Today is Sunday; 2nd of the Iranian month of Dey 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 15th of the Islamic month of Rabi as-Sani 1440 lunar hijri; and December 23, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1758 solar years ago, on this day in 240 AD, Queen Zenobia, who built a short-lived empire encompassing Syria, Egypt and most of Anatolia (modern Turkey) was born to a local Amalekite chieftain in the rich and flourishing oasis city of Tadmor (Palmyra of the Romans) in the Syrian Desert, located along the caravan routes linking Persia with the Mediterranean ports of Syria and Phoenicia. On marrying Septimius Odaenathus, the Rome-appointed Amalekite ruler of the kingdom of Palmyra, she became known as "Septimia Zenobia", although she used the Aramaic form "Bat-Zabbai" to sign her name. Some attribute her lineal descent to the Greek Seleucid line of the Ptolemies, while others claim she was an Israelite. The early Iranian Muslim historian Abu Ja’far Tabari, who wrote in Arabic, says her original name was Zaynab, and her father was Amr ibn az-Zarib. On her husband’s death in 267, she took power as regent for her young son, and threw off the Roman yoke by conquering all of Syria, Egypt and parts of Anatolia. She had the stated goal of protecting the Roman Empire from Sassanid Iran. Known for her military prowess as well as her beauty and chastity, she refused to surrender to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius despite her defeat in 273 in Emessa, and with the help of the Iranians, she and her son escaped by camel, but were captured on the Euphrates River by Roman horsemen. Marcus took her as captive to Rome, paraded her in chains in his triumph, and is said to have executed her in 275.

1078 solar years ago, on this day in 940 AD, ar-Raadhi-Billah, the 20^th self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime died at the age of 31 after a 7-year reign, during which the real power was in the hands of the cruel vizier, Ibn Raeq – a military officer of Khazar origin who became the first “Amir al-Umara” (Commander of Commanders), and has earned lasting notoriety for impairing the agriculture of Iraq for several centuries by blocking the Nahrawan Canal. Son of Ja’far al-Muqtadir-Billah, he was installed as caliph on removal from power after a year-and-a-half rule of his uncle al-Qaher-Billah. Raadhi’s reign saw the mischief of the Hanbali sect, which created an atmosphere of sedition in Baghdad, especially against the followers of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt – with the tacit support of the regime. His authority hardly extended beyond the capital, Baghdad, while abroad, even less. The rich Persian East was gone, and so was Egypt and Berber North Africa, as well as peninsular Arabia where the Carmathians held sway, while western Syria and upper Mesopotamia were saved from the repeated attacks of the Byzantine Empire, thanks to the bravery of the Hamdanid ruler Sayf od-Dowla.

1056 solar years ago, on this day in 962 AD, Byzantine troops, led by the future emperor, Nicephorus Phocas, stormed the city of Aleppo in Syria, which was the capital of the Hamdanid Shi’ite Muslim Dynasty, and carried off 10,000 Muslims as prisoners. Soon Emir Sayf od-Dowla recovered and refortified Aleppo and counterattacked the Byzantines by raiding deep into Asia Minor. The Byzantine-Hamdanid Wars were part of the Christian-Muslim conflict for supremacy in northern Syria and Asia Minor (present day Turkey) and were continuation of the Greek-Achaemenid, Roman-Parthian, and Roman-Sassanid Wars of the past millennium-and-a-half for control of the region. They continued in the subsequent centuries in the form of Byzantine-Turkic wars, starting with the rise of the Iran-based Seljuqs and culminating in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.

241 solar years ago, on this day in 1777 AD, Alexander I of Russia was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul. He is said to have been involved in the murder of his father, whom he succeeded as Emperor of Russia in March 1801 and ruled till his death in 1825. The first Russian King of Poland (1815 to 1825), as well as the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland, his reign saw aggression on Qajarid Iran in the Caucasus, resulting in the 9-year Russo-Persian War from 1804-to-1813, and imposition of the Gulistan Treaty through which Georgia, Daghestan, and much of what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan was seized from the Persian Empire. In his European policy, he switched Russia back and forth four times during 1804-1812 from neutral peacemaker to anti-Napoleon to an ally of Napoleon, winding up in 1812 as Napoleon’s enemy. In 1805, he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after the massive defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz he switched and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain. He and Napoleon could never agree; especially about Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810. His greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved a total disaster for the French. Later he formed the so-called Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe and helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements. Alexander died without issue.

228 solar years ago, on this day in 1790 AD, French Orientalist, Jean-François Champollion, was born. He established scientific methods in archaeology and pioneered in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. He mastered Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Chinese, and Coptic languages, and later learned ancient Syriac and Chaldean. He started interpreting Egyptian hieroglyphics, building on the earlier efforts of Thomas Young. He succeeded in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, a stone slab unearthed in 1799 at Rosetta near Alexandria, Egypt, inscribed in two languages and three scripts, that is, Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic, and ancient Greek.

184 solar years ago, on this day in 1834 AD, Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist and demographer, died at the age of 68. Although an Anglican Christian priest, his theories, as is evident from his work “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, betrayed his lack of belief in the Infinite Power of the Almighty Creator. He wrote “population would always outrun the food supply and would result in famine, disease or war to reduce the number of people.” His views became controversial, across economic, political, social and scientific thought, while his reputation as economist dropped away for the rest of his life.

69 solar years ago, on this day in 1948 AD, as per the verdict of an International Tribunal in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, seven senior officials of Japan's imperial government, including former premier, Hideki Tojo, were executed for war crimes committed during World War II. The court was held simultaneous with the Nuremberg Tribunal in Germany for prosecution of Nazi war criminals. It tried 25 Japanese officials and sentenced 18 of them to prison terms.

65 solar years ago, on this day in 1953 AD, Lavrenity Pavlovich Beria, Head of the Soviet Union’s dreaded security apparatus and the No.2 man during Joseph Stalin’s rule, was tried and executed on charges of deviation from the principles of the communist party, and for conspiracy against the Soviet system. Upon Beria’s order many people were killed, and gory purges took place within the communist party and the Red Army, as a result of which, an atmosphere of fear dominated the Soviet Union. Following Stalin’s death in March 1953, the new leaders executed Beria.

48 solar years ago, on this day in 1970 AD, the construction of the World Trade Center in New York City reached 1353 feet high (411 meter), its highest point. This was a complex of 7 buildings including the twin 110-storey towers, having 9 million sq. feet of office space. The towers' design by architect Minoru Yamasaki used a steel frame with glass curtain walls. Observation decks at the top of the towers gave a view of 45 miles. The building had three vertical zones served by express elevators to skylobbies at the 41st and 74th floors and local elevators within the three zones. Once the highest skyscrapers in the world (until surpassed by the Sears Tower, Chicago), the twin towers were totally destroyed by fire on 11 September 2001 by remote-controlled unmanned planes in a conspiracy hatched by the FBI and the Zionist spying agency Mossad, in order to lay the blame on Muslims for a pretext to attack and occupy Afghanistan.

46 solar years ago, on this day in 1972 AD, a destructive quake jolted Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, claiming almost 10,000 lives, while 15,000 others sustained injuries. Half of Managua’s residents were made homeless, and huge damage inflicted on the city and its environs.

7 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD new evidence came to light of the genocide carried by France in Algeria where fifteen percent of the Muslim population was massacred by the colonialists, and beginning in 1945 many Algerians were burned in oven. With the weakening of Ottoman power, France invaded and occupied Algeria in the 1830s after crushing the heroic resistance of Amir Seyyed Abdul-Qader al-Hassani al-Jazayeri. After a hard fought war of independence lasting from 1954 to 1962, during which 1.5 million more Algerians were killed by the French, the country became free.

8 lunar years ago, on this day in 1432 AH, the prominent scholar and combatant religious leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeqi Tehrani passed away at the age of 87. His father was one of the famous orators. Mohammad Sadeqi entered the Islamic seminary of Tehran at the age of 14. His teachers were Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Ali Shahabadi, and Mirza Mahdi and Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani. He acquired deep knowledge of Qur’anic exegesis from Ayatollah Shahabadi and later accomplished it in Qom under Allamah Seyyed Mohammad Hussain Tabatabaei – author of the famous exegesis “Tafsir al-Mizan”. He completed jurisprudence under Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hussain Borujerdi, and attained the status of Ijtehad. Thereafter he attended the lectures of Imam Khomeini (RA) in philosophy and ethics, and was profoundly influenced by his teacher’s political thoughts. Ayatollah Sadeqi returned to Tehran after ten years at the Qom seminary, and in addition to teaching at the university, he obtained PhD in Islamic studies and Masters in four other subjects, including law. At the same time, he attended the lectures in mysticism of Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammad Taqi Amoli as well as philosophical lectures of Ayatollah Rafi’i Qazvini. After ten years of political struggle against the despotic Pahlavi regime and giving lessons on the exegesis of the holy Qur’an in Tehran, he was invited in 1962 AD by the scholars of Qom to attend an important meeting in commemoration of the first anniversary of the passing away of Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi. At the gathering he delivered a fiery speech exposing the oppressive policies of the British-installed and American-backed Shah. As a result, he was prosecuted by the SAVAK and sentenced to death in absentia, since he had already left for holy Mecca, where during the Hajj rituals he further exposed the tyranny of the Shah. He was imprisoned by the Saudi regime but released following protests by the scholars of Iran and Iraq. He moved to holy Najaf in Iraq, where besides teaching Islamic sciences, exegesis of the holy Qur’an in particular, he continued his political activities against the Pahlavi regime, especially since his mentor Imam Khomeini was in Najaf on being exiled by the Shah. Forced to leave Iraq by the repressive Ba’th minority regime, he went to Lebanon, where he stayed for five years and then proceeded to Mecca again. During his 2-year stay he held classes on Qur’anic exegesis and jurisprudence in the Masjid al-Haraam behind the "Maqam-e Ibrahim" where more than six hundred students from various countries used to attend his lectures. He organized peaceful debates with scholars of various jurisprudential schools, and convinced them by his strong arguments. As a result, the Wahhabi regime again expelled him. He went back to Beirut and three months later, after 17 years of exile, he returned home to Iran following triumph of the Islamic Revolution, to assist his teacher Imam Khomeini in establishment of the Islamic Republic. A few months after triumph of the Islamic Revolution, he arrived back in Qom for teaching Qur’an and jurisprudence. His lectures were wholly based on the Holy Qur’an. He authored about 110 books on various subjects. His main work is the 3-volume exegesis of the holy Qur’an titled “Tafsir al-Furqan”.  He also wrote a critique on the Bible titled “Aqaidona” (Our Beliefs). He made vigorous criticisms of the prevailing philosophy at Islamic seminaries, saying its foundation is inconsistent with the Qur’an and Sunnah. He also challenged Western and Eastern philosophers in a significant book titled “Talks between Monotheists and Materialists”.

7 solar years ago, on this day in 2011 AD, the repressive Aal-e Khalifa minority regime of the Persian Gulf island state of Bahrain, banned the weekly peaceful protest by the people in Manama, after attacking with bullets and teargas the headquarters of al-Wefaq, the main opposition party. The vast majority of the Bahraini people are deprived of their birthrights, and this year the tyrannical regime desecrated mosques and hussainiyahs.

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