Today is Friday; 20th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 29th of the Islamic month of Jamadi as-Sani 1437 lunar hijri; and April 8, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1799 solar years ago, on this day in 217 AD, Roman Emperor Caracalla was assassinated after a 6-year reign by his guards in Edessa in northern Mesopotamia (presently in Turkey), a year after he tricked the Iranians into believing that he was sincere in his peace and marriage proposal to the daughter of Parthian Emperor, Artabanus V (Ardavan in Persian), but then had the bride and guests massacred at the wedding celebrations at the royal palace in Arabela – present day Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. Of mixed Punic and Syrian descent, he was named Lucius Septimius Bassianus on his birth in Lyon, France, to the Emperor Septimius Severus. Of mean character, on the death of his father in what is now York in Britain, he was proclaimed joint emperor with his brother, Publius Septimius Antoninus Geta, whom he soon treacherously murdered in front of his mother. A contemporary account of Caracalla’s massacre of the Iranians says that a huge gathering had stood about casually, eager to see the bridegroom and expecting nothing out of the ordinary. Then the signal was given by the Roman emperor to his army to attack and massacre all. Totally astounded at this onslaught the people fled – wounded and bleeding. Artabanus managed to escape with a few companions, while the rest of the Parthians, lacking their indispensable horses, were cut down – for they had sent the horses out to graze and were standing about. The Roman army then carried out a campaign of massacres in northern Mesopotamia and around Media, where Caracalla dug open the royal tombs of the Parthians, and scattered their bones. The Iranians, however, soon regrouped and fought the Romans to a bloody standstill at the Battle of Nisibis (in today’s southeastern Turkey), making them pay war reparations of 200 million sestertii.

1401 lunar years ago, on this day in 36 AH, according to some historians such as al-Masoudi, the Battle of Jamal took place near Basra in southern Iraq in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, with a decisive victory for the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the First Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Other historians have given the 10th of Jamadi al-Awwal as the date of this decisive battle against a large army of rebels led by a wife of the Prophet named Ayesha, who along with her brother-in-law Zubayr ibn Awam and his close friend Talha ibn Obaidollah, broke the pledge of allegiance to the caliphate of Imam Ali (AS). To be brief, the seditionists refused to heed the voice of reason for reconciliation, on the pretext of avenging the blood of the 3rd caliph, Osman ibn Affan, although it was Ayesha herself who used to openly call for the murder of Osman by declaring him to be an apostate. The Imam had no choice but to confront the seditionists, especially after Ayesha ordered 600 Muslims beheaded, including 40 in the grand mosque of Basra, in addition to looting the treasury. Before the battle, Imam Ali (AS) made a fervent appeal to avoid the shedding of Muslim blood, and although Zubayr heeded the advice and disengaged from the combat, after recalling a famous hadith on the righteousness of Imam Ali (AS), he was killed under suspicious circumstances, since his son Abdullah who instigated his aunt Ayesha to enter the battlefield – seated on a camel (Jamal) – was a sworn enemy of the Prophet's Blessed Household. After victory over the seditionists, the Imam magnanimously treated his vanquished enemies by sending the rebellious Ayesha back to Medina under the escort of her brother, Mohammad bin Abu Bakr, who was a loyal follower of Imam Ali (AS).

1311 lunar years ago, on this day in 126 AH, the Godless Waleed II, the 11th self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad dynasty, was killed in Al-Aghdaf in what is now Jordan, after a reign of a year, two months and ten days, during which he committed many abominable sins, including the cruel martyrdom in Jowzajan in Khorasan, of Yahya ibn Zayd, the grandson of the Prophet’s great-grandson, Imam Zayn al-Abedin (AS). On succeeding his uncle, the tyrant Hesham bin Abdul Malik, he continued his debauched life. He built in his palace a fountain of wine in which he used to take dips. On one occasion he threw the holy Qur’an and riddled it with a volley of arrows. Once, in the state of intoxication and in the act of cohabiting with a drunken concubine, when he heard the call for the Fajr Prayer, he promptly asked the ritually unclean woman to put on his clothes, enter the mosque, and lead the Morning Prayer. In a famous hadith, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had foretold about this ungodly ruler by name, and called him the Pharaoh of the ummah.

1238 lunar years ago, on this day in 199 AH, Mohammed Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Ismail Ibn Ibrahim Ibn Imam Hassan Mojtaba (AS), defeated the governor of Kufa, and established his short-lived Islamic state in Iraq. Known popularly as Ibn Tabataba, he died soon afterwards and Mamoun’s Abbasid forces re-occupied Kufa and its surroundings. His movement, however, continued after his death, especially in Yemen, where many members of the Tabatabai branch of the Prophet’s descendants ruled and rose to become scholars and jurisprudents.

1140 solar years ago, on this day in 876 AD, the usurper Abbasid caliphate survived annihilation when pride and overconfidence cost the Iranian general, Amir Yaqoub ibn Laith Saffari, victory in the Battle of Dayr al-Aqoul at Estarband, 80 km southeast of Baghdad. Yaqoub Saffari, who from his base in Zaranj in Sistan, after taking control of Sindh, Baluchestan and Kabul, had carried the banner of Islam to the then Buddhist ruled areas of Bamiyan, Balkh, Badghis, and Ghor (in present-day Afghanistan), now turned towards the west, and swept through Khorasan, conquering Fars and Khuzestan on his way to Iraq. Mu’tamid-Billah, the 15th self-styled Abbasid caliph and murderer of Imam Hasan al-Askari (AS) – 11th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) – terrified at the idea of the Saffarids joining the raging Zanj revolt in Basra and southern Iraq, offered Yaqoub the governorships of Khorasan, Fars, Tabaristan, Gorgan, and Rayy, if he spared Iraq. Yaqoub, however, sensing the weakness of the caliphate, from which Egypt, North Africa, Syria and Central Asia, had already broken away, resolved to end Abbasid rule. He advanced north of Waset, but here the clever tactic of the pro-Abbasid Iranian general, Masrour al-Balkhi, in flooding the adjoining lands slowed down his march. This provided the Abbasids ample time to gather troops and Turkic mercenaries, and thus save their rule that had been established a century and 26 years ago in 750 by Abu’l-Abbas Saffah by overthrowing the Omayyads with Iranian help. The result of the battle, completely halted Yaqoub's advance, as he fell back broken-hearted after a valiant fight, and in the next three years that he was alive, did not make any campaigns in Iraq. In 879, his brother and successor, Amr ibn Laith concluded peace with the caliph. The Abbasids, who had become puppets of Turkic slave generals, continued to be in power, until all executive authority was taken away from them by the Iranian general, Moiz od-Dowla Daylami on the fall of Baghdad in 945 to the Buwaiyhids, who ruled Iraq, Oman and most of Iran for 110 years. Next the Seljuq Turks reduced the Abbasids to vassals. Finally in 1258, the Abbasid caliphate was thrown into the dustbin of history with the sack of Baghdad by the bloodthirsty Buddhist Mongol hordes of Hulaku Khan, the grandson of Chingiz Khan.

745 solar years ago, on this day in 1271 AD, the 4th Turkic Mamluk Sultan (slave-king) of Egypt and Syria, Rukn od-Din Baybars al-Bandouqdari, conquered the impregnable fortress of Krak des Chevaliers by defeating the crusader occupiers and expelling them back to Europe. Known to Muslims as “Hisn al-Akraad” (Castle of the Kurds), it sits atop a 650-metre (2,130 ft) high hill east of Tartus, Syria, in the Homs region on the way to Tripoli in what is now Lebanon. The castle was made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2006. Recently this fortress was liberated by Syrian troops from the Takfiri terrorists who are backed by US, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Baybars, earlier as a general, had taken part in the resounding defeat of the 7th crusade led by the French king, Louis IX, at the Battle of Fareskour in Egypt (1250) and the decisive Muslim victory over the Mongols at Ain Jalut in Palestine (1260).

555 solar years ago, on this day in 1461 AD, Austrian mathematician and astronomer, Georg von Peurbach, died at the age of 37 in Vienna. He studied the Islamic scientist, Ibn Haytham’s book “On the Configuration of the World”, and replaced the Greek scientist Ptolemy's chords in the table of sines with the Islamic Arabic numerals that were introduced 250 years earlier in place of Roman numerals and which today are in use in the whole world (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5 etc.)

157 solar years ago, on this day in 1859 AD, Austrian-German philosopher, Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl, who established the school of phenomenology, was born in Prostejov (presently in Czech Republic). He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, and elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic. Not limited to empiricism, but believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, he worked on a method of phenomenological reduction by which a subject may come to know directly an essence. He died in Nazi Germany in 1938.

130 lunar years ago, on this day in 1307 AH, the Persian newssheet “Qanoun” (Law), was published in London during his exile from Iran by Mirza Malkam Khan, an Iranian Armenian who claimed to have converted to Islam. It was banned in Iran since it attacked both the Qajarid Shah and his government and called for reforms and modernization on West European patterns. Malkam Khan, who set up societies similar to the Freemasons in Iran in1859, was a controversial person, who was exiled several times, until he was reinstated as ambassador to Italy by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah in 1898 with the title of Nezam od-Dowlah.

66 solar years ago, on this day in 1950 AD, India and Pakistan inked the Liaqat-Nehru Pact in New Delhi after six days of talks. The signatories were Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and Pakistani Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. The treaty sought to guarantee the rights of minorities in both countries after the partition of the Subcontinent – Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India.

46 solar years ago, on this day in 1970 AD, the Bahr al-Baqar massacre was carried out by aircraft of the illegal Zionist entity, which deliberately bombed an Egyptian school in the eastern province of Sharqiyya (80 km north of Cairo), resulting in the martyrdom of 46 children and injury to 50 others. Earlier, on February 12 the same year, Israeli warplanes had bombarded an Egyptian factory, martyring and wounding 168 workers. On March 31, 1970, Zionist warplanes pounded the city of Mansurah, martyring 12 civilians and wounding 35 others. The usurper state of Israel has a bleak and bloody record of crimes against humanity.

23 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, the committed Iranian artist and author, Seyyed Morteza Aavini, attained martyrdom at the age of 47. He started his cultural activities at a young age and soon obtained MA in architecture from Tehran University. An ardent supporter of the Islamic Revolution, he volunteered for service at the warfronts during the 8-year war imposed by the US through Saddam. He played a pivotal role in shaping Iran’s revolutionary cinema, making more than 100 documentaries for IRIB. He was martyred due to a mine explosion, while making a documentary on the imposed war in a border area of southern Iran.

22 solar years ago, on this day in 1994 AD, in Rwanda more than 1,400 Tutsis were massacred by Hutu militia at a church atop a hill in Kesho. About this time, when the commander of UN forces in Rwanda warned Ghana’s Kofi Annan, the head of the UN Peacekeeping operations that the Kigali government was planning to slaughter Tutsis, Annan’s office ordered General Romeo Dallaire of Canada against protecting the informant or confiscating arms stockpiles of the Hutus. Annan, who went on to become the UN Secretary-General in 1997, later claimed that he lacked the military might and political backing to stop the slaughter of more than 500,000 people.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2006 AD, the Islamic Republic of Iran gained access to uranium enrichment technology for peaceful use of nuclear energy. Iranian scientists, despite the restrictions imposed by the US and its European accomplices, completed the nuclear fuel production cycle by producing the needed uranium for atomic power stations. Iran thus joined the countries that have mastered nuclear technology. A year later on this date Iran formally started nuclear fuel production on the industrial level. Iran achieved these successes under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and within framework of rules of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This day is known as National Day of Nuclear Technology.

AS/AS/ME