Today is Wednesday; 25th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 5th of the Islamic month of Rajab 1437 lunar hijri; and April 13, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1345 lunar years ago, on this day in 92 AH, Tareq bin Ziyad, crossed the Mediterranean from the northwestern African coast and landed on the island known ever since in his memory as Gibraltar (European corruption of the Arabic term "Jabal at-Tareq", which means Rock or Mount of Tareq). He was governor of Tangiers under Musa bin Nusayr, the conqueror and Emir of the Province of Ifriqiya (made up of present day western Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco). The Muslims under Tareq swept through Spain and soon conquered the whole Iberian Peninsula. Later, they crossed the Pyrenees into southern France and conquered it. Tareq was made governor of Islamic Spain but was eventually called back to Damascus by the jealous Omayyad caliph, Walid I, who also relieved Musa bin Nusayr of the overall charge of northwest Africa, Spain and the islands off the coast of France. There are three different accounts of the origins of Tareq given by Arab historians – he was a Persian from Hamedan; he was an Arab of the Sadf tribe; he was a Berber from North Africa. Musa bin Nusayr is also said to be the son of an Iranian Christian, according to the historian Tabari; while others say he belonged to the Lakhmid Arab clan who were clients of the Sassanid Dynasty.

1193 lunar years ago, on this day in 244 AH, the prominent Islamic scientist and lexicographer, Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq, popularly known as “Ibn Sikkit” was brutally martyred by the cruel Abbasid caliph, Mutawakkil, who ordered the pulling out of his tongue through the nape for speaking the truth. Born in Khuzestan, southwestern Iran, he studied in Baghdad under prominent scholars, and his fame led Mutawakkil to invite him to Samarra where he was appointed as tutor to two of the caliph’s sons. Mutawakkil, who is notorious for his sacrilegious destruction of the shrine of the Martyr of Karbala and his forcing of the Prophet's 10th Infallible Successor, Imam Hadi (AS) to come to Samarra, once asked Ibn Sikkit whether his sons were superior to the Prophet’s two grandsons, Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS). The scholar boldly replied that even Qanbar, the black slave of Imam Ali (AS), was better than the caliph's sons. The enraged caliph ordered his execution. Here is one of his poems worth pondering upon.

"By Allah, if the Omayyads had killed the (grand)son of the Prophet unjustly,

His cousins (the Abbasids) did the same;

Here (in Karbala) is his tomb destroyed!

They felt sorry that they did not participate in killing him,

So they chased him in the grave."

In addition to his poems, Ibn Sikkit has left behind at least twenty books, including “Islah al-Manteq” on lexicography.

849 lunar years ago, on this day in 587 AH, the Iranian mystical philosopher, Shahab od-Din Suhrawardi, was martyred in Aleppo, Syria, by the Kurdish ruler, Malik az-Zaher, the son of Salah od-Din Ayyoubi. Born in Suhraward, near the northwestern city of Zanjan, he went to Iraq and Syria to develop his knowledge. During his short life of less than forty years he wrote valuable works that established him as founder of a new school of philosophy, called "Hikmat al-Ishraq" (Illuminationist Philosophy). He is thus known as "Shaikh-e Ishraq". His views angered his opponents, who had him arrested on charges of heresy and subsequently martyred. Suhrawardi has left behind some 50 works in Persian and Arabic.

812 solar years ago, on this day in 1204 AD, Constantinople fell to the Latin Catholic West European hordes of the Fourth Crusade, who unable to confront Muslims in Palestine, turned against their own co-religionists of the Greek Orthodox Church, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire, as the final act in the permanent separation of the two Christian Churches. For three days the Crusader thugs looted and burned Europe’s largest and most civilized city, committing every crime and sin under the sun. The Latins (as the Byzantines called them because of their adherence to the Catholic sect of the Church of Rome) were viewed as lawless, impious, covetous, bloodthirsty, undisciplined, and (quite literally) unwashed hordes. During the siege and attacks and counterattacks of the two sides, nearly 35 percent of the city that had known peace for several centuries was destroyed, and over 50 percent of the population became homeless, in addition to the tens of thousands of people massacred. Many ancient and medieval Roman and Greek works were either stolen or destroyed. The Library was destroyed. Despite wearing crosses and pretentions to religion, the Crusaders ruthlessly and systematically violated the city's churches and monasteries, destroying, defiling, or stealing all they could lay hands upon, in addition to raping nuns. The medieval historian Speros Vryonis, gives a vivid account of the sack. He writes:

“The Latin soldiers subjected the greatest city in Europe to an indescribable sack. For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale, which even the non-Christian Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable. Constantinople had become a veritable museum of ancient and Byzantine art, an emporium of such incredible wealth that the Crusader thugs were astounded at the riches they found. The French, the Germans, the Italians, the Anglo-Saxons, and other West Europeans destroyed indiscriminately, halting to refresh themselves with wine, violating the chastity of Greek nuns, and murdering Orthodox clerics. The Crusader Catholics vented their hatred for the Orthodox Greeks most spectacularly in the desecration of the greatest Church in Christendom. They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church's holy vessels. The Byzantines were convinced that if the Muslims had taken the city they would not have committed such savagery as fellow Christians.”

As history bears witness, over two-and-a-half centuries later, when Muslims under Ottoman Sultan Mohammad al-Fateh peaceably conquered Constantinople, they renamed it Islambol (Istanbul), preserved its ancient monuments, and spared its population of any massacre. It should be noted that earlier in 1099 on seizing Bayt al-Moqaddas from the Fatemid Shi’ite Muslim dynasty of Egypt, the Crusaders had massacred over 70,000 Arab, Iranian, Turkish, and Kurdish men, women and children.

391 solar years ago, on this day in 1625 AD, the word "microscope" was coined as a suggested term in a letter written by Johannes Faber of Bamberg, Germany, to Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparata and founder of Italy's Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the Lynx). The science of optics is indebted to Muslim scientists who invented the telescope.

321 solar years ago, on this day in 1695 AD, Jean de La Fontaine, the famous French poet of the 17th century, died. He is known above all for his “Fables”, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France.

273 solar years ago, on this day in 1743 AD, Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), who later served two terms (1801-1809) as the Third US president, was born in what is now Albemarle County in Virginia in an English family. A controversial character, he was profoundly influenced by the British Empiricists, including John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. He qualified as a lawyer and was a noted bibliophile, possessing thousands of books. Despite his struggles for freedom from the British crown, he was an embodiment of slave-holding interests in the new republic, the USA, openly denying basic and birthrights to the black-skinned Africans enslaved by the white Europeans. His racist tendencies are evident by his famous statement that blacks were “in reason inferior” and “in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous.” Over the course of his life he owned some 600 slaves, buying and selling them as required. Though he called slavery cruel, he included 25 slaves in his daughter’s dowry, took enslaved children to market for sale, had 10-year-old slaves working 12-hour-a-day in his nail factory, and fathered at least six children from a slave concubine. Jefferson also mistreated the Amerindian natives, forcibly moving Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River. Later, as president, he proposed in private letters beginning in 1803 a policy that under Andrew Jackson would be called “Indian Removal”, under an act passed in 1830. As president, he made a deal with elected officials of the state of Georgia: if Georgia would drop its claims to "discovery" in lands to its west, the US military would help expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. His deal violated an existing treaty between the US government and the Cherokee Nation, which guaranteed its people the right to their historic lands. Jefferson believed that the Amerindian Natives should give up their own cultures, religions, and lifestyles to assimilate to western European culture. He openly said he had lost faith in Christianity, calling parts of the Bible a "dunghill" of "priestcraft and roguery". An imperialist to the very core, he became the first US president to launch wars abroad when he sent the navy to bombard Tripoli and the Muslim coastal cities of North Africa. Jefferson died in 1826 at the age of 83.

148 solar years ago, on this day in 1868 AD, the Abyssinian War ended as British and Indian troops captured Magdala but were deprived of taking as prisoner, Emperor Tewodros II, who committed suicide in captivity, and thus became a symbol of the defiant independence of the Ethiopian people. The British burned Magdala and its churches, and looted many historical and religious artifacts, including manuscripts and the crown of Tewodros II,

143 solar years ago, on this day in 1873 AD, some 153 African-Americans were cold-bloodedly massacred at Colfax, Grant Parish, Lousiana, by white Democrats, and the bodies thrown into the river. It was preceded since 1870 by systematic killings of scores of black people by the racist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi to deny them voting rights.

107 solar years ago, on this day in 1909 AD, the Turkish military reversed the Ottoman countercoup of March 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and replace him with his brother, Mohammad V. The countercoup was an attempt to dismantle the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire and replace it with autocracy. Abdul Hamid’s bid for return to power gained traction when he promised to restore the caliphate, eliminate secular policies, and revive the sharia-based legal system. A military coup in June 1908, led by the so-called Young Turks, had stripped Abdul Hamid II of his power, reconstituting the parliament and constitution he had suspended three decades earlier. The Sultan, however, had maintained his symbolic position, and in March 1909 attempted to seize power once more by stirring populist sentiment throughout the Empire. Because the coup was an attempt to undermine the Young Turks, it became known as the Countercoup, which was largely made possible by the Ottoman Empire's gradual disintegration, especially the loss of Bulgaria to complete independence within a year of the Young Turk Revolution. The failure of the Countercoup, however, brought the Committee of Union and Progress back from disarray, ending Arab-Turkish solidarity, closing Arabic journals and outlawing societies, such as the Arab-Ottoman Brotherhood. The Committee of Union and Progress, which was dominated by some influential Jews, made a major mistake in calling for "Turkification" of all the Arab subjects of the Empire. This stirred nationalist sentiments and moves for independence by the Arab population, making Britain skillfully exploit inter-Muslim differences to defeat the Ottomans in World War I.

97 solar years ago, on this day in 1919 AD, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in Amritsar in Punjab, India, when British troops massacred in cold blood hundreds of unarmed demonstrators and injured over a thousand others. The perpetrator of the massacre was Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who on hearing that a crowd of 15,000 to 20,000 people had assembled at the Jallianwala Bagh, placed his riflemen on a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at the crowd that included men, women, and children. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 killed.

50 solar years ago, on this day in 1966 AD, Iraqi President, Colonel Abdus-Salaam Aref, was killed in an air crash, while returning to Baghdad from Basra, after a blasphemous attempt during a public address to ridicule the famous censuring of the rebellious people of Basra by the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), following the historical Battle of Jamal. On hearing the president's speech on radio the people of Iraq were greatly saddened at his ridiculing of the Imam's statements. In holy Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakeem, went to the holy shrine of Imam Ali (AS) and clinging to the metal enclosure wept bitterly and prayed fervently, before leaving the place in a state of profound grief. No sooner had he left the shrine, when the radio cut its regular broadcasts to announce the death of the Iraqi president in air crash. Abdus-Salaam Aref had seized power in 1963, in a coup with the help of the Ba’thists, against President General Abdul-Karim Qassem, who was killed.

41 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, the brutal killing of 26 Palestinians in Lebanon by the Israeli-backed Phalangist Christian militia, set off the 15-year Lebanese Civil War in which Israel, France, and the US were all brutally involved and indulged in unprintable atrocities.

32 solar years ago, on this day in 1984 AD, India moved into the Siachen Glacier to annex more territory from the Line of Control that determined the border with Pakistan, thus bringing swift response from the latter. The Siachen Glacier is located in the eastern Karakoram Range in the Himalaya Mountains and is the world’s highest battleground. It lies immediately south of the great watershed that separates the Eurasian Plate from the Subcontinent in the extensively glaciated portion of the Karakoram, called the "Third Pole" (after the North and South Poles). The borders of China also meet here. Both India and Pakistan maintain a permanent military presence in the region at an altitude of over 6,000 meters above sea level. Between 1984 and 1999, frequent skirmishes took place between the two countries. However, more soldiers have died in Siachen from harsh weather conditions than from combat. The conflict has damaged the ecology of the glacier which is fast melting, mainly because of chemical blasting, done for constructing camps and posts, and laying of oil pipelines by India to supply kerosene and aviation fuel to its soldiers in this remote and uninhabited place.

13 solar years ago, on this day in 2003 AD, following the fall of Saddam and the American occupation of their country, the people of Iraq staged the first public demonstrations after three decades of suffocating Ba’th minority rule, calling for establishment of Islamic government amid vociferous cries of “Allah-o Akbar” (Allah is Greatest) and “la ilaha il-Allah” (there is no god but Allah). The huge rally called for end of occupation, holding placards and chanting such slogans as “No to the US & Israel”, and Bush & Saddam are Alike”.

Farvardin 25 is commemorated every year in the Islamic Republic of Iran as National Day for the acclaimed Persian poet and mystic, Farid od-Din Attar Naishapuri, who was killed during the Mongol massacre of the inhabitants of the city of Naishapur sometime in April 1221, at the age of 76. The son of a pharmacist, he followed his father's profession and led a prosperous life before experiencing an inner revolution that made him turn to mysticism and frequent travels that took him to Iraq and Arabia including holy Mecca, as well as to the different cities of Iran and Transoxiana. One of his valuable prose works is “Tazkerat al-Awlia” on the status of mystics. His poetical masterpieces manifest the power of imagination as is evident by the versified book (Discourse of the Birds). He composed several volumes of poetry. Attar, who in some of his poems also pays tribute to the peerless personality of Imam Ali (AS), had a profound influence on the great Persian poet, Mowlana Jalal od-Din Balkhi Roumi.

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