This Day in History
(July 6)
Today is Monday; 15th of the Iranian month of Tir 1394 solar hijri; corresponding to 19th of the Islamic month of Ramadhan 1436 lunar hijri; and July 6, 2015, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1396 lunar years ago, on this day in 40 AH, the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the First Infallible Successor to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), was struck a fatal sword blow on the head by the renegade, Abdur-Rahman Ibn Muljam, while engaged in the Morning Prayer in the Grand Mosque of Kufa, and attained martyrdom two days later. As the first cousin, ward, son-in-law and divinely-decreed vicegerent of the Seal of Messengers, Imam Ali (AS) needs no introduction, the more so in view of his matchless characteristics such as faith, piety, patience, prudence, valour, magnanimity, knowledge, wisdom, ethics, eloquence, and justice. He single-handedly led Islam to victory in almost all the early battles imposed on the Prophet and the young Muslim community by the Arab infidels and the Israelite hypocrites. When usurpers seized the caliphate on the passing away of the Prophet, he patiently endured the calamity for the sake of Islamic unity, since his resorting to the sword would have made most neo-Muslim Arabs revert to paganism. When 25 years later, the caliphate came begging at his door, he reluctantly took up the reins of political rule of the Islamic state and for the next four-and-a-half years, until his untimely martyrdom, he strove to establish the model government of social justice, the like of which the world is yet to see.
1375 solar years ago, on this day in 640 AD, the Muslim army defeated the Byzantine forces near Heliopolis or Ayn Shams in Egypt. Though there were several major skirmishes after this battle, it effectively decided the fate of Byzantine or Eastern Roman rule in Egypt, and opened the door for the Muslim conquest of North Africa.
604 solar years ago, on this day in 1411 AD, Admiral Zheng He of China’s Ming Dynasty, whose real name was Mahmoud Shams od-Din, returned to Nanjing after his second voyage and presented the Sinhalese king, captured during the Ming–Kotte War, to the Yongle Emperor. In 1405 AD, he set sail to explore the world on the first of his seven voyages that took him to Southeast Asia, the Subcontinent, Arabia, Iran, and Africa. He was the great-great-great-grandson of Seyyed Ajal Shams od-Din, the Iranian statesman who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire, and was appointed governor of Yunnan by the Yuan Dynasty. Born in 1371, his father and grandfather were both Hajis, who had performed pilgrimage to holy Mecca. As a 10-year boy, Mahmoud was captured by the Ming, who castrated him and gave him the Chinese name of Zheng He. Nonetheless, his indomitable spirit made him to overcome his physical handicap to rise as a general, diplomat, courtier and admiral. He commanded a flotilla of several hundred galleys, including huge five-decked ships, on each of his voyages in the span of 28 years, and in addition to demonstrating the might of China through presents to the rulers of lands he visited, he brought back home exotic things and animals including zebras, giraffes and ostriches. During his last journey in 1433, at the age of 62, he died off the coast of Kozhikode, southern India, and was buried at sea.
604 lunar years ago, on this day in 832 AH, the eminent Iranian astronomer and mathematician, Ghiyas od-Din Jamshid Kashani, died under suspicious circumstances in Samarqand at the age of around 50 years. He was born in Kashan and went to Samarqand at the invitation of the Timurid scientist-ruler, Ologh Beg, to set up the famous observatory. He produced a Zij entitled the "Khaqani Zij”, which was based on Khwaja Naseereddin Tusi's "Zij-e Ilkhani”. He also produced tables on transformations between coordinate systems on the celestial sphere, such as the transformation from the ecliptic coordinate system to the equatorial coordinate system. He wrote the book "Sullam as-Sama” on the resolution of difficulties met by predecessors in the determination of distances and sizes of heavenly bodies such as the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and the Stars. He also invented a mechanical planetary computer which he called the Plate of Zones, which could graphically solve a number of planetary problems, including the prediction of the true positions in longitude of the Sun and Moon, and the planets in terms of elliptical orbits; the latitudes of the Sun, Moon, and planets; and the ecliptic of the Sun. In one of his numerical approximations of "P" (pronounced pie), he correctly computed 2 P to 9 sexagesimal digits. This approximation of 2 P is equivalent to 16 decimal places of accuracy. This was far more accurate than the estimates earlier given in Greek mathematics of 3 decimal places by Archimedes, Chinese mathematics of 7 decimal places by Zu Chongzhi and Indian mathematics of 11 decimal places by Madhava of Sangamagrama. The accuracy of Jamshid Kashani's estimate was not surpassed until Ludolph van Ceulen computed 20 decimal places of "P" nearly 200 years later.
480 solar years ago, on this day in 1535 AD, Thomas More, English lawyer, social philosopher, author, and statesman, who coined the word "Utopia" in the novel of the same name, was beheaded at the age of 57 after being tried for treason and convicted on perjured testimony, following imprisonment a year earlier for his refusal to endorse King Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church and declaration of himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Born in London to the lawyer and judge, John More, and highly educated, in 1516 he published "Utopia", a name he gave to an ideal and imaginary island nation, the political system of which contrasts the contentious social life of European states with the perfectly orderly, reasonable social arrangements. In "Utopia", with communal ownership of land, private property does not exist; men and women are educated alike; and there is almost complete religious toleration. Utopia tolerates different religious practices but does not tolerate atheists, since Thomas More believed that if a person did not believe in God or in afterlife he/she could never be trusted. He coined the English phrase "grasp at straws" to mean "desperately trying even useless things", in his book "Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. He caught the king’s attention and served as Councilor to Henry VIII, before being promoted to Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. A bitter opponent of the Protestant Movement, he ridiculed the German Church reformer, Martin Luther, as a heretic in the book "Responsio ad Lutherum", in which he also opposed the English monarch's separation from the Catholic Church and refused to accept the king as Supreme Head of the Church of England, a factor that brought about his downfall.
161 solar years ago, on this day in 1854 AD, German mathematician and physicist, Georg Simon Ohm, passed away at the age of 67 years. He conducted extensive research, discovering laws in electricity which are named after him as "Ohm”, and are applied to this day.
130 solar years ago, on this day in 1885 AD, French chemist and microbiologist, Louis Pasteur, successfully tested his vaccine against rabies. The patient was Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog. The 9-year old boy was injected the first of 14 daily doses of rabbit spinal cord suspensions containing progressively inactivated rabies virus. This was the beginning of the modern era of immunization, which had been presaged by Britain’s Edward Jenner nearly 100 years earlier. The boy grew up and became caretaker of the Pasteur Institute until age 64.
128 solar years ago, on this day in 1887 AD, David Kalakaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was forced at gunpoint by the Americans to sign the "Bayonet Constitution” giving US nationals more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights. The Hawaiian islands in the Pacific are presently under full US occupation and regarded as an American state.
48 solar years ago, on this day in 1967 AD, the Biafran War erupted in Nigeria, lasting more than two years and claiming some 600,000 lives. The Republic of Biafra was proclaimed, through Israel’s sedition to instigate the ethnic Igbo populated eastern region of Nigeria to secede. This was followed by civil war. The federal troops held most of rebellious Biafra by the end of 1968 but the Igbos attempted to hold out in a small and crowded area. The war broke out when the Igbos, led by Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu of the Nigerian army, launched a rebellion to form a separate state on Israel’s instigation.
40 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, the Comoros Islands gained independence from French colonial rule. Comoros is actually the French corruption of "Qamar” for Moon in Arabic since the islands are known as Juzur al-Qamar or Moon Islands. According to accounts, in 632, upon hearing of Islam, the islanders are said to have dispatched an emissary, the navigator Qumralu, to Arabia—but by the time he arrived there, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had departed from the world. Nonetheless, after a stay in Medina, he returned to Qanbalu Island and led the gradual conversion of his islanders to Islam. Some of the earliest accounts of the Comoros were derived from the works of the famous Islamic geographer, al-Masudi, who mentions the early Islamic trade routes and how the islands were frequently visited by Muslims including Iranian and Arab merchants and sailors from Basra in search of coral, ylang-ylang, ivory, beads, spices, and gold. They also brought Islam to the people of Comoros and Zanzibar. By the 12th century AD, masses of people converted to Islam in these islands and the Islamic culture and civilization quickly spread. In the 16th Century AD, Comoros Islands were for a while occupied by Portugal. The Sultan of Oman who had brought Zanzibar under his control, managed to put an end to this occupation. In 1842, parts of Comoros were occupied by France.
29 solar years ago, on this day in 1986 AD, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Khamenei – father of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei – passed away at the age of 91 in Mashhad and was laid to rest in the holy mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS), the 8th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Born in Khameneh in East Azarbaijan Province, northwestern Iran, he was educated by his scholarly father, before moving to Mashhad, Khorasan, northeastern Iran, where he studied under Ayatollah Aqazadeh Khorasani and Ayatollah Aqa Hussain Qomi. He went to holy Najaf in Iraq for higher religious courses and attended the classes of Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hussain Na’ini and Grand Ayatollah Abu’l-Hassan Isfahani. On return to Iran, he left the rest of his life in Mashhad in piety and asceticism.
20 solar years ago, on this day in 1995 AD, Serbs, under the command of General Ratko Mladic and assisted by Greek volunteers unleashed genocide on the town of Srebrenica, right before the eyes of the Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, driving out over 30,000 Bosniak Muslims from their homes as part of ethnic cleansing, and massacring more than 8000 Bosniak men, women and children, in what is known as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War. The tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever, because of the genocide in the presence of peacekeeping troops as well as the delay of the International Criminal Court at Hague for meting out justice to Ratko Mladic, who is under trial since 2012. "The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica” compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names. As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potocari.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://english.irib.ir)
1396 lunar years ago, on this day in 40 AH, the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), the First Infallible Successor to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), was struck a fatal sword blow on the head by the renegade, Abdur-Rahman Ibn Muljam, while engaged in the Morning Prayer in the Grand Mosque of Kufa, and attained martyrdom two days later. As the first cousin, ward, son-in-law and divinely-decreed vicegerent of the Seal of Messengers, Imam Ali (AS) needs no introduction, the more so in view of his matchless characteristics such as faith, piety, patience, prudence, valour, magnanimity, knowledge, wisdom, ethics, eloquence, and justice. He single-handedly led Islam to victory in almost all the early battles imposed on the Prophet and the young Muslim community by the Arab infidels and the Israelite hypocrites. When usurpers seized the caliphate on the passing away of the Prophet, he patiently endured the calamity for the sake of Islamic unity, since his resorting to the sword would have made most neo-Muslim Arabs revert to paganism. When 25 years later, the caliphate came begging at his door, he reluctantly took up the reins of political rule of the Islamic state and for the next four-and-a-half years, until his untimely martyrdom, he strove to establish the model government of social justice, the like of which the world is yet to see.
1375 solar years ago, on this day in 640 AD, the Muslim army defeated the Byzantine forces near Heliopolis or Ayn Shams in Egypt. Though there were several major skirmishes after this battle, it effectively decided the fate of Byzantine or Eastern Roman rule in Egypt, and opened the door for the Muslim conquest of North Africa.
604 solar years ago, on this day in 1411 AD, Admiral Zheng He of China’s Ming Dynasty, whose real name was Mahmoud Shams od-Din, returned to Nanjing after his second voyage and presented the Sinhalese king, captured during the Ming–Kotte War, to the Yongle Emperor. In 1405 AD, he set sail to explore the world on the first of his seven voyages that took him to Southeast Asia, the Subcontinent, Arabia, Iran, and Africa. He was the great-great-great-grandson of Seyyed Ajal Shams od-Din, the Iranian statesman who served in the administration of the Mongol Empire, and was appointed governor of Yunnan by the Yuan Dynasty. Born in 1371, his father and grandfather were both Hajis, who had performed pilgrimage to holy Mecca. As a 10-year boy, Mahmoud was captured by the Ming, who castrated him and gave him the Chinese name of Zheng He. Nonetheless, his indomitable spirit made him to overcome his physical handicap to rise as a general, diplomat, courtier and admiral. He commanded a flotilla of several hundred galleys, including huge five-decked ships, on each of his voyages in the span of 28 years, and in addition to demonstrating the might of China through presents to the rulers of lands he visited, he brought back home exotic things and animals including zebras, giraffes and ostriches. During his last journey in 1433, at the age of 62, he died off the coast of Kozhikode, southern India, and was buried at sea.
604 lunar years ago, on this day in 832 AH, the eminent Iranian astronomer and mathematician, Ghiyas od-Din Jamshid Kashani, died under suspicious circumstances in Samarqand at the age of around 50 years. He was born in Kashan and went to Samarqand at the invitation of the Timurid scientist-ruler, Ologh Beg, to set up the famous observatory. He produced a Zij entitled the "Khaqani Zij”, which was based on Khwaja Naseereddin Tusi's "Zij-e Ilkhani”. He also produced tables on transformations between coordinate systems on the celestial sphere, such as the transformation from the ecliptic coordinate system to the equatorial coordinate system. He wrote the book "Sullam as-Sama” on the resolution of difficulties met by predecessors in the determination of distances and sizes of heavenly bodies such as the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and the Stars. He also invented a mechanical planetary computer which he called the Plate of Zones, which could graphically solve a number of planetary problems, including the prediction of the true positions in longitude of the Sun and Moon, and the planets in terms of elliptical orbits; the latitudes of the Sun, Moon, and planets; and the ecliptic of the Sun. In one of his numerical approximations of "P" (pronounced pie), he correctly computed 2 P to 9 sexagesimal digits. This approximation of 2 P is equivalent to 16 decimal places of accuracy. This was far more accurate than the estimates earlier given in Greek mathematics of 3 decimal places by Archimedes, Chinese mathematics of 7 decimal places by Zu Chongzhi and Indian mathematics of 11 decimal places by Madhava of Sangamagrama. The accuracy of Jamshid Kashani's estimate was not surpassed until Ludolph van Ceulen computed 20 decimal places of "P" nearly 200 years later.
480 solar years ago, on this day in 1535 AD, Thomas More, English lawyer, social philosopher, author, and statesman, who coined the word "Utopia" in the novel of the same name, was beheaded at the age of 57 after being tried for treason and convicted on perjured testimony, following imprisonment a year earlier for his refusal to endorse King Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church and declaration of himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England. Born in London to the lawyer and judge, John More, and highly educated, in 1516 he published "Utopia", a name he gave to an ideal and imaginary island nation, the political system of which contrasts the contentious social life of European states with the perfectly orderly, reasonable social arrangements. In "Utopia", with communal ownership of land, private property does not exist; men and women are educated alike; and there is almost complete religious toleration. Utopia tolerates different religious practices but does not tolerate atheists, since Thomas More believed that if a person did not believe in God or in afterlife he/she could never be trusted. He coined the English phrase "grasp at straws" to mean "desperately trying even useless things", in his book "Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. He caught the king’s attention and served as Councilor to Henry VIII, before being promoted to Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. A bitter opponent of the Protestant Movement, he ridiculed the German Church reformer, Martin Luther, as a heretic in the book "Responsio ad Lutherum", in which he also opposed the English monarch's separation from the Catholic Church and refused to accept the king as Supreme Head of the Church of England, a factor that brought about his downfall.
161 solar years ago, on this day in 1854 AD, German mathematician and physicist, Georg Simon Ohm, passed away at the age of 67 years. He conducted extensive research, discovering laws in electricity which are named after him as "Ohm”, and are applied to this day.
130 solar years ago, on this day in 1885 AD, French chemist and microbiologist, Louis Pasteur, successfully tested his vaccine against rabies. The patient was Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog. The 9-year old boy was injected the first of 14 daily doses of rabbit spinal cord suspensions containing progressively inactivated rabies virus. This was the beginning of the modern era of immunization, which had been presaged by Britain’s Edward Jenner nearly 100 years earlier. The boy grew up and became caretaker of the Pasteur Institute until age 64.
128 solar years ago, on this day in 1887 AD, David Kalakaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was forced at gunpoint by the Americans to sign the "Bayonet Constitution” giving US nationals more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights. The Hawaiian islands in the Pacific are presently under full US occupation and regarded as an American state.
48 solar years ago, on this day in 1967 AD, the Biafran War erupted in Nigeria, lasting more than two years and claiming some 600,000 lives. The Republic of Biafra was proclaimed, through Israel’s sedition to instigate the ethnic Igbo populated eastern region of Nigeria to secede. This was followed by civil war. The federal troops held most of rebellious Biafra by the end of 1968 but the Igbos attempted to hold out in a small and crowded area. The war broke out when the Igbos, led by Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu of the Nigerian army, launched a rebellion to form a separate state on Israel’s instigation.
40 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, the Comoros Islands gained independence from French colonial rule. Comoros is actually the French corruption of "Qamar” for Moon in Arabic since the islands are known as Juzur al-Qamar or Moon Islands. According to accounts, in 632, upon hearing of Islam, the islanders are said to have dispatched an emissary, the navigator Qumralu, to Arabia—but by the time he arrived there, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had departed from the world. Nonetheless, after a stay in Medina, he returned to Qanbalu Island and led the gradual conversion of his islanders to Islam. Some of the earliest accounts of the Comoros were derived from the works of the famous Islamic geographer, al-Masudi, who mentions the early Islamic trade routes and how the islands were frequently visited by Muslims including Iranian and Arab merchants and sailors from Basra in search of coral, ylang-ylang, ivory, beads, spices, and gold. They also brought Islam to the people of Comoros and Zanzibar. By the 12th century AD, masses of people converted to Islam in these islands and the Islamic culture and civilization quickly spread. In the 16th Century AD, Comoros Islands were for a while occupied by Portugal. The Sultan of Oman who had brought Zanzibar under his control, managed to put an end to this occupation. In 1842, parts of Comoros were occupied by France.
29 solar years ago, on this day in 1986 AD, Ayatollah Seyyed Jawad Khamenei – father of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei – passed away at the age of 91 in Mashhad and was laid to rest in the holy mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS), the 8th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Born in Khameneh in East Azarbaijan Province, northwestern Iran, he was educated by his scholarly father, before moving to Mashhad, Khorasan, northeastern Iran, where he studied under Ayatollah Aqazadeh Khorasani and Ayatollah Aqa Hussain Qomi. He went to holy Najaf in Iraq for higher religious courses and attended the classes of Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hussain Na’ini and Grand Ayatollah Abu’l-Hassan Isfahani. On return to Iran, he left the rest of his life in Mashhad in piety and asceticism.
20 solar years ago, on this day in 1995 AD, Serbs, under the command of General Ratko Mladic and assisted by Greek volunteers unleashed genocide on the town of Srebrenica, right before the eyes of the Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, driving out over 30,000 Bosniak Muslims from their homes as part of ethnic cleansing, and massacring more than 8000 Bosniak men, women and children, in what is known as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War. The tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever, because of the genocide in the presence of peacekeeping troops as well as the delay of the International Criminal Court at Hague for meting out justice to Ratko Mladic, who is under trial since 2012. "The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica” compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names. As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves; as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potocari.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://english.irib.ir)