Today is Monday; 25th of the Iranian month of Tir 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 2nd of the Islamic month of Zil-Qa’dah 1439 lunar hijri; and July 16, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1396 solar years ago, on this day in 622 AD, the Islamic lunar calendar began. It was fixed in 638 AD, 16 solar years after the passing away of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), when confusion arose regarding the dates and years to be followed. During his caliphate Omar ibn Khattab, who had banned the written compilation of the Prophet’s hadith and even rejected the collection of the ayahs of the holy Qur’an in book form as Mus’haf by Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), received a letter from the governor of Basra that the absence of any years on the correspondence he receives from Medina, make it difficult for him to determine which instructions were most recent. Omar was perplexed, and as usual the magnanimous Imam Ali (AS) came to his rescue by suggesting that the Islamic calendar be dated according to the Prophet’s Hijra (migration) from Mecca to Medina. Omar accepted the Imam’s advice, but he fixed the date of the beginning of the Islamic year on the 1st of Moharram, in line with the pagan Arab customs, even though the Prophet had migrated on the eve of Rabi al-Awwal.
1128 lunar years ago, on this day in 311 AH, the Iranian Sunni Muslim compiler of hadith, Mohammad ibn Ishaq Ibn Khuzaymah Naishapuri, passed away. After basic studies in his homeland he travelled to Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, collecting hadith from different sources before returning to Iran, where he took up residence in Gorgan. He is the compiler of the book "Mukhtasar al-Mukhtasar min al-Musnad as-Sahih", which is known as "Sahih Ibn Khuzaymah". Though not included in the "Sihah as-Sitta" or the Six Canonical Hadith Compendiums of the Ahl as-Sunnah, it is considered by many prominent Sunni figures, next only to "Sahih Bukhari" and "Sahih Muslim". Like all other compilers of Sunni hadith – all of whom were Iranians – Ibn Khuzaymah failed to have any direct contact with the Infallible Imams or their disciples for determination of authentic hadith, though he has mentioned some of the unsurpassed merits of the Prophet’s Ahl al-Bayt.
1116 lunar years ago, on this day in 323 AH, the imposter and apostate, Mohammad ibn Ali ash-Shalmaghani, who falsely claimed to be an emissary and gateway to Imam Mahdi (AS), was executed and hanged in Baghdad, when he failed to serve the evil designs of the usurper Abbasid regime in undermining the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt during the "Ghaybat-as-Sughra” (Minor Occultation) of the 12th and Last Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) – may Allah hasten his reappearance to cleanse the earth of all vestiges of oppression and corruption, and to establish the global government of peace, prosperity and justice. Shalmaghani, after a good beginning as a scholar, fell prey to the satanic temptations of greed and jealousy, because of his personal enmity with the 12th Imam’s 3rd Deputy, Hussain Ibn Rouh Nowbakhti, and finally went completely astray, to the extent that the Imam had to personally issue a denunciation with his sacred seal so as to caution the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt against believing in his false claims.
806 solar years ago, on this day in 1212 AD, The Battle of al-Uqab or Las Navas de Tolosa, occurred in southern Spain between Muslims and Christians. It led to the defeat of the self-styled caliph, an-Nasser of the al-Muwahidin (Almohad) Empire of Morocco-Andalusia by the combined armies of the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. It marked the decline of Islamic Spain after five centuries of ascendancy, and was the outcome of a crusade against Spanish Muslims called by Pope Innocent III involving Christian mercenaries from all over Europe. The debacle was because of laxity on the part of the self-styled caliph, who proud of his vast army, left unguarded small passes in the mountainous terrain through which the Christians led by Castile’s King Alfonso VIII sneaked in for the ambush while the Muslim camp was asleep. The result was a great slaughter of Muslim forces, as an-Nasir fled the battlefield.
802 solar years ago, on this day in 1216 AD, Innocent III, the most powerfully politicized Pope of the Catholic sect of Christianity and the most hostile towards Muslims and Jews, died after an 18-year reign. He appeared in a vision the same day to nun, St. Lugarda in her monastery at Aywieres in faraway Belgium, engulfed in flames as punishment for three of the most cardinal sins he had committed in life, and for which he said (before disappearing in anguish) that he would languish for centuries in purgatory. He ordered wars that resulted in the massacre of 20,000 men, women and children of the Albigenses or Cathar sect of southwestern France, and in total disregard to the Muslim-Christian peace accord in Palestine, mobilised the 4th Crusade for invasion of Egypt, which, however, because of fears of facing the powerful Ayyubids, was diverted towards an easier target, that is, the fellow Christians of the Byzantine Empire, and led to the fall of Constantinople and its plunder – all of which the Pope legitimized, regardless of the permanent rift he was causing between the Greek and Latin Churches.  
556 lunar years ago, on this day in 883 AH, the Treaty of Istanbul was signed by the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice, ending the 15-year war between the two sides as a result of the advance of the Turks under Sultan Mohammad Fateh (conqueror of Constantinople) to the outskirts of Venice.
536 lunar years ago, on this day in 903 AH, prominent Iranian historian, Seyyed Mohammad Ibn Khwandshah Ibn Ma?moud, popular as Mir-Khwand, passed away. Born in Balkh, he lived most of his life in Herat at the Timurid court of Sultan Hussain Bayqarah, and authored the universal history "Rawzat as-Safa” (Garden of Purity).
146 solar years ago, on this day in 1872 AD, Norwegian explorer, Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen, was born. In 1904 he located the site of the North Magnetic pole. When he turned his attention to the Antarctic, he achieved his quest to be the first to reach the South Pole (14 Dec 1911). After three unsuccessful attempts, he was among the first to cross the Arctic by air in 1926 when he made a flight across the North Pole.
128 solar years ago, on this day in 1890 AD, the Parkinson Disease and how it develops were identified by English physician, James Parkinson. The main reason for this illness is brain malfunctions, and still no certain treatment has been found for it.
109 solar years ago, on this day in 1909 AD, Iran’s Constitutional Revolution forced out Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar as king and replaced him by his son, the young Ahmad Shah. The ousted Shah, who had earlier hired Cossack mercenaries to shell the parliament and attack its members, took refuge in the Russian embassy, which was stormed by the angry people, but he managed to escape and fled to Istanbul, Turkey.
73 solar years ago, on this day in 1945 AD, the US misused science and technology to explode the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, thereby triggering a race for weapons of mass destruction to the detriment of humanity. The atomic bomb was invented by two refugee German scientists, Professor Rudolph Peierls and Otto Frisch. They designed a "blueprint" for making an atom bomb in 1940 after fleeing to the US from Nazi Germany. It actually began when the Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi, working in the US, invented an apparatus which produced the first atomic chain reactions. In 1940 both the Americans and British were researching the atom bomb and when the United States entered WW2, the British joined the American "Manhattan Project" and production of the bomb went on ahead in the US, which is the only power to have criminally used the atomic bomb on the hapless Japanese people as field test, when World War 2 was virtually over.
70 solar years ago, on this day in 1948 AD, following resistance, the Palestinian city of an-Nasserah (Nazareth), revered by Christians as the childhood hometown of Prophet Jesus (PBUH), fell to the Israeli troops, and ever since has been under Zionist occupation.
64 solar years ago, on this day in 1954 AD, Henri Frankfort, Dutch-American archaeologist who established the relationship between Egypt and Mesopotamia and documented reconstruction of ancient Mesopotamian culture and art, died. The excavations he directed in Egypt and Iraq led to his writing of 15 books and monographs and about 73 articles for journals about ancient Egypt, archaeology and cultural anthropology, especially on the religious systems of the Ancient Near East.
39 solar years ago, on this day in 1979 AD, Iraq’s first president of the repressive Ba’th minority regime, General Hasan Ahmad al-Bakr, was ordered by his masters in London and Washington to resign and hand over power to his more brutal vice-president, Saddam, five months after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Saddam instantly launched a reign of terror by imprisoning and murdering prominent religious and political leaders of the long-suppressed Arab Shi’ite majority, including the reputed scholar, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer as-Sadr. He also suppressed the ethnic Sunni Kurds of the north and expelled tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens on the pretext of being of Iranian origin. In September 1980, at the behest of the US, he imposed a brutal war on the Islamic Republic of Iran which raged for 8 years. In 1990, he occupied Kuwait and was driven out seven months later by an international coalition. With his downfall in 2003 at the hands of his own backers, the Americans, 34 years of brutal Ba’th minority rule came to its end.
13 solar years ago, on this day in 2005 AD, in Iraq a terrorist bomber blew up a fuel truck near a crowded vegetable market outside a Shi’a Muslim mosque in Musayyeb town, martyring 98 people. Takfiri terrorists, financed by the US, the Zionist entity and Saudi Arabia, carry out such cowardly attacks in Iraq, Syria and other countries.  
10 solar years ago, on this day in 2008 AD, Lebanon’s legendry anti-terrorist movement, the Hezbollah, in return for the handover of the bodies of two Zionist soldiers, made Israel release five Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of some 200 martyrs. The exchange was the result of indirect negotiations, with the mediation of Germany. Among the liberated Lebanese, were persons from other groups, such as Samir Qantar, who spent almost thirty years in Zionist dungeons, and who was martyred by the Israelis in July 2015 in the Golan Heights of Syria.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)
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