Today is Friday; 29th of the Iranian month of Tir 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 6th of the Islamic month of Zil-Qa’dah 1439 lunar hijri; and July 20, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

2374 solar years ago, on this day in 356 BC, Alexander, the Greek conqueror of the Persian Empire, was born in Macedonia to the local king, Philip and his wife Olympias. It seems that despite being tutored by the philosopher Aristotle, he did not acquire any humanitarian values. In 334 BC, two years after succeeding his father, he launched a raid on the western fringes of the Achaemenian Empire in what is now the Aegean Sea coast of Turkey. Because of the laxity of the Iranians, coupled with their pride in seriously confronting an upstart like him, he was able to sweep across the entire empire from Egypt till the Indus River in India. After destroying the Persian capital, Persepolis, and indulging in the massacres of the conquered peoples, he died in 323 in Babylon, in what is now Iraq, in the palace of the ancient tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar, at the age of 33, due to heavy drinking. His corpse, while on its way to Macedonia, was hijacked by General Ptolemy to Egypt.

1948 solar years ago, on this day in 70 AD, During the First Jewish-Roman War, the Roman army led by Titus, who later became emperor, reconquered Bayt al-Moqaddas, ending the 4-year Jewish occupation. The Roman sacked the city and destroyed the Second Jewish Temple. The destruction of both the First and Second temples is mourned annually as the Jewish fast Tisha B'av, while the Arch of Titus, celebrating the Roman sack of Jerusalem and the Temple, still stands in Rome. The Jews, who had deviated from the divine teachings, denying the mission of Prophet Jesus and desecrating the Grand Edifice built by Prophet Solomon for the worship of the One and Only God, had set up temples of their own in its place.

1371 solar years ago, on this day in 647 AD, Godless tyrant, Yazid was born out of wedlock to a morally-loose nomadic Arab Christian woman named Maysun bint Bajdal al-Kulaibi an-Nasrania, who was ravished and abandoned by the Omayyad governor of Syria Mu’awiyah ibn Abu Sufyan. He was suckled by several whores while growing up in the desert. Years later, after seizing the caliphate, Mu’awiyya, who had failed to produce any male issue from the women of his harem, suddenly remembered the illegitimate brat he had abandoned, brought him to Damascus as a young man, and after some years of training, named him successor on his deathbed in gross violation of the terms of the Treaty by which he had usurped rule of the Islamic realm from Imam Hasan Mojtaba (AS), the elder grandson of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). An infidel, who did not believe in any religion, although a crucifix used to dangle from his neck, Yazid was a drunkard and frequently asked his slaves to sodomize him. The first thing the libertine Yazid did was to demand allegiance to his ungodly and un-Islamic rule from the Prophet's younger grandson Imam Husain (AS), and when this was rejected he had the Imam mercilessly martyred in Karbala, along with 18 members of the Prophet's family, including the 6-month infant, Ali Asghar. The children and womenfolk of the Prophet's progeny were then dragged as captives to his court in Damascus. His second abominable crime was to attack the holy city of Medina in Zilhijja 63 AH after the infamous Battle of Harra in which 10,000 people were massacred, including hundreds of the Prophet's companions. Yazid's soldiers entered Medina, desecrated the Prophet's shrine, and were given permission to loot public property and rape women for three days – resulting in the birth of several thousand illegitimate children that year who are known in history as "Awlad-e Fitna" and said to be the ancestors of today’s Wahhabi heretics. Next Yazid ordered his forces to attack Mecca and storm the holy Ka'ba. Catapults were placed on mountains overlooking the “Masjid al-Haraam” (Sacred Mosque) to hurl blazing naphtha pots at Islam’s holiest sanctuary. The Symbolic House of God caught fire and was almost burnt to the ground when the attack was called off because of Yazid's sudden death in Damascus on 11 November 683. Yazid, who since the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS), suffered severe bouts of headache, collapsed in the state of drunkenness in the toilet and died. According to another account, divine wrath struck him while on a hunting trip, and only his charred leg was found in the stirrup of his horse with no trace of his body. Some 60 years later when the Abbasid caliph, Abu'l-Abbas as-Saffah, ordered opening of the graves of the Omayyad caliphs, including that of Mu'awiyah, and the burning of their bones, only a piece of a leg bone was found in Yazid's grave along with blackened dust resembling ashes after the body and skeleton has been burnt, which indicates divine punishment. Both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims consider Yazid an infidel.

6^th Zi’l-Qa’dah is commemorated every year in the Islamic Republic of Iran in honour of Seyyed Ahmad Ibn Musa, whose holy shrine is in the city of Shiraz and who is popularly known as “Shah Cheragh” (King of Lights), because of a miraculous incident. He was the second son of Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS) and the younger brother of Imam Reza (AS) – respectively the 7^th and 8^th Infallible Heirs of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Born in Medina, he was loyal to Imam Reza (AS) and along with his friends and followers, pledged allegiance to him as the rightful Imam on the martyrdom of his father. In 203 AH, he was on his way to Khorasan, along with some of his brothers, when news reached him in Shiraz of the martyrdom of Imam Reza (AS). Mamoun the self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime, who had martyred Imam Reza (AS) through a fatal dose of poison, ordered the governor of Fars to confront and kill Seyyed Ahmad and his entourage. A battle ensued and lasted for three days at the end of which the noble defenders were martyred. Seyyed Ahmad was buried in his armour in the public graveyard of Shiraz. Years later when this son of the 7^th Imam was almost forgotten, people began to see light emanating from the graveyard. When a scholar of repute was notified about the matter, he resolved to investigate it. One night he traced the light to a grave and the following morning gave permission for its exhumation. To the pleasant surprise of all those assembled at the site, the corpse that emerged was of bright visage, remarkably fresh, and clad in armour, with a ring on a finger of the right hand bearing the inscription “al-Izzatu-Lillah, Ahmad bin Musa” (All Dignity belongs to God – Ahmad son of Musa). In the 1130s AD, over two centuries after the martyrdom of this venerable figure, the Seljuqid Turkish vizier, Atabeg Abu Sa’eed Zangi, built the tomb chamber, the dome, and a colonnaded porch over the grave. Roughly 200 years later, Queen Tash Khatoun, the mother of the local Mongol Muslim ruler of Fars, Shah Abu Ishaq Inju, during the years 1344-1349 AD (745-750 AH), carried out repairs, built a hall of audience, a college, a tomb for herself on the southern side, and presented to the mausoleum a unique Qur'an written in golden Sols characters by the calligraphist, Yahya Jamali. This Qur'an is preserved in the Pars Museum. Shah Ismail I who established the Safavid Dynasty ordered expansion of the mausoleum of Shah Cheragh in 1506 AD. Later, the Qajarids embellished it. Today, thanks to the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, the shrine of Ahmad ibn Musa has been reconstructed on a grand scale to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims, and enclosed within its precincts is the shrine of another son of Imam Kazem (AS), named Seyyed Mohammad, who also has been endowed with miraculous powers by God Almighty to answer to the needs of the faithful.

1078 solar years ago, on this day in 940 AD, the famous Iranian Islamic calligrapher and vizier, Abu Ali Mohammad Ibn Ali Ibn Muqlah Shirazi, was torturously executed by the Abbasid regime in his hometown Baghdad at the age of 56. He is regarded as inventor of the "thuluth" script, the first cursive style of Arabic. By the age of 22 he was a scribe as well as holding two other important jobs. He was the vizier three times under the Abbasids in Baghdad. After years of fighting for causes he believed in, he was publicly disgraced and imprisoned. After four years of maltreatment, he was executed, with his tongue chopped off and right hand amputated by the executioners. Along with Ibn al-Bawwab and Yaqut al-Musta'simi, he is regarded as founder of the modern style. Among books written by him is “Risalah fi Ilm al-Khat wa'l-Qalam”.

906 lunar years ago, on this day in 533 AH, prominent Iranian Muslim theologian and mathematician, Abu'l-Hassan Sohrevardi, passed away. He was a polymath in sciences and was a student of the Iranian Sunni Muslim philosopher, Mohammad Ghazali. His famous book is on Algebra "Usoul al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabelah".

616 solar years ago, on this day in 1402 AD, Amir Timur inflicted a shattering defeat on the Ottomans in the Battle of Ankara and captured Sultan Bayezid I – the only instance when an Ottoman Sultan has been captured in person. The battle was the culmination of years of insulting letters exchanged between Bayezid, whose armies were sweeping across Europe, and Timur, whose empire stretched over most of the Muslim east. The defeat and the subsequent death of Bayezid in captivity in Samarqand, led to a period of crisis for the Ottoman Empire. However the Timurid Empire went into terminal decline following Timur's death just three years after the battle, while the Ottoman Empire made a full recovery, and continued to increase in power for another two to three centuries.

229 solar years ago, on this day in 1789 AD, Mahmoud II, the 30th Ottoman sultan was born in Istanbul as the posthumous son of Sultan Abdul Hamid I, three-and-a-half months after the latter’s death. His mother Naqshdil was the French heiress Aimee du Buc de Rivery – a cousin of Josephine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte – who was captured at sea by Barbary corsairs and ended up in the sultan’s harem in Istanbul. He replaced his step-brother Mustafa IV on the throne in 1808, and one of his commendable acts was to order the governor of Egypt, Mohammad Ali Pasha to liberate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from Wahhabi occupation and to punish the heretical Saudis for the blasphemous destruction of the sacred sites in Hijaz. By 1818, Ibrahim Ali Pasha sacked and destroyed the Saudi stronghold of Diriya in Najd and dispatched to Istanbul the Wahhabi chieftain, Abdullah bin Saud, who was promptly beheaded for crimes against Islam. During his 31-year rule, Mahmoud carried out administrative, fiscal and military reforms, including abolishment of the Jan-Nisari Corps. His armies were, however, routed in the Battle of Erzurum in 1821 by Iranian forces led by Qajarid Crown Prince, Abbas Mirza, as part of the Ottoman-Persian War of 1821-to-1823. A few years later in 1827, the combined British, French and Russian navies defeated the Ottoman Navy at the Battle of Navarino during the Greek rebellion, forcing him to recognize the independence of Greece with the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832. Two years earlier in 1830, with France’s occupation of the province of Algeria, the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire had started. Non-Turkish ethnic groups of empire, especially in Europe, started their bid for independence with the support of European powers. On his death in 1839, Mahmoud was succeeded by his son Abdul-Majid I.

208 solar years ago, on this day in 1810 AD, New Granada, made up of the South American states of Columbia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador, became independent of Spanish rule, following the occupation of Spain by French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. The revolutionaries were led by Camilo Torres. Although the Spanish forces initially defeated the revolutionaries, in 1819 Simon Bolivar crushed the Spanish to set up the Greater Colombia Federation, which later split into independent states. With the separation of Panama in 1903, Colombia took its current shape.

125 lunar years ago, on this day in 1314 AH, the famous Islamic philosopher and Gnostic, Mirza Abu’l-Hassan Jalweh, passed away at the age of 76. Born in Ahmadabad in the state of Gujarat in western India, he traced his lineal descent to Imam Hasan al-Mujtaba (AS), the elder grandson and 2^nd Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). As a child, he migrated to Iran and settled in Isfahan, where he had his basic education. At the age of 35 he moved to Tehran where for the next four decades he taught philosophy and mathematics at the Dar ush-Shefa seminary. He groomed a large number of scholars including Mirza Taher Tonekaboni, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Shahabadi, Seyyed Hussain Badkubaie, Mullah Mohammad Ameli, Jahangir Khan Qashqai, etc. He wrote several books, such as annotations on Ibn Sina’s “ash-Shefa”, and Mullah Sadra’s “Asfaar al-Arba”.

88 lunar years ago, on this day in 1351 AH, the jurisprudent and theologian, Mirza Sadeq Mujtahed Tabrizi, passed away at the age of 88. Born in Tabriz, northwestern Iran to the jurisprudent/theologian Allamah Mirza Mohammad Aqa, popular as “Mujtahed Kuchak”, left for Iraq at the age of 19, along with his elder brother for higher studies at the famous seminary of holy Najaf. He returned to Iran after 21 years on attaining the status of Ijtehad and settled in his hometown Tabriz, where he opposed the deviation of the Constitutional Movement as violation of the shari’ah. He was banished to the remote parts of the country by the British-installed Pahlavi dictator, Reza Khan. He authored some 12 books. 

81 solar years ago, on this day in 1937 AD, the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, died at the age of 63. He was the son of an Italian businessman and was born in France in 1874. He is credited with perfecting wireless sets.

67 solar years ago, on this day in 1951 AD, King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated by a Palestinian in Bayt al-Moqaddas, for the Arab defeat in the 1948 Israeli war, after a reign of 30 years over a pseudo country created by the British out of Greater Syria as a reward for the treason of his father, Sharif Hussain of Hejaz against the Ottoman Turks. Born in Mecca in 1882 into a family claiming Hashemite descent and ruling the two holy cities for several centuries as vassals of the regional empires before ouster by the Wahhabi brigands of Najd, he was succeeded by his son Talal, who was forced to abdicate a year later by his British masters in favour of his own teenaged son, Hussain (who died 1999), the father of the present king, Abdullah II.

58 solar years ago, on this day in 1960 AD, Prime Minister Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (presently Sri Lanka), became the world's first elected female head of government.

49 solar years ago, on this day in 1969 AD, Apollo XI astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, became the first men to walk on the moon, after their lunar module separated from the command module and landed on the lunar surface at 09:18 GMT, while Michael Collins orbited above. Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface at 10:56 and proclaimed, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Internationally, nearly 700 million television viewers witnessed the event live as it happened. Years later, while on a trip to Egypt, when Armstrong heard the “Adhaan” (Call to Prayer), he was astounded and admitted that this was exactly the tone he had heard on the moon, although he could not understand it then. The Moon is 384,000 km away from the Earth and orbits around our Planet every 29.5 days.

44 solar years ago, on this day in 1974 AD, Turkish forces landed on Cyprus on the invitation of local Turkish Muslim Cypriot leader, Raoof  Denktash, after a coup d’état by Greece to take over the entire island. Since then Cyprus is divided into the northern one-third controlled by Turks and the southern two-thirds controlled by the Greeks. UN measures for unity of this island state have remained inconclusive. Cyprus first came under Muslim rule in the latter half of the 7th century AD when Arabs from Syria entered it. Two centuries later it was re-occupied by the Greek Byzantine Empire. It fell to the Venetians in the 15th century, and in 1570 was formally taken over by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, whose rule lasted till 1914 and the beginning of World War 1, although in 1878 it was leased to the British.

16 solar years ago, on this day in 2002 AD, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of the capital Tehran condemning US President George Bush for his crimes against humanity and his wild accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Similar massive rallies were staged in other cities and towns of Iran. Vociferous chants of “Down with the US” and “Death to Bush” rent the air of Iran.

11 solar years ago, on this day in 2007 AD, in Sokoto and several other cities of Nigeria, Wahhabi mobs backed by the Saudi regime, burned down houses of the country’s Shi’a Muslims and assassinated a Lebanese businessman.

7 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, Iran shot down an unmanned US spy plane that was trying to gather information on the underground Fordo uranium enrichment site.

AS/ME