Today is Sunday; 8th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Muharram 1440 lunar hijri; and September 30, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1379 lunar years ago, on this day in 61 AH, burial of the body of the Christian freedman Jown bin Huway, a former black Nubian slave of the Prophet’s loyal companion, Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, who was martyred in Karbala on the epic day of Ashura, in defence of Islam and Imam Husain (AS), took place. When Abu Dharr was exiled from Medina to the Rabadha desert by Othman ibn Affan, he went to the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb, who invited him to stay on as his companion. On the martyrdom of Imam Ali (AS) in 40 AH, Jown stayed with the Prophet’s elder grandson Imam Hasan (AS) and on the martyrdom of the latter in 50 AH, he joined Imam Husain (AS). When Imam Husain (AS) left Medina Jown insisted on accompanying him. At Karbala, Jown could always be seen at the side of Hussein. He was an old man, dark with gray curly hair. Because of his profound knowledge and pleasant manners he was greatly respected. On the night before Ashura, Imam Husain (AS) urged Jown to go away and seek safety, to which he replied: How is it fair that I benefit from your company and hospitality but abandon you in your hardship?

The next day, Jown helped repelled the first two attacks by the Omayyad hordes, and following the Afternoon Prayer, he charged into the battlefield, reciting the poem:

“I am a soul willing to die for Allah,

“And have a sword thirsty of the blood of His enemies

“Before I die I shall fight the enemies of Allah,

“With my sword and my tongue serve the Grandson of His Prophet.”

When he fell from his horse and was martyred by the cowardly enemies, the Imam rushed towards him and supplicated with the words: O God, have his face bright and his smell delightful; have him resurrected with the virtuous alongside Your Prophet and his progeny.

Jown’s black body that had miraculously turned white on his martyrdom, was identified after ten days and laid to rest by the Bani Assad tribesmen.

1281 solar years ago, on this day in 737 AD, the Battle of the Baggage occurred in Central Asia, resulting in a humiliating defeat of the Omayyads at the hands of the Turgesh Turks, supported by both Iranian and Arab Muslims of Transoxiana. It marked the culmination of a string of defeats that started over the past 16 years for the tyrannical Omayyad regime before the outbreak of the Abbasid movement that threw them into the dustbin of history. When the Omayyad governor of Khorasan, Asad Ibn Abdullah al-Qasri and his freshly arrived 20,000 Syrian troops tried to invade Khuttal in what is now eastern Tajikistan, the people requested the non-Muslim Turks and the Chinese for help, in addition to urging the local Muslim population of both Iranians and Arabs to rise up. The Turks led by Sulu attacked the Omayyads and as they tried to flee across the Oxus into what is now Afghanistan, they outpaced them to the river. The Omayyad army retreated in haste and managed to cross the Oxus, but the Turks crossed immediately after, seized the entire baggage and inflicted heavy casualties. The failure of the campaign meant the end of Omayyad control over all Transoxiana including Samarqand their last stronghold. The losses suffered by the Syrians were of grave consequences, as the Syrian army was the main pillar of the Omayyad regime, which neither had the support of other Arabs nor Iranian Muslims.

498 solar years ago, on this day in 1520 AD, Suleiman I succeeded his father Selim I as Ottoman Sultan and ruled till 1566, during which he seized Iraq from the Safavid Empire of Iran. Twice he tried to attack Iran, but the wise policies of Shah Tahmasp, coupled with stiff resistance by the Iranians foiled his ambitions, and he had to conclude a long term peace with the Safavids. In the west, his armies swept across Southwestern Europe and North Africa, and changed the Mediterranean Sea into a Turkish lake. Suleiman, in addition to his native Turkic, was a poet in Persian.

498 lunar years ago, on this day in 942 AH, the Spanish Christians led by King Charles V seized the Islamic city of Tunis on the North African coast from the Ottoman Turks and perpetrated a heinous massacre of at least 30,000 Muslims. The stench of the corpses was such that Spanish king soon left Tunis by placing Molay Hassan as a client ruler. The Spanish also took thousands of women and children as slaves, and set on fire tens of thousands of books and rare manuscripts.

477 solar years ago, on this day in 1541 AD, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces entered Tula territory in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance from the Amerindians, who were overpowered because of the superior firepower and brutality of the European invaders.

361 lunar years ago, on this day in 1079 AH (corresponding to 1669 AD), the Ottoman Empire defeated a coalition of European armies to take over Crete from the Republic of Venice. Crete, the 5th largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, was under Turkish rule for over two centuries till 1898, when it was seized by a joint British-French- Italian-Russian force, which in 1913 handed it to Greece at the end of the 2nd Balkans War with the Turks. Over half of Crete’s population was made up of local Cretan Muslims, many of whom were forcibly converted to Christianity and the rest expelled by the Greeks to Turkey, Syria, and Egypt by 1923. Among the Cretan Muslims, who spoke Greek as their mother tongue and not Turkish, there were many who followed the Bektashi Sufi order founded by Iranian mystic, Haji Bektash Vali of Naishapur, Khorasan, and were hence followers of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt. All the mosques and Tekiyes were either destroyed or turned into churches by the Greek Christians, who a century earlier had remove all traces of four centuries of Turkish Muslim rule from Greece. It is worth recalling that Islam was brought to Crete a thousand and two centuries ago by Spanish Muslims, who ruled this island as the Emirate of Ikritish for almost 150 years from their capital Rabdh al-Khandaq (modern Heraklion).

172 lunar years ago, on this day in 1268 AH, the highly efficient Prime Minister of Iran, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir, was dismissed from his post by Naser od-Din Shah Qajar, following court intrigues by local agents of foreign powers, on loss of their illegal interests, because of his political and administrative reforms. Rising from the lower rungs of the society through hard work, honesty, and voracious appetite for knowledge and 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 which taught medicine, surgery, pharmacology, natural history, mathematics, geology, and natural science to train the civilian and military staff, cancellation of the one-sided treaties with the Russians and the British, promotion of education, launching of a newspaper, and above all the timely crackdown on the seditious Babi-Bahai plot against Islam and the country, resulting in the execution of the heretic Mohammad Ali Bab. In the end, Amir Kabir was martyred in Kashan and with him died the prospects of an independent Iran led by meritocracy.

123 solar years ago, on this day in 1895 AD, Madagascar was proclaimed a French protectorate after much bloodshed. France invaded this island off the southeastern coast of Africa in 1883 in what became known as the first Franco-Hova War, at the end of which Madagascar was forced to cede the northern port town of Antsiranana (Diego Suarez) to the European invaders from France and pay 560,000 francs. In 1890, the British accepted the full formal imposition of a French protectorate on the island, but French authority was not acknowledged by the Madagascar government. To force capitulation, the French shelled and occupied the harbour of Toamasina on the east coast, and Mahajanga on the west coast, in December 1894 and January 1895 respectively. A French military column then MUSICed toward Antananarivo, losing many men to malaria and other diseases. Reinforcements came from Sub-Saharan Africa and upon reaching the city in September 1895, the column bombarded the royal palace with artillery, causing heavy casualties and forcing Queen Ranavalona III to surrender. France dissolved the Merina monarchy and sent the royal family into exile on Réunion Island and to Algeria. A two-year resistance movement organized in response to the French capture of the royal palace was effectively put down at the end of 1897. There were several uprisings, one of which in 1947 led to the killing of almost 90,000 people by the French, who savagely attacked the independence-seekers and engaged in a variety of terror tactics designed to demoralize the population. The French carried out mass execution, torture, rape, torching of entire villages, collective punishment and other atrocities such as throwing live Malagasy prisoners out of airplane – called death flights. By August 1948, the majority of the nationalist leaders were killed or captured, and the Uprising was put down by December 1948. The violent repression of the nationalist uprising left deep scars in Malagasy society. A generation of the managerial class was wiped out, creating challenges for the country upon achieving independence in 1960. The majority of people are Malagasy, tracing their origin to Borneo in Southeast Asia. Muslims constitute over 10 percent of the population. The first Muslims to arrive were Arabs and Somalis in the 9^th century. The written history of Madagascar began with the Arabs, who established trading posts along the northwest coast by the 10^th century and introduced Islam and the Arabic script that was formally used to transcribe the Malagasy language in a form of writing known as Sorabe. Today the language is written in the Latin script imposed by the French and the majority of people are Christians. It is worth noting that over 90% of wildlife of Madagascar is found nowhere else on Earth.

80 solar years ago, on this day in 1938 AD, German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hosted a conference in Munich on the border dispute with Czechoslovakia, attended by Italian Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, French prime minister, Edouard Daladier, and British premier, Neville Chamberlain. The leaders of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union did not attend the meeting in which Britain and France gave permission to Hitler to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The events led to the start of World War 2 the following year.

80 solar years ago, on this day in 1938 AD, the League of Nations unanimously outlawed "intentional bombings of civilian populations". In practice, however, nothing changed for the aggressors, who continue to bomb and destroy civilians, as was the case of the criminal atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US. In the 1980s, with Washington’s support Saddam devastatingly bombed Iranian cities, as the UN looked the other way, and today, the US, on the pretext of targeting its own creation the Takfiri terrorists, is killing men, women, and children in Iraq and Syria, without due regard for international laws and conventions.

53 solar years ago, on this day in 1965 AD, the 30 September Movement attempted a coup against the Indonesian government, but was crushed by the General Suharto, resulting in a mass anti-communist purge, with over 500,000 people killed.

52 solar years ago, on this day in 1966 AD, Botswana in southern Africa, gained independence from Britain after over 8 decades of plundering of its resources. Landlocked Botswana shares borders with South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia.

33 solar years ago, on this day in 1985 AD, the seismologist inventor of Richter scale, Charles Richter, died in the US, at the age of 85. In the early 1930s, he developed with his German colleague, Beno Gutenberg, a scale for measuring earthquake intensity. The scale assigns numerical ratings to the energy released by earthquakes. Richter used a seismograph (an instrument generally consisting of a constantly unwinding roll of paper, anchored to a fixed place, and a pendulum or magnet suspended with a marking device above the roll) to record actual earth motion during an earthquake. The scale takes into account the instrument's distance from the epicenter. Gutenberg suggested that the scale be logarithmic so, for example, a quake of magnitude 7 would be ten times stronger than a 6.

32 solar years ago, on this day in 1986 AD, nuclear scientist, Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of the covert nuclear military activities of the illegal Zionist entity to the British media, was kidnapped in Rome, Italy, by the Israeli spying outfit, Mossad, in cooperation with the CIA, and taken to Israel. Vanunu, who had converted to Christianity from Judaism, spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. Released from prison in 2004, he became subject to a wide range of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been arrested several times for alleged violations of those restrictions, including giving interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. He says he suffered "cruel and barbaric treatment" at the hands of the Zionists while imprisoned, and suggests that his treatment would have been different if he were Jewish.

28 solar years ago, on this day in 1990 AD, Pakistani researcher, Siraj Munir, passed away. He strove for promotion of Persian language and introduction of Iran's prominent literary, cultural, and philosophical figures. He is considered as one of the founders of the Persian Language Association in Pakistan.

25 solar years ago, on this day in 1993 AD, an estimated 10,000 people were killed and another 30,000 injured when an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 6.0-to-6.4 struck the Latur-Osmanabad region in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra Province in the Deccan (southern India). Its epicenter was about 350 miles southwest of Jabalpur. Fifty-two villages were demolished in the intraplate earthquake. The Latur-Osmanabad regions, which has a 30 percent Muslim population, was part of the Bahmani and Adel Shahi sultanates of Iranian origin, before being annexed by the expanding Moghal Empire of northern India. In the early 18^th century it became part of the dominions of Nizam ul-Mulk Asef Jah of Haiderabad-Deccan, until its separation in 1960 and merger with Bombay Presidency, later renamed Maharashtra.

4 solar years ago, on this day in 2014 AD, Kashmiri religious scholar and politician, Mowlavi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, who was organizer of the Grand Ashura Procession, passed away in Srinagar at the age of 71. He had succeeded his father Mowlavi Mohammad Jawad Ansari as president of All Jammu and Kashmir Shi’a Muslim Association in 1962. He was a sitting member of the Jammu-Kashmir Legislative Assembly, and was earlier with the National Conference and Congress. He was thrice the target of assassination attempts. In June 2000 he barely escaped the explosion of a landmine while addressing a religious congregation. The blast killed twelve persons.

AS/SS