Today is Saturday; 28th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1395 solar hijri; corresponding to 8th of the Islamic month of Rajab 1437 lunar hijri; and April 16, 2016, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

3473 solar years ago, on this day in 1457 BC the Battle of Megiddo between Pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, occurred in Palestine. It is believed to be the first battle recorded in relative detail. This battle is also the first recorded use of the composite bow and the first body count. All details come from Egyptian sources—primarily the hieroglyphic writings on the Hall of Annals in the Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, Thebes (now Luxor), by the military scribe Tjaneni. The ancient Egyptian account gives the date of the battle as the 21st day of the first month of the third season of Year 23 of the reign of Thutmose III. It has been claimed that this was April 16, 1457 BC according to the Middle Chronology, although other sources place the battle in 1482 BC or 1479 BC. The Battle of Megiddo was an Egyptian victory and resulted in the rout of the Canaanite forces. Tell Megiddo or Har Megiddo, as it is called in Hebrew, was corrupted to “Armageddon” in the Greek translation of the Bible, and is associated with some crucial battles in history. It is supposed to be the site (although its authentication is open to doubt), of the last battle in the end times between the forces of good and evil. Of the two other crucial battles that took place in Megiddo, is the one fought in 609 BC between the Egyptians and the Israelites, in which Pharaoh Necho II while leading his army to fight the Babylonians in Syria, defeated the Kingdom of Judah and killed King Josiah, as recorded in the Old Testament. The last and the best-known Battle of Megiddo was in 1918 during the closing months of World War I when a British force made up of soldiers of different lands including Arabs and Indian Muslims, and led by General Edmund Allenby defeated the Ottoman Turks to seize control of Palestine.

2481 solar years ago, on this day in 465 BC, Ardashir I or Artaxerxes I Longimanus, as the Greeks called him, formally declared Takht-e Jamshid as capital of the Achaemenian Empire. Founded half-a-century earlier in 515 by his grandfather, Darius I, in the Persian heartland as the ceremonial capital of the empire, it was named Parsa or “City of the Persians”, which in Greek means Persepolis. In the same decree Artaxerxes Longimanus specified that Susa or Shush will continue to remain the administrative capital of the Persian Empire and in the summer because of the intense heat of the region, the administrative apparatus would move to Hamedan in the north which has a milder climate. For this reason, ancient Greek historians have mentioned three capitals for the Achaemenian Empire that for 220 years spanned what is now West Asia-Egypt-Southeastern Europe as the world’s first-ever superpower, until its defeat by Alexander of Macedonia, who went on to destroy Persepolis, whose ruins are situated 70 km north of Shiraz.

638 solar years ago, on this day in 1378 AD, Mujahid Shah, the 3rd ruler of the Bahmani Sultanate of the Deccan (southern India) was assassinated at the age of 22 in his capital Gulbarga after a rule of only three years, by his jealous uncle, Daud Shah, who in turn was killed a month later on the orders of his niece Rouh Parwar Agha (sister of the deceased Mujahid Shah) and replaced by her younger brother, Mohammad Shah II. The court language of the Bahmanis, who traced their origin to the pre-Islamic Iranian hero Bahman, was Persian, and they promoted Iranian culture, art and architecture.

404 lunar years ago, on this day in 1033 AH, the renowned theologian and hadith scholar, Shaikh Abu Ja’far Mohammad ibn al-Hassan ibn Ali ibn al-Hussain al-Ameli al-Mashghari, popularly known as al-Horr al-Ameli, was born in the village of Mashghara in the Jabal Amel region of southern Lebanon. His early education began with a family of teachers that included his father, his paternal uncle, his maternal grandfather Shaikh Abdus-Salaam ibn Mohammad, and one of his father's maternal uncles, Shaikh Ali ibn Mahmoud. He also studied under Hussain ibn Hassan ibn Yunus Zaher and Hassan ibn Zain od-Din Ameli, who was the great-grandson of the Second Martyr. Husain Zaher was the first to give him the ijaza or permission to teach and transmit hadith. He remained for the first forty years of his life in his homeland, performing the Hajj to Mecca twice and pilgrimage to the holy shrines in Iraq. He eventually journeyed to Mashhad, Iran, and settled there for the rest of his life as Shaikh al-Islam at the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS), the 8th Infallible Successor of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Before arriving in Mashhad he stayed for a while in the Safavid capital, Isfahan, where he became acquainted with the famous Allamah Mohammad Baqer Majlisi. The meeting between these two scholars left an impression on both of them and Majlisi introduced Horr al-Amili to the Safavid Emperor, Shah Sulaiman. He passed away in Mashhad at the age of 81 and was laid to rest in one of the portals of the holy shrine, where his grave is still the site of pilgrimage. He wrote numerous books including “Wasa'el ash-Shia”, which is a vast but concise compilation and classification of Hadith that took him 18 years to complete. Among his other famous works is “al-Jawaher as-saniya fi'l-Ahadith al-Qudsiya”, and “Amal al-Amel fi Ulama Jabal al-Amel”, which is a biographical dictionary of Shi'ite Muslim scholars who originated from the Jabal Amel region.

284 solar years ago, on this day in 1732 AD, Shah Tahmasp II, the 10th and the last ruler of the Safavid Empire of Iran, was deposed and replaced by his infant son, Abbas III, by his powerful general, Nader Quli Khan Afshar, who four years later would dethrone the boy and crown himself Nader Shah. Tahmasp, who ruled for ten years, was the 3rd and only surviving son of Shah Sultan Hussain Safavi, having escaped the capital Isfahan on its fall and the surrender of his father to the Afghan rebels led by Mahmoud Ghilzai Hotaki. On reaching Tabriz in 1722, he established a government with the support of both the Sunni Muslims of the Caucasus and the Shi’ite Qizilbash tribes, while the rest of Iran was under occupation. Tahmasp also gained the recognition of the Ottoman Empire and Czarist Russia – each uncomfortable with the seizure of Iran by the Afghan rebels, despite their exploiting of the situation to seize Iranian territory in the west and northwest respectively. The Mughal Grand Vizier, Nizam ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, also acknowledged support for Shah Tahmasp II and urged Emperor Mohammad Shah to help the Safavids against the Pashtun rebels by recalling the favours of Shah Tahmasp I some two centuries earlier to Humayun Shah to regain the throne of Delhi after he lost it to the Afghan adventurer, Sher Shah Suri. By 1729 Tahmasp II managed to liberate most of Iran (from the Afghans, Ottomans and Russia), mainly due to the victories of his general, Nader, while eleven of his brothers were murdered on a single day (Feb 8, 1925) in Isfahan by Mahmoud Hotaki. In 1740, after 8 years in prison in Sabzevar, he was murdered at the age of 36, along with his deposed son, Abbas III, by Reza Qoli Mirza, the eldest son of Nader Shah on the fear that the Iranian people, who greatly loved the Safavids, would rise up and restore them to the throne. The Safavids, who ruled Iran and parts of Iraq, Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bahrain, for two centuries and two score years, left a lasting legacy in religion, national identity, Persian culture, art, architecture, carpet-weaving and state affairs, that survives till this day.

246 lunar years ago, on this day in 1191 AH, the prominent Islamic scholar, Seyyed Hussain son of Seyyed Ja’far Khwansari, passed away. He groomed numerous students; some of whom became the leading ulema of their day, such as Allamah Bahr al-Oloum. He has left behind numerous books including commentaries on the Ziyarat Ashura of Imam Husain (AS) and the famous supplication of the month of Ramadhan, known as Dua Abu Hamza Thumali that was taught by Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) to his disciple of the same name.

172 solar years ago, on this day in 1844 AD, the French author and poet, Anatole France, was born in Paris. He has left behind numerous works. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1914 and died in 1924.

166 solar years ago, on this day in 1850 AD, Marie Tussaud, French-English sculptor, who founded the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London, died. Born as Marie Grosholtz in 1760 in Strasbourg, France in a German family, on the death of her father, her widowed mother shifted with her 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. Today the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum is a major tourist attraction of London.

157 solar years ago, on this day in 1859 AD, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville died in Cannes at the age of 54. His collected writings filled 17 volumes and included "Democracy in America" and "The Old Regime and the French Revolution".

127 solar years ago, on this day in 1889 AD, the British comedian and filmmaker, Charles Spencer Chaplin, known as Charlie Chaplin, was born in London. He appeared on stage in childhood and went to the US to work in films. Due to making critical films and expressing sympathy with the poor and needy, he faced a number of restrictions imposed by the US government. In 1952 he was deported from the US and settled in Switzerland, from where he always criticized the corrupt Western cinema. In general, his films, which are black-and-white comedies, ridicule the unequal social relations in the West. His most famous films include “The Gold Rush”; “City Lights”; and “The Great Dictator”. The last named was his first sound film comedy on German Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.

109 lunar years ago, on this day in 1328 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Abdullah Behbahani, who was a leading religious figure of the Constitutional Movement, was martyred by terrorists at the age of 68. Born in holy Najaf, in Iraq, to Seyyed Ismail Mojtahed Behbahani, he completed his education there under such senior ulema as Ayatollah Sheikh Morteza Ansari, and Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi – famous for fatwa against tobacco consumption. At the age of 35, after attaining the status of ijtehad, he came to Iran and involved himself in the struggle against the despotic rule of the Qajarid Dynasty, along with Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Sadeq Tabatabai. He played a pivotal role in the victory of the Constitutional Revolution, making utmost efforts to this end, which led to his martyrdom.

69 solar years ago, on this day in 1947 AD, US presidential advisor, Bernard Baruch, coined the term "Cold War" to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although, at the end of World War II, English author George Orwell used “cold war”, as a general term, in his essay “You and the Atomic Bomb”, published October 19, 1945, in the British newspaper Tribune, the first use of this term in the political context was by Baruch in South Carolina, during a speech in which he said: “Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war.” Newspaper reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency, with the book titled “The Cold War”. The Cold War ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

68 solar years ago, on this day in 1948 AD, terrorist outfits set up by the illegal Zionist migrants to Palestine, martyred 90 Palestinians and injured hundreds of others, while the British forces were evacuating this Muslim land by mischievously giving its control to the Zionists to set up the illegal entity called Israel. The result of these coordinated measures by the British and Zionists against Palestinians was the mass murder of a large number of Muslims and their homelessness that culminated in the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland and the illegitimate birth of Israel on May 14, 1948.

28 solar years ago, on this day in 1988 AD, Palestinian activist Abu Jihad Khalil al-Wazir, one of the founders of the Fatah Movement, was murdered by Israeli assassins in Tunisia at the age of 53. They left the chief strategist of the Palestinian Liberation Organization with 170 bullets in his body. When Palestinians reacted angrily in their usurped homeland, at least 14 were shot and killed by Israeli troops in Gaza and West Bank. In 2012 Israel admitted it killed Abu Jihad.

19 solar years ago, on this day in 1997 AD, the explosion of a gas capsule led to a massive fire in Mena, 10 km from the holy city of Mecca, resulting in the death of 343 Hajj pilgrims and injury to 1290 others. Some 70,000 tents were burnt. This incident was the second major fire in Mena after the fire of December 1975 which killed thousands of Hajj pilgrims and scorched several thousand others. Such deadly incidents have led to setting up of fire-proof tents in Mena.

15 solar years ago, on this day in 2001 AD, India and Bangladesh began a five-day border conflict, but were unable to resolve the disputes about their unmarked international border.

14 solar years ago, on this day in 2002 AD, the Dutch government resigned in response to a damning report on the 1995 slaying of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslims by Serbs in Srebrenica, who were under the ostensible protection of Dutch troops.

5 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime of Bahrain detained human rights lawyer Mohammed at-Tajer, and at least two doctors as part of a crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in the Persian Gulf island state, which is in the throes of a popular uprising to end dictatorial rule. Tareq al-Fursani, a gold medalist in several Asian championships, was also arrested this day at his home in a village east of the capital Manama.

AS/ME