Today is Tuesday; 17th of the Iranian month of Mehr 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 29th of the Islamic month of Muharram 1440 lunar hijri; and October 9, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1379 lunar years ago, on this day in 61 AH, 19 days after the heartrending tragedy of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS), the captive children and womenfolk of the Household of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), along with the heads of martyrs, mounted on spear-points, were brought to Damascus, the capital of the Godless Yazid, the self-styled caliph of the Omayyad regime. The noble captives were made to stand at the city gates without any shade, until the bazaars and streets of Damascus were decorated to mock at the Prophet’s family.

1126 solar years ago, on this day in 892 AD, the renowned Iranian Sunni Muslim authority on hadith, Mohammad ibn Eisa Tirmizi, passed away. He was born and died in Bagh, near Tirmiz in Greater Khorasan (now in Uzbekistan). At the age of twenty, he travelled to Kufa, Basra and the Hijaz, in pursuit of knowledge. His teachers included Mohammad al-Bukhari, Muslim Naishaburi and Abu Dawoud Sijistani – all three of whom were renowned Iranian Sunni Muslim compilers of hadith.  Tirmizi, who became blind in the last two years of his life, is the author of the "al-Jame' as-Sahih", popularly called "Sunan at-Tirmizi", one of the six canonical hadith compilations of Sunni Muslims. He has included in his compendium authentic narrations on the unrivalled merits of the blessed household of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He has said the term Ahl al-Bayt as used by God in the holy Qur'an and by the Prophet in several hadith, is exclusive for Imam Ali (AS), Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA), Imam Hasan (AS) and Imam Husain (AS), and does not include the Prophet's wives, as some allege. Tirmizi's grave is in Sherobad, 60 km north of Tirmiz, where he is called Tirmiz Baba.

744 solar years ago, on this day in 1264 AD, the Spanish Muslim Ta’efa of Jerez (Sheresh in Arabic) in southern Spain, along with its capital of the same name, was occupied by Christian mercenaries of the kingdom of Castile after over five-and-a-half centuries of Muslim rule. In the 12th and 13th centuries Jerez underwent a period of great development, building its defense system and setting the current street layout of the old town.

537 lunar years ago, on this day in 903 AH, the Iranian historian, Mohammad bin Khwandshah, popularly known as Mirkhwand, passed away in Herat, which was then part of Khorasan and is now in present day Afghanistan. He was from a well-known Seyyed family of Bukhara that traced its descent to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Spending most of his life in Herat in the court of the last Timurid sultan, Hussain Bayqarah, Mirkhwand enjoyed the patronage of the renowned minister, Ali Shir Nava’i, a celebrated writer and poet himself. At the request of his patron, he wrote the general history titled "Rowzat os-Safa" (Garden of Purity). The work is composed of seven large volumes and a geographic appendix, sometimes considered an 8th volume. The history begins with the pre-Islamic Persian kings and surveys the major Muslim rulers of Iran up to his times. Mirkhwand’s maternal grandson, the historian Khwandamir, wrote a sequel to it, and in the 19th century the Iranian scholar Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat wrote a supplement to this work. Mirkhwand is often criticized for his highly embellished and bombastic style and for his uncritical approach to the sources, but his history preserves sections from earlier works that have since been lost. Volumes 5 and 6 are particularly reliable, for they utilize the abundant historiographical materials of the Mongol and Timurid periods and furnish independent information on events contemporary or near contemporary to the author’s lifetime.

424 solar years ago, on this 1594 AD, a 20,000-strong army of the Portuguese Empire was annihilated by the Kingdom of Kandy in Sri Lanka, bringing an end to the Campaign of Danture, and marking a turning point in the indigenous resistance to Portuguese colonialism. The Portuguese, led by Pedro Lopes de Sousa, invaded Kandy on 5 July 1594, and after three months, severely depleted by guerilla warfare, the Portuguese army was completely annihilated by the forces of King Vimaladharmasuriya. With this victory, the Kingdom of Kandy emerged as a major military power; it was to retain its independence until 1815, against Portuguese, Dutch, and British armies.

310 solar years ago, on this day in 1708 AD, Sweden was decisively defeated by Peter the Great at the Battle of Lesnaya in Belarus when it attacked Russia. Given the freezing weather and shortage of food, over half of the Swedish soldiers lost their lives.

278 solar years ago, on this day in 1740 AD, Dutch colonists and various slave-trading groups began massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.

258 solar years ago, on this day in 1760 AD, Austrian and Russian troops entered Berlin and began burning structures and looting during the “7-Year War” that involved most of the big powers of the time and affected Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines. The two major opponents were Britain and France. In the historiography of some countries, the war is named after combatants in its respective theatres: “The French and Indian War” in the United States. In French-speaking Canada, it is known as the “War of the Conquest”, while it is called the “Seven Years' War” in English-speaking Canada, the “Pomeranian War” (with Sweden and Prussia, 1757–1762), “Third Carnatic War” (in the Subcontinent, 1757–1763), and “Third Silesian War” (with Prussia and Austria, 1756–1763). “The Seven Years' War” is retrospectively regarded as one of the first true world wars, having taken place almost 160 years before what is commonly known as World War I.

80 lunar years ago, on this day in 1360 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, passed away. A product of the seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, on his return home, he was active in the northwestern parts of Iran. He groomed many scholars, including his son, Seyyed Mohammad Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, who was a Marja’ or Source of Emulation of his times.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1962 AD, Uganda gained independence after 74 years of British rule. Over 15 percent of the population of Uganda is Muslim. Situated in East Africa, the Republic of Uganda covers an area of almost 235,880 sq km and shares borders with Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its capital is Kampala.

54 solar years ago, on this day in 1964 AD, prominent Iranian researcher, writer and translator, Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim Ayati, passed away at the age of 50 in what was described as a road accident. Born near Birjand in Khorasan, he studied in holy Mashhad under prominent scholars, such as Adib Naishapuri, Shaikh Hashem Qazvini, and Shaikh Mojtaba Qazvini, and for a decade taught and preached in his hometown. He then enrolled at Tehran University, obtained PhD in philosophy and for years taught at the same university. As a conscious religious scholar, aware of the political conditions of the time, he became a close assistant of two of the prominent ulema of the era – Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Taleqani, and Ayatollah Shaikh Morteza Motahhari. Dr. Ayati, who played a key role in the monthly journal “Goftar”, has left behind valuable works, such as “A Probe into the History of Ashura”, and “History of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA)”. He also edited the exegesis of the holy Qur’an written by Sharif Lahiji, in addition to translating several books into Persian.   

52 solar years ago, on this day in 1966 AD, South Korean forces, operating under US command in South Vietnam, massacred hundreds of Vietnamese men, women and children, in two separate incidents in the regions of Dien Nien and Phuoc Binh. In Dien Nien, the massacre lasted two days and as many as 280 unarmed civilians were killed in cold blood in Tinh Son village of Quang Ngai Province. In Phuoc Binh hamlet, the victims of the massacre were mostly 180 children and elderly women who were butchered in a schoolyard. The South Koreans acted upon the orders of the US.

51 solar years ago, on this day in 1967 AD, prominent Latin American revolutionary, physician, author, and military theorist Ernesto Che Guevara of Argentina, was executed by the US-installed regime of Bolivia, along with many of his comrades at the age of 39. Born of mixed Basque and Irish descent in a well-to-do household, he learned chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by age 12. During adolescence and throughout his life he was passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, and Walt Whitman. He could also recite Rudyard Kipling's works and Jose Hernandez's from memory. The Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which made him a voracious reader interested in the works of Karl Marx, William Faulkner, Andre Gide, Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne. He also read the works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Vladimir Lenin, and Jean-Paul Sartre; as well as Anatole France, Friedrich Engels, H. G. Wells, and Robert Frost. He kept notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals, which included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas also fascinated him topics such as dreams and narcissism. As a medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was shocked by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the US prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified his political ideology. Following his meeting in Mexico with Cuban leader, Fidel Castro in the 1950s, the two teamed up to lead the Cuban revolution to victory in 1959 by overthrowing US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. He was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism, and monopoly capitalism. 1959, Castro sent Guevara on a three-month tour of 14 mostly Bandung Pact countries (Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Yugoslavia, Greece) and the cities of Singapore and Hong Kong. He also visited China, the Soviet Union, and Palestine. In 1965, Guevara left Cuba to plan revolution abroad, first in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia to form a guerrilla group to bring down US-installed regime. He was cornered by the CIA, imprisoned and executed

37 solar years ago, on this day in 1981 AD, Palestinian revolutionary Majed Abu-Sharaar was martyred in Italy by agents of the illegal Zionist entity. The usurper state of Israel pursues a policy of terrorism against Arabs and Muslims around the world in a vain bid to prolong its illegal existence on the soil of Palestine.

AS/SS