Today is Wednesday; 14th of the Iranian month of Azar 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 27th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1440 lunar hijri; and December 5, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

971 lunar years ago, on this day in 469 AH, the prominent historian of Muslim Spain, Abu Marwan Hayyan ibn Khalaf ibn Hussain al-Qortobi, passed away in his hometown, Qortoba – or Cordova as it is presently called. He was a prolific writer, and among his works are “al-Akhbar fi'd-Dowlat-al-Amiriya” in 100 volumes, “al-Batshat-al-Kubra” in ten volumes, and “al-Muqtabis fi Tarikh al-Andalus” in ten volumes.

741 lunar years ago, on this day in 699 AH, Mahmood Ghazaan Khan the Mongol Ilkhanid ruler of Iran and Iraq fought a battle in Syria with Nasser Qalawoun, the ruler of the Mamluk or Turkic Slave Dynasty of Egypt at Marj al-Morouj, east of Homs. The Mamluks were defeated and pushed back from Syria into Egypt. Ghazaan was the 7th ruler of the Ilkhanid dynasty and the first one to convert to Islam from Buddhism.

610 solar years ago, on this day in 1408 AD, the Muslim ruler, Amir Edigu of the Golden Horde reached Moscow and besieged it after capturing several Russian cities. Part of Moscow was burned and the siege was lifted on resumption of the annual tribute to the Tatars by the Russians, who had withheld it for several decades. Edigu gained fame as a highly successful general of Khan Tokhtamysh before turning the arms against him. By 1396, he was a sovereign ruler of a large area stretching between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, which would later be called the Nogai Horde. In 1397 he allied himself with Timur-Qutlugh and was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the Golden Horde armies. In 1399 he inflicted a crushing defeat on Tokhtamysh and the Christian king, Vytautas of Lithuania at the Vorskla River. In 1406 he located his old enemy Tokhtamysh in Siberia and had him killed through his agents. The following year he raided Volga Bulgaria. In 1408, he staged a triumphant Tatar invasion of Russia. Two years later Edigu was dethroned in the Golden Horde and had to seek refuge in Khwarezm. Shah Rukh, the son and successor of the fearsome Turkic conqueror, Amir Timur, expelled him back to Sarai, where he was assassinated by one of Tokhtamysh's sons in 1419. Edigu's dynasty in the Nogai Horde continued for about two centuries.

562 solar years ago, on this day in 1456 AD, a devastating earthquake struck Naples, Italy, resulting in the death of around 40,000 people.

348 solar years ago, on this day in 1670 AD, Sultan Abdullah Qotb Shah of the Iranian origin kingdom of Golkandah-Haiderabad in the Deccan (southern India), issued a farmaan to the Iranian Armenian merchant from Isfahan, Marcara Avanchintz, permitting the French to trade and build a factory in the port-city Machli Bandar on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Marcara had joined the service of King Louis XIV, and was appointed director of the newly founded French East India Company. Because of the common bond of Persian language, Marcara had established cordial relations with the Qotb Shahi Dynasty.

227 solar years ago, on this day in 1791 AD, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the famous Austrian pianist and composer, died at the young age of 35. Born in Salzburg, he spent the last ten years of his short life in Vienna. He composed several masterpieces. His famous operas include: "The Marriage of Figaro", and "The Magic Flute".

215 solar years ago, on this day 1803 AD, Russian poet and diplomat, Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, was born near Bryansk. He spent most of his childhood in Moscow, and is generally considered the last of three great Romantic poets of Russia, following Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.

206 solar years ago, on this day in 1812 AD, French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, after suffering a crushing defeat by Russia, returned crestfallen to Paris. He had launched his offensive on Russia on June 2 and advanced till Moscow, where for six months he met stiff resistance in freezing cold and was driven back, having lost 320,000 of the 350,000 French troops.

183 solar years ago, on this day in 1835 AD, the Iranian statesman and political figure, Mirza Abu’l-Qasem Qa’em Maqaam Farahani, was killed for carrying out political and administrative reforms that the colonialists and their local agents deemed against their interests. He served as regent to the young Mohammad Shah Qajar, and later as Grand Vizier. But within a year, due to the intrigues of John Campbell, the British representative in Iran, Farahani was arrested and subsequently murdered. He was kept for five or six days in a room in the basement of Negarestan without any food so that he would die when his strength diminishes. Eventually, the executioner, Safar Ismael Khan Qarajeh Daghi entered the basement and thrusting a handkerchief in his mouth, suffocated him. Farahani had mastered many sciences of the day in addition to literary techniques and initiated a new style in Persian prose. Among his works is a Divan of Persian poetry and the “Mansha’at” in prose.

148 solar years ago, on this day in 1870 AD, French author Alexandre Dumas died at the age of 68. He wrote numerous novels on the French Revolution and history based on the memoirs of his father, who was an army general. Among his books, mention can be made of “The Three Musketeers”, and “The Count of Monte Cristo”. He was also a playwright and has written a number of famous plays.

144 solar years ago, on this day in 1874 AD, Iran became member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was set up in Geneva, Switzerland on 17 February 1863. On 5 April 1922, the “Iran Red Cross Society” changed its name to “Red Lion and Sun Society of Iran”. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, its name was changed to the “Red Crescent Society”, which is headquartered in Tehran, and is among the top five relief agencies of the world.

124 solar years ago, on this day in 1894 AD, the famous Urdu poet of the Subcontinent, Shabbir Hassan Khan “Joush” was born in a Pashtun family in Malihabad, northern India. After mastering Urdu and English, he studied Arabic and Persian, and in 1925 began to supervise translation work at the famous Osmania University in the semi-independent state of Haiderabad-Deccan. Soon he founded the magazine “Kaleem” in which he openly wrote articles in favour of independence from Britain. As his reputation spread, he came to be called “Sha’er-e Inqelab” (Poet of the Revolution), and was a personal friend of India’s first prime minister, Jawaherlal Nehru. Over a decade after India’s independence, disillusioned with the declining status of Muslims and Urdu language in India, he migrated to Pakistan in 1958, and settled in Karachi where he joined “Anjuman-e Tarraqi-e-Urdu” for promotion of the Urdu language in Pakistan. He passed away in Islamabad on February 22, 1982. Joush Malihabadi has left behind valuable works in poetry and prose, including lengthy odes in praise of the Ahl al-Bayt, especially Imam Ali (AS) and Imam Husain (AS) – regarded as masterpieces of Urdu poetry.

117 solar years ago, on this day in 1901 AD, the famous American showman, animator and producer of children’s cinema and cartoons, Walt Disney, was born in Chicago in a family of Irish origin. He obtained a PhD in Arts from Harvard University and went on to create world famous cartoons such as Mickey Mouse, winning academy awards on several occasions. Disney had an aversion towards the racist ideology of Zionism. In view of this, pro-Israeli Jewish groups tried to accuse him of anti-Semitism, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Semites are Arabs and not the Jews of European origin, who are in fact ethnic Khazars – a Turkic people converted to Judaism and with no connection to the soil of Palestine, where the illegal entity Israel has been set up. He died in Burbank, California, in 1966.

66 solar years ago, on this day in 1952 AD, a dense cold fog descended upon London, combining with air pollution and killing over four thousand people in four days. It paralyzed transport service because of almost nil visibility. Even after its clearance, deaths continued to occur for several weeks, and claimed 12,000 lives.

55 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardi, the 5th Prime Minister of Pakistan and one of its founding fathers, passed away in Beirut, Lebanon, and his body was brought for burial to Dhaka – then in East Pakistan and now capital of Bangladesh. He was premier from 1956 to 1957. Born into a prominent  academic family of Bengal, he traced his lineage to the Iranian mystic and founder of the Sufi order, Shehab od-Din Suhrawardi, who in turn was a descendant of Mohammad Ibn Abu Bakr, one of the loyal devotees of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS).

50 lunar years ago, on this day in 1390 AH, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakeem Tabatabaie passed away in the holy city of Najaf at the age of 84. Born in a religious family, he was a child prodigy, who after memorizing the holy Qur'an, strove to acquire higher degrees of knowledge and attained the status of Ijtehad. He taught jurisprudence and soon emerged as the leading scholar of the Najaf Seminary. In 1961, following the passing away of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Boroujerdi in Qom, Iran, he became the sole Marja or Supreme Religious Authority with worldwide following. The hawza of Najaf grew immensely under his leadership. His historic opinion branding communism as kufr or atheism proved the beginning of the end of communism in Iraq. When the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), was exiled from Iran by the Shah’s regime and took up residence in Iraq in 1964, he welcomed him in holy Najaf and provided support to him. Grand Ayatollah Hakeem’s suggestions and advices on political and social issues were valued by the Muslim Ummah. In 1967, following the defeat of Arab armies in the six-day war he wrote to the heads of Muslim states to put aside their differences and unite against the illegal Zionist entity. During the last year of his life, following the coup that brought to power the tyrannical Ba’th minority regime in Baghdad, he was subjected to persecution and finally passed away in 1970. His sons and grandsons also emerged as leading scholars and were active on the political and social scenes. Many of them were martyred in a cowardly manner by Saddam and his henchmen, including son, Ayatollah Seyyed Mahdi in Khartoum, during an international conference in Sudan in 1987. Another of his sons, Ayatollah Seyyed Baqer al-Hakeem was the Leader of the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) and was martyred in 2003 in a terrorist bomb blast after leading the Friday Prayer in the holy shrine of Imam Ali (AS) in Najaf. The present leader of the Iraqi Islamic Assembly, Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Ammar al-Hakeem, is the grandson of the Late Grand Ayatollah al-Hakeem.

28 solar years ago, on this day in 1990 AD, Iranian lecturer, researcher, and Persian language expert, Dr. Gholam Hussein Yousufi, passed away at the age of 63. Born in the holy city of Mashhad, he started his career as a university lecturer after obtaining a PhD. Among the books he has left behind, mention can be made of “Cheshma-e Rowshan”. He also edited several Persian literary masterpieces such as “Qaboos-Nameh”, and the “Golestan” and “Boustan” of the famous poet, Sa’di Shirazi.

8 solar years ago, on this day in 2010 AD, The Islamic Republic announced it could now use domestically mined uranium to produce nuclear fuel, giving Iran complete control over the fuel cycle, as part of efforts for peaceful use of nuclear energy.

5 solar years ago, on this day in 2013 AD, Nelson Mandela, lawyer, politician and 1st President of South Africa, died at the age of 95 in Johannesburg. Born in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then a part of South Africa's Cape Province, his patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was ruler of the Thembu people in the Transkeian Territories of what is now Eastern Cape Province. One of this king's sons, named Mandela, became Nelson's grandfather and the source of his surname. Mandela attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the African National Congress (ANC) and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner minority government of the National Party established apartheid in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested. In 1963 he was convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid regime and sentenced to life. In 1990, he was released after 27 years in prison and was accorded a very warm welcome by the black people of South Africa. In 1991, an agreement was reached between Mandela and the minority regime for ending the apartheid system, and in 1994, after holding of the first multiracial elections Mandela was elected as the first black president of South Africa. He stepped down from office in 1999.

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