Today is Monday; 21st of the Iranian month of Aban 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 4th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1440 lunar hijri; and November 12, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1440 lunar years ago, on the eve of this day, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), who had sought refuge in the Cave of Thaur on the outskirts of Mecca from the evil of the Arab infidels, during his historic migration, as per God's commandments, continued his journey towards Yathreb, which would eventually become famous as “Medinat-an-Nabi” (City of the Prophet), or simply Medina. The Almighty had saved His Last Messenger from the plot of the polytheists to murder him, by commanding him to instruct his dear cousin, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) to sleep on his bed, so that he could migrate undetected. The selfless act of Imam Ali (AS) in risking his life and limbs brought divine rewards in the form of revelation of ayah 207 of Surah al-Baqarah. With the Prophet's arrival in Medina, Islam entered the decisive phase of its universal mission to enlighten all mankind.

289 solar years ago, on this day in 1729 AD, French navigator and scientist, Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born in Paris. He was also a man of action who fought in the Seven Years War and explored the Pacific Ocean. Accompanied by naturalists and astronomers, he made a voyage around the world from 1767 to 1769. He visited many of the islands of the South Pacific and compiling a scientific record of his findings. The largest of the Solomon Islands is named after him, as is the colourful tropical climbing plant bougainvillea. He died on 31^st August 1811 at the age 81.

254 lunar years ago, on this day in 1186 AH, the scholar Shaykh Yusuf ibn Ahmad al-Bahrani passed away in the holy city of Karbala, in Iraq at the age of 79 and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Imam Husain (AS). Born in Safavid-ruled Bahrain in the Persian Gulf where he studied in Diraz, at the age of 22, he witnessed the seizure of Bahrain by Oman because of the declining status of Iran. He has written a lively account of these events, including the great sum of money Shah Sultan Hussain Safavi paid to the ruler of Oman to take back Bahrain, but soon lost it to local tribes, before being overthrown himself by Afghan rebels. The deteriorating conditions forced Shaykh Yusuf al-Bahrani to flee his homeland; first to Qatif on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, thence to Mecca and then Iran, before he settled in Karbala towards the end of his fruitful life. In 1140 AH when the Iranians led by Nader Shah were liberating Iran from the Afghan rebels (and eventually went on to liberate Bahrain), Shaykh Yusuf al-Bahrani moved to Kerman and soon shifted to Shiraz, where he found good opportunity to engage in teaching and writing books, while attending the classes of Shaykh Abdullah Biladi al-Bahrani. In 1157 AH, due to cholera outbreak in Shiraz, he moved to Fasa, where he continued his research activities while engaged in farming to make a living. In 1165 AH, the city was plundered and al-Bahrani's books and properties were lost. He moved to Istahbanat and finally immigrated to Karbala, where he lived until his death. Shaykh Yusuf al-Bahrani groomed several renowned scholars such as Mullah Mahdi Naraqi (author of “Jame’ as-Sa’dat”), Allamah Bahr al-Uloum, and Mirza Abu’l-Qassim “Muhaqqiq” Qomi (author of the jurisprudential work “al-Qawanin al-Muhkama fi’l-Usoul”). He was a prolific writer himself and authored several books such as the biographical work on scholars titled "Lu'lu'at al-Bahrain" (Pearls of Bahrain – the last chapter of which is his autobiography), and "al-Hada'eq an-Nazerah" in several volumes on hadith and the unrivalled merits of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and the Infallible Imams. A follower of the Usouli school in his youth, he later adopted Akhbari ideas, but accepted the validity of the Friday Prayer during the occultation of the Imam of the Age, and did not go so far as to say that no ayah of the holy Qur'an could be understood without interpretation of the Infallible Imams. He sought to bridge the gap between the two schools and famously debated in Karbala with the Usouli scholar Wahid Behbahani, whom he willed should perform the funeral prayer for him. He authored a total of 32 works including "Anees al-Musafer wa Jalees al-Khawater".

252 solar years ago, on this day in 1766 AD, British colonialists led by Colonel Calliaud, imposed a treaty on Nizam Ali Khan Asaf Jah II of Haiderabad-Deccan, to occupy the districts of Elur, Chikakol, Guntur, Rajahmundry, and Muzaffarnagar on the Bay of Bengal coast, thus depriving India’s premier Muslim kingdom of access to international waters. The dubious treaty in order to involve Indian Muslim states in internecine warfare, allowed Nizam Ali Khan to attack Bangalore which was under the rule of Haider Ali Khan of Mysore. Until 1823, the Asaf Jahi dynasty actively claimed this region (known today as Andhra), which, along with Rayalseema had come under Muslim rule in 1471 during the eastward expansion of the Bahmani Empire of Iranian origin, and was later part of the Qotb-Shahi kingdom – also of Iranian origin.

178 solar years ago, on this day in 1840 AD, the acclaimed sculptor, Auguste Rodin, was born in Paris. In the following years, he created beautiful masterpieces, gaining fame as a major sculptor. He died in 1917.

125 solar years ago, on this day in 1893 AD, the treaty of the Durand Line delineating the border between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan was signed by Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in British India, and the Afghan Amir Abdur-Rahman Khan. The Durand Line has gained international recognition as an international border between the two nations, although the Pashtun tribes inhabiting either side of the border, dispute it as a colonialist design to divide them.

122 solar years ago, on this day in 1896 AD, Indian ornithologist, Saleem Moiz od-Din Abdul Ali, popularly called the “Birdman of India,” for his conservation of India's biological diversity, was born in Bombay in a family of Ismaili Shi'ite Muslims. His love of birds began at age 10, when he started writing his observations. Eventually, he undertook professional education in ornithology. In 1930 he began a bird survey of the semi-independent state of Hyderabad-Deccan. By 1976, he had published several popular regional field guides of Indian birds for which he is famous. These surveys were based on extensive travels throughout India and Pakistan. The title of his autobiography “The Fall of a Sparrow” recalls the first sparrow that drew his interest as a boy. He died in 1987 at the age of 91.

121 solar years ago, on this day in 1897 AD, the Iranian poet, Ali Esfandiari, known by his penname of Nima Youshij, was born in the village of Yoush in Mazandaran Province, northern Iran. He later took up residence in Tehran, and learned French and Arabic. Upon the encouragement of one of his lecturers, he started composing modern poetry. He passed away in 1959 at the age of 62.

110 solar years ago, on this day in 1908 AD, Bulgaria, which was separated from the Ottoman Turkish Empire by the Russians and Europeans, thirty years earlier in 1878, was declared fully independent after over five centuries of Muslim rule. After World War II, Bulgaria became a socialist satellite state of the Soviet Union, and carried out a systematic persecution of its large Muslim population. After the end of communism, it adopted a capitalist system and became part of the European Union. Bulgaria covers an area of 111000 sq km in the Balkan region, in southeastern Europe. It shares borders with Romania, Serbia, Greece, Macedonia, and Turkey. Its capital is Sofia.

110 lunar years ago, on this day in 1330 AH, the combatant Iranian religious leader, Mirza Ali Aqa Siqqat-ol-Islam Tabrizi, was martyred by the invading Russian forces. He played an important role in Tabriz, as an activist of the Constitutional Revolution. He resolutely struggled against the occupation of parts of northwestern Iran in the Caucasus by Czarist Russia, while guiding and leading people to this end. The Russians, who considered him an opponent, kidnapped and martyred him.

104 solar years ago, on this day in 1914 AD, during Frist World War, following fatwa issued by senior Ayatollahs of the holy Najaf seminary, Iraq’s oppressed Shi’a Muslim majority was mobilised for defence of the country against the British invasion forces. The Ottomans, who controlled Iraq, though incompetent to protect the country from the British, instead of supporting the popular forces, attacked and dispersed them. As a result, the British Indian army, finding no resistance to its advance from Basra, easily defeated the Ottoman Turks and drove them out of Iraq. Throughout its three-and-a-half-century long occupation of Iraq, the Ottoman Empire oppressed the Shi’a Arab majority, which always looked to Iran for support. The British occupiers also followed the same policy and by depriving the Iraqi majority of its rights, installed an imported king, Faisal of Hijaz, as ruler of Iraq. After overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, power was monopolized by several minority regimes, until the ouster of Saddam’s repressive Ba’thist rule by his own masters, the Americans. Thanks to the awareness of the ulema and mobilization of popular forces of the Iraqi majority, the US-Saudi plan to hold Iraq in thrall through so-called ‘nationalist-secularist’ elements, and then Takfiri terrorists, has been soundly defeated.

100 solar years ago, on this day in 1918 AD, Austria was declared a republic, following the defeat and collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I.

71 lunar years ago, on this day in 1369 AH, senior Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Mirza Mohammad Ali Shahabadi, passed away in Tehran at the age of 77. He was an accomplished scholar in the field of philosophy and Gnosticism and groomed numerous students at the Qom Seminary. Among his prominent students was the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). Ayatollah Shahabadi wrote a large number of books and treatises including "al-Insaan wa’l-Khateraat".

62 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, Zionist troops committed a massacre at the Palestinian refugee camp in the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. The slaughter continued for several days even after announcement of ceasefire in the war Israel had imposed on Egypt in league with Britain and France. Some 110 Palestinian women, men, and children were martyred and almost 1,000 others injured.

62 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, the largest iceberg on record was sighted by the USS Glacier, a Navy icebreaker, about 150 miles west of Scott Island in the Southern Hemisphere. It had broken from the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. Its size was about the size of Belgium – that is, 335 km long and 96 km wide. This record iceberg was many times larger than any seen in the Northern Hemisphere, where the largest iceberg on record was encountered near Baffin Island in 1882.

52 solar years ago, on this day in 1966 AD, famous Iraqi eulogy-elegy reciter, Basim Karbalai was born in the holy city of Karbala, where he where he lived until the age of 14, actively participating in mourning processions for Imam Husain (AS), before moving to Isfahan because of Saddam’s repressive rule. In the Islamic Republic of Iran he learned to memorize and recite the holy Qur’an in the proper manner which helped soften and improve his voice. After the fall of the tyrannical Ba’th minority regime, he returned to his hometown Karbala. He has recited thousands of elegies and eulogies regarding Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and the Blessed Ahl al-Bayt. Besides Iran and Iraq, he has been invited to recite in gatherings in Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Arabia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Britain.

49 solar years ago, on this day in 1969 AD, Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s 1st President died in London at the age of 70. In 1958 he was deposed in a bloodless coup by General Ayub Khan, who was his own appointee as martial law enforcer 20 days earlier. Iskander Mirza belonged to the ruling family of Iranian origin of Murshidabad in Bengal. His body was brought to Iran and buried in the mausoleum of Seyyed Abdul-Azim al-Hassani in Rayy, near Tehran.

49 solar years ago, on this day in 1969 AD, during the Vietnam War, independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai Massacre, over a year and a half after it was carried out. Of the 22 cowardly US soldiers involved in sadistic savagery at My Lai village on 16^th March 1968, only Lt. William Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the cold-blooded killing of 109 Vietnamese men, women and children, including infants. Some of the bodies were later found to be mutilated and many women raped prior to the killings. The massacre prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in 1969. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Three US servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by several US Congressmen as traitors in an attempt to cover up the massacre. They received hate mail and death threats. The three were later widely praised and decorated by the army for their heroic actions. As for the chief culprit William Calley, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest before being released, which shows the highly flawed nature of justice in the US.

48 solar years ago, on this day in 1970 AD, the Bhola cyclone, the deadliest tropical cyclone in history, made a landfall on the coast of East Pakistan or what is now Bangladesh, claiming the lives of at least half-a-million people, primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded much of the low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta.

45 solar years ago, on this day in 1973 AD, Iranian scholar Reza Rouzbeh passed away at the age of 52 due to cancer as a result of radioactive effects of chemical experiments in laboratory. Born in Zanjan, after completing religious studies in jurisprudence, logics, and philosophy, he enrolled at the university and graduated in physics. He started his profession as a teacher but refused to teach at the university, and established an Islamic school for grooming youngsters. He authored several books, including “Proofs of Cognition of God”, “Vilayat” or divinely-decreed authority of the Infallible Imams, and “Arabic Simplified”.

22 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collided in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349 people, in the deadliest mid-air collision to date.

10 solar years ago, on this day in 2008 AD, Iran successfully test-fired the Sejjil, a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missile using solid fuel, making them more accurate than its predecessors. It has a range of about 2,000 km.

7 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, a blast at Iran's Martyr Modarres missile base in Bid-Kaneh on the outskirts of Tehran resulted in the death of 17 persons, including Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, the main architect of Iran’s deterrent missile system. An engineer by profession and senior military officer, as chief of the "self-sufficiency" unit of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), he designed the long-range Shahab, Qadr and Sejjil missiles.

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