ago, on this day in 1626 AD, Pasha Mohammad ibn Farrukh, the tyrannical governor of Bayt al-Moqaddas that was part of the Ottoman Sanjak of Nablus, was driven out by the people. A manumitted Circassian slave from the Caucasus, due to the favour of his former owner, Bahram Pasha, he rose to the prominent position of governor.

379 solar years ago, on this day in 1638 AD, Ali Mardan Khan, the Kurdish governor of the Iranian border city of Qandahar in what is now Afghanistan, betrayed the post entrusted to him by the Safavid Emperor, Shah Safi, to handover this strategic fort and its districts to the Mughal Empire of the Northern Subcontinent. Mughal Emperor Shah-Jahan rewarded him for his treason to Iran by appointing him governor of the province of Punjab which at that time stretched from the vicinity of Kabul to the vicinity of Delhi. He later received the title of Amir ol-Omara (Chief of Nobles) and governorship of Kashmir as well. A proficient engineer and architect as well, his tomb is in Lahore, while a garden named after him as "Bagh-e Ali Mardan Khan" still survives in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

377 solar years ago, on this day in 1640 AD, with the collapse of the Iberian Union, Portugal became an independent kingdom, no longer affiliated to Spain, with which it had formed a union in 1580, along with other Christian regions of the Iberian Peninsula.

278 lunar years ago, on this day 1161 AH, the eminent Iranian Islamic scholar, Seyyed Ali ibn Mohammad Tabatabai was born in the holy city of Kazemain in Iraq. Nephew (sister’s son) of the great scholar, Mohaqqeq Behbahani, he attained the status of Ijtehad at a young age. He authored several books, the most important of which is “Riyaz al-Masa’el”, also known as “Sharh-e Kabir”. In addition to his piety, he was active in social affairs, had the Jame’ Mosque constructed in Karbala, besides building a wall around the holy city to safeguard it from the attacks of Wahhabi hordes of Najd. He passed away in Karbala at the age of 70 and was laid to rest in the courtyard of the shrine of Imam Husain (AS).

275 solar years ago, on this day in 1742 AD, Empress Elisabeth ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Russia for their charging of high usury and insulting of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity like slandering Prophet Jesus and his mother, the Virgin Mary (peace upon them).

256 solar years ago, on this day in 1761 AD, the famous wax sculptor, Madame Tussaud, was born as Marie Grosholtz in 1760 in Strasbourg, France in a German family. On the death of her father, her widowed mother shifted to Bern, Switzerland, where she worked as housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius, a physician who was skilled in wax modeling and who taught the young girl this unique art.  After moving to Paris, she created her first wax sculpture in 1777, of the philosopher Voltaire. Other famous people she modeled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the American statesman Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution she modeled many prominent victims. In her memoirs she claims that she would search through corpses to find the severed heads of executed persons, from which she would make death masks. In 1795, she married Francois Tussaud and acquired a new name as Madame Tussaud. In 1802 she went to London, having accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern and phantasmagoria pioneer, to exhibit her work alongside his show. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, she was unable to return to France, so she traveled throughout Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection. By 1835 Madame Tussaud settled down in Baker Street where she set up her wax museum, one of whose main attractions was the Chamber of Horrors and included victims of the French Revolution and the newly created figures of murderers and other criminals. In 1842 she made a self-portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum. She died in her sleep on 15 April 1850. Today the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum is a major tourist attraction of London.

192 solar years ago, on this day in 1825 AD, the so-called Holy Alliance (also called the Grand Alliance) among Russia, Austria and Prussia collapsed shortly after the death of Czar Alexander I, at whose behest it was created in 1815 on the claim of instilling Christian religious values of charity and peace in European political life, but in practice to act as a bastion against reform, revolution and democracy.

173 lunar years ago, on this day in 1266 AH, the prominent jurisprudence Fathollah bin Mohammad Namazi Gharawi, popular as Shaikh osh-Shari’ah Isfahani, was born in Isfahan in a family of scholars from Shiraz. After initial studies he enrolled at the seminary of holy Mashhad, where his teachers included Mullah Haidar Ali Isfahani, Mullah Abdul-Jawad Khorasani Modarris Kabir, and Mullah Ahmad Sabzevari. Here he established himself as a budding scholar with dynamic views. At the age of 30, he went to Iraq for higher studies at the famous seminary of holy Najaf, where his teachers were Mirza Habibollah Rashti and Shaikh Mohammad Hussain Faqih Kazemi. He soon became an authority on different branches of Islamic sciences, and the Marja’ or Source of Emulation. He wrote several books and groomed many scholars, such as Seyyed Abdul-Hadi Shirazi, Shaikh Mohammad Hassan al-Muzaffar an-Najafi, Aqa Bozorg Tehrani, and Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Tabataba'i Boroujerdi. Sheikh osh-Shari’ah Isfahani was also politically active against the colonialists, issuing fatwas on Italy’s aggression on Libya, the Russian attack on Khorasan and shelling of the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS) in Mashhad, the invasion of the Ottoman state by the allied European powers during World War 1, and the landing of British troops in Basra and their occupation of Iraq. He rejected any political, military, economic and cultural domination of Islamic lands by the colonialists. He passed away at the age of 73 and was laid to rest in the courtyard of the holy shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS).

151 solar years ago, on this day in 1866 AD, Welsh military engineer and geodesist, George Everest, who worked on the trigonometrical survey of India during the years 1818-43, providing the accurate mapping of the subcontinent, died. For more than twenty-five years, he surveyed the longest arc of the meridian ever accomplished at the time. Everest made countless adaptations to the surveying equipment, methods, and mathematics in order to minimize problems specific to the Great Survey, such as the immense size and scope, the terrain, weather conditions, and the desired accuracy. Mount Everest, formerly called Peak XV, was renamed in his honour in 1865, a year before his death, although he never set foot on it, and despite the fact that for centuries the Tibetans as well as the Nepalis, in whose territory, the world’s tallest peak lies, have called it "Chomolungma".

139 lunar years ago, on this day in 1300 AH, the prominent Iranian mujtahed, Seyyed Mahdi Qazvini, passed away in Hillah, in Iraq. A product of the famous seminary of holy Najaf, he was an expert in jurisprudence, theology, exegesis of the holy Qur'an, and the “Nahj al-Balagha” – collection of the sermons, letters, and maxims of Imam Ali (AS). He wrote several books including "Wada'e" and "Mazamir". Under his influence, over 100,000 people in and around Hillah became followers of the school of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt.

104 solar years ago, on this day in 1913 AD, the island of Crete, having obtained self-rule from Turkey after the Second Balkan War, was annexed by Greece with the help of Britain, France, Italy and Russia, which had seized this Muslim majority island in 1898 after over two centuries of Ottoman rule. The Greeks immediately forced Cretan Muslims to either become Christian or risk expulsion. As a result, tens of thousands of Cretan Muslims fled to Turkey, the Levant and Egypt. Crete, the 5th largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, had many citizens who followed the Bektashi Sufi order founded by Iranian mystic, Haji Bektash Vali of Nishabur, Khorasan, and were hence followers of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. All the mosques and Tekiyes were either destroyed or turned into churches by the Greek Christians, who a century earlier had removed all traces of four centuries of Turkish Muslim rule from Greece. It is worth recalling that Islam was brought to Crete a thousand and two centuries ago by Spanish Muslims, who ruled this island as the Emirate of Ikritish for almost 150 years from their capital Rabdh al-Khandaq (modern Heraklion).

79 solar years ago, on this day in 1938 AD, Ayatollah Seyyed Hassan Modarres was martyred through poisoning by agents of the despotic British-installed Pahlavi ruler, Reza Khan, in the city of Kashmar, Khorasan, at the age of 68, for his untiring efforts to safeguard freedom and liberties in Iran. Born near the city of Ardestan in central Iran, on completion of his studies, he left for the holy city of Najaf in Iraq, to attend the classes of prominent ulema, such as Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi (famous for his anti-tobacco fatwa that saved Iranian economy from the British). On returning to Iran, Ayatollah Modarres started his struggles against the despotic regime and its colonial masters. He was elected to the parliament and lobbied for implementation of Islamic laws in the country, a factor that angered Reza Khan, who exiled him from Tehran.

69 solar years ago, on this day in 1948 AD, the “Tamam Shud Case”: The body of an unidentified man was found in Adelaide, Australia, involving an undetectable poison and a secret code in a very rare book. The case remains unsolved to this day, and is one of Australia's most profound mysteries. Also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, it concerns an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide. It is named after the Persian phrase “Tamam Shud”, meaning "ended" or "finished", printed on a scrap of paper found in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. This turned out to have been torn from the final page of a particular copy of “Rubaiyat” (or Quatrains) of the 12th century Iranian poet, Omar Khayyam. Following a police appeal, the actual book was handed in – six months after the body was found. Imprinted on the back cover of the book was something looking like a secret code as well as a telephone number and another unidentified number. The case is still open with so many speculations over the past six-and-a-half decades.

62 solar years ago, on this day in 1955 AD, Afro-American seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested for allegedly violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which led to the December 5 Montgomery Bus Boycott – a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks, and launched the Civil Rights movement in the US. She refused to move to the back of the bus, to accommodate a white male passenger, as ordered by driver James F. Blake. She was jailed. Virginia Durr helped a black civil rights leader bail Parks out of jail. In 1999, Rosa Parks was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, Ayatollah Mirza Jawad Sultan-al-Qurrai Tabrizi, passed away at the age of 96.Born in a family of scholars who were jurisprudents for the past four centuries, he attained Ijtehad at the young age of 25. An expert in jurisprudence, hadith, history, geography, biography of narrators, mathematics, astronomy, and Persian and Arabic literature, he travelled widely, visiting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He made copies of rare books in the libraries he visited, and wrote several books.

20 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, eight planets from our Solar System lined up from West to East beginning with Pluto, followed by Mercury, Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn, with a crescent moon alongside, in a rare alignment visible from Earth that lasted until Dec 8. Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are visible to the naked eye, with Venus and Jupiter by far the brightest. A good pair of binoculars is needed to see the small blue dots that are Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is visible only by telescope. The planets also aligned in May 2000, but too close to the sun to be visible from Earth. It will be at least another 100 years before so many planets will be so close and so visible.

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