Today is Monday; 18th of the Iranian month of Dey 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Rabi as-Sani 1439 lunar hijri; and January 8, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

694 solar years ago, on this day in 1324 AD, Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, died at the age of 69. He was seventeen years old when he started his long journey to China, along with his father and uncle, visiting several Asian lands, including Iran, both on the way and while returning. During his return journey he escorted Princess Kokachin sent by Kublai Khan from China as a bride for his grandnephew, Arghun Khan, the Ilkhanid Mongol ruler of Iran-Iraq. It took two years for Marco Polo and the bridal party to reach Hormuz by sea from southern China, and when they arrived in Maraghah, the then capital of Iran, the Khan had died and was succeeded by his son, Ghazaan Khan, who married the princess and on conversion to Islam changed his name to Mahmoud. When Marco Polo finally returned to his hometown, Venice in 1291, it was after 24 long years, but with many riches and after travelling some 24,000 kilometers. He related his memoirs to Rustichello da Pisa while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic, mentioning his observations at the court of China’s Mongol Emperor, such as use of paper money, in addition to his observations in other Asian cities and lands, including Iran.

376 solar years ago, on this day in 1642 AD, Italian scientist, astronomer, and physicist, Galileo Galilei, died at the age of 78. Born in Pisa, he studied literature until the age of 19 before turning to physics and mathematics. With the usage of lens, invented by the famous Muslim astronomer, Ibn al-Haytham, he developed a telescope for observing stars. With this instrument, and with the aid of the writings of Islamic scientists, he wrote that the surface of moon has plains and altitudes and each galaxy is made of small and large stars. He also claimed as his own, the discoveries of Islamic scientists that the Sun is at the centre of the Solar System and other planets, including Earth, revolve round it. These discoveries were already made several centuries earlier in the Islamic world by the renowned Iranian astronomer, Abu-Rayhan Birouni (a follower of Prophet Mohammad’s [SAWA] Ahl al-Bayt), who had proved the orbit of the Earth around the Sun as it rotates on its axis. Following the publication of Galileo’s theory on the movement of earth and other planets of the solar system round the sun, the Roman Church charged him with blasphemy, forcing him to renounce his views or risk execution.

337 solar years ago, on this day in 1681 AD, the Treaty of Radzin ended the five-year war between the Ottoman Empire and the allied countries of Russia and Poland. The Turks were forced to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over much of Ukraine including the capital Kiev and its adjacent districts. Russia was also granted access to the Black Sea, although the Muslim populated Crimean Peninsula remained in Ottoman hands.

305 lunar years ago, on this day in 1134 AH, the Iranian poet and literary figure, Lotf-Ali Bayk Azar Bigdeli, was born in Isfahan. For a while he lived in Qom and Shiraz, and upon returning from the Hajj Pilgrimage, resided in his hometown, Isfahan. Despite famine and insecurity in the wake of internal wars plaguing Iran, he continued his studies under ulema and poets. An eloquent speaker well-versed in poetry, he compiled a large number of works, including a divan of poems, and “Atashkada-e Azar”, which is an anthology of contemporary and past poets.

238 solar years ago, on this day in 1780 AD, an earthquake of estimated magnitude 7.7 hit the city of Tabriz, Iran, killing about 80,000 people and causing major damage.

166 solar years ago, on this day in 1852 AD, the highly efficient Iranian Prime Minister, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, was killed on the orders of the Qajarid king, Nasser od-Din Shah in the “hammam” (bathhouse) of the famous garden-pavilion of Feen in the city of Kashan, where he was exiled, after dismissal from his post, following court intrigues by local agents of foreign powers, on loss of their illegal interests, because of his political and administrative reforms. He had risen from the lower rungs of the society through hard work, honesty, and voracious appetite for knowledge and eagerness to learn new techniques. His achievements include the vaccination of Iranians against smallpox; economic development of the fertile Khuzestan Province; foundation in Tehran of the Dar ol-Fonoun Academy (for teaching medicine, surgery, pharmacology, natural history, mathematics, geology, and natural sciences to train the civilian and military staff); cancellation of the one-sided treaties with the Russians and the British; launching of a newspaper; crackdown on the seditious Babi-Bahai plot against Islam and the country; and execution of the heretic Mohammad Ali Bab.

141 solar years ago, on this day in 1877 AD, native Amerindian Chief, Tasunke Witko, whom the Anglo-Saxon occupiers of America, called 'Crazy Horse', fought his last battle against the US Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory, before he was tricked into surrendering, and some months later cowardly shot to death. He took up arms against the US regime to fight encroachments on Amerindian territories and way of life of the Lakota people by the white-skinned occupiers of his homeland. In June 1876 he had defeated the better armed US army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The US, which was originally made up of the 13 'New England' colonies established by the British occupiers of North America, has almost wiped out the native Amerindians, as part of its expansionist policy of genocide.

92 solar years ago, on this day in 1926 AD, Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, chieftain of a Wahhabi clan from Najd, declared himself king of Hejaz after destroying the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina, and massacring tens of thousands of Muslims in the two holy cities, as well as in Jeddah and Ta’ef. A salaried servant of the British Empire for destabilizing Ottoman rule in Arabia and paid in India currency through the Bombay Presidency, in the 1920s he expanded his territories at the expense of fellow British agent, Sharif Hussein of the Hejaz. He also occupied parts of Yemen and seized the oil-rich lands of the Sh’ite Muslim tribal chiefs on the eastern, Persian Gulf coast of the Arabian Peninsula. In 1932, the British decided to gift him with a kingdom called Saudi Arabia, for his promise to facilitate the planting of the Zionist entity, Israel, in Palestine. The most blasphemously criminal act of Abdul-Aziz was destruction of the sacred cemeteries of Jannat al-Mo’alla in Mecca that housed the holy tombs of family members of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and of Jannat al-Baqie in Medina that housed the holy shrines of Four of the Prophet’s Twelve Infallible Heirs – Imam Hasan al-Mojtaba (AS), Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), Imam Mohammad al-Baqer (AS) and Imam Ja’far as-Sadeq (AS).

58 lunar years ago, on this day in 1381 AH, Ayatollah Sheikh Hashim Mudarris Qazvini passed away. Born in Qazvin, after completing his religious studies in his hometown, he joined the Islamic seminary at Isfahan for higher studies, before moving six years later to holy Mashhad, where he taught for forty years. Among his students was the future Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

33 lunar years ago, on this day in 1405 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khwansari passed away at the age of 96 in Tehran and was laid to rest in the holy shrine of Hazrat Fatema al-Ma’soumah (SA) in Qom. His lineage goes back by 30 ancestors to Imam Musa Kazem (AS), the 7th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). His father Mirza Yusuf and his grandfather Mirza Baba were both religious scholars. His initial teachers were his elder brother Seyyed Mohammad Hassan and his sister's husband, Seyyed Ali Akbar Bidihindi. At the age of 16 he travelled to Iraq for higher studies at the seminary of holy Najaf, where his teachers included Akhond Khorasani, Sheikh ash-Shari’ah Isfahani, Mirza Mohammad Hussain Na'ini, Ziya od-Din Iraqi, Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Tabataba'i al-Yazdi, and Sheikh Abdul-Kareem Ha'iri Yazdi. On his return to Iran, he taught theology, Islamic philosophy, and jurisprudence at the seminary of holy Qom. For a while, he was sent by Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi to Tehran, where beside his religious activities, he joined the ulema in the struggle against the despotic rule of the British-installed and US-backed Pahlavi regime. His students included the philosopher, Ayatollah Martyr Morteza Motahhari. He wrote several books, the most important of which is “Jame’ al-Madarek” in Arabic in the field of jurisprudence in 14 volumes that took some three decades to complete, and is a commentary on “al-Mukhtasar an-Nafe’” of Muhaqqiq Hilli.

19 solar years ago, on this day in 1999 AD, Pakistan formally acknowledged that at least 50,000 Pakistanis were being kept as slaves by powerful landlords in the Sindh Province. The acknowledgement was made by Governor Moinuddin Haider. Pakistan is among the countries with the highest number and highest percentage of forced labour. According to the latest figures from Pakistan, about two million people are in bonded labour, mostly in the Sindh and Punjab provinces, particularly in brick kilns, carpet-making, agriculture, fishing, mining, leather tanning, and production of glass bangles;

17 solar years ago, on this day in 2001 AD, the Taliban militia massacred over 300 unarmed Shi’ite Muslims of the Hazara ethnic group in Yakalang in Afghanistan. Created from among Afghan Pashtun refugees in Pakistan, with Saudi money and weapons supplied by the US, the savage militia seized power in Afghanistan and terrorized the country and the people by implementing inhuman medieval European laws in the guise of Islam, until its ouster by the Americans in 2001. The Taliban, like similar terrorist groups, such as al-Qa’eda, Boko Haram, ISIL, and Lashkar-e Jhangavi, preach and practice hatred, violence, and brutal killings of Muslims, as part of the Zionist-Salafi-Imperialist plot to tarnish the image of Islam.

11 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, the Iranian historian and researcher, Hojjat al-Islam Ali Davani, passed away at the age of 78. Born near the city of Kazeroun, in southern Iran, at the age of 14 he left for the seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq for learning Islamic sciences. He returned to Iran five years later and continued studies under prominent figures, such as Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi, and the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). He soon attained the status of Ijtehad. He was an expert on Islamic history and wrote 110 books and numerous articles in this regard. His books include "The Movement of Iranian Ulema", which is in ten volumes. He was compiling the "Alawid Encyclopedia" when death overtook him.

AS/ME