Today is Sunday, 27^th of the Iranian month of Aban 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 10^th of the Islamic month of Rabi al-Awwal 1440 lunar hijri; and November 18, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.

1485 lunar years ago, on this day, 45 years before Hijra, Abdul-Mutalleb, the paternal grandfather of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), passed away in Mecca, when the grandson was only 8 years old. He was leader of the Quraysh tribe descended from Prophet Ishmael, and was known for his eloquence and virtues as a firm monotheist following the creed of his ancestor, Prophet Abraham (AS). He was in charge of the custodianship of the Holy Ka'ba which he had received through his father, Hashem, and his illustrious forbears. He was the guardian of his grandson, the future Prophet, following the death of the latter's parents, Abdullah and Amena bint Wahb (SA). Eight years before Abdul-Mutalleb's death, the Ethiopian Christian governor of Yemen, Abraha, had marched on Mecca riding an elephant with the intention of destroying the holy Ka'ba. Abraha's army seized Abdul-Mutalleb's herd of camels on assumption that this will make him plead for the safety of the Ka'ba. Abdul-Mutalleb, however, only asked for the release of his camel herd, and when Abraha asked him why he does not plead for the Ka'ba, he replied: I am the owner of these camels, and the Ka'ba has its own owner (God); He will take care of its safety. Soon Abraha, his elephant and his army were miraculously attacked by a flock of birds pelting them with pebbles, which routed the formidable forces and reduced them to chewed straw as the holy Qur'an records in "Surah al-Feel”. The Prophet was born in the same year of this divine miracle. On his grandfather’s death, his guardianship was taken over by his loving uncle, Abu Taleb, the consanguineous brother of his father Abdullah.

1468 lunar years ago, on this day, 28 years before Hijra, the marriage of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and Hazrat Khadija (SA) took place in Mecca. Known as "Maleekat al-Arab” (Queen of Arabia), because of her proverbial wealth that she had accumulated through trade caravans, Khadija (SA) was a pure, monotheistic and chaste lady (Tahera). Impressed by the honesty and truthfulness of her trade manager, her distant relative the future Prophet, who did not possess any material wealth, she proposed marriage to him. The two made an excellent husband-and-wife pair. Fifteen years later, when God formally ordained Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) as the Last and Greatest Messenger to mankind, she immediately believed in the mission of her husband and thereafter spent all her wealth for feeding and sheltering the persecuted Muslim community of Mecca, to the extent that when she passed away, nothing was left of her wealth or any inheritance for her only surviving daughter, the noblest lady of all time, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA). For over 25 long years, as the "Omm al-Momineen” (Mother of Believers), Hazrat Khadija (SA) was the one and only wife of the Prophet, and as long as she lived he never took another spouse. Even in the last ten years of his life in Medina when out of social necessity and to break the absurd customs of the days of ignorance, the middle aged Prophet had to marry several wives, he always used to cherish the memory of Khadija (SA), his firm support and the mother of his progeny, the Ahl al-Bayt.

1261 lunar years ago, on this day in 179 AH, the jurisprudent Malek bin Anas passed away in his hometown Medina at the age of 84. For some time, along with his Iranian contemporary Abu Hanifa, he studied under Imam Ja’far Sadeq (AS), the 6^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He describes Imam Sadeq (AS) as the doyen of knowledge and wisdom, whom none could equal. He later founded the Maleki School of jurisprudence, regarded as one of the four official Sunni schools. His collection of hadith is titled "al-Muwatta”, although many narrations are of doubtful chains.

1111 lunar years ago, on this day in 329 AH, Raazi-Billah, the 20^th self-styled caliph of the usurper Abbasid regime, died. A cultured person, well versed in literature and poetry, he returned the vast orchard of Fadak to the Prophet's descendants. Fadak was the personal property of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) and was situated north of Medina near Khaybar. The Prophet had given it in his lifetime to his only daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA), who used its revenues for the upkeep of the poor and destitute Muslims. After the Prophet passed away, the new regime in Medina seized Fadak by coining a spurious hadith that Prophets do no leave inheritance and whatever they leave is the property of the Ummah, despite the Prophet’s daughter’s memorable defence of her rights by citing the ayahs of the holy Qur'an which speak of Prophet Solomon inheriting Prophet David, and Prophet Yahya inheriting Prophet Zachariah. In the subsequent years, Fadak was returned and retaken several times.

1073 lunar years ago, on this day in 367 AH, the prominent jurisprudent, hadith expert and theologian, Abu’l-Qasim Ja’far ibn Mohammad, popular as Ibn Qulawayh al-Qomi, passed away in Baghdad, and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Imam Musa Kazem (AS), the 7^th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He was one of the distinguished students of the renowned Sheikh Mohammad ibn Ya’qub al-Kulayni, and among the most outstanding teachers of the famous theologian Shaikh Mufid. He is the compiler of the book named "Kamel az-Ziyaraat”, which is a collection of standard form of salutations for the Prophet and the Infallible Imams. Born in Qom in a scholarly family, he travelled widely for acquisition of knowledge, and for some years stayed in Fatemid Egypt to learn from the scholars of that land.

975 lunar years ago, on this day in 465 AH, Alp Arsalan the second and most powerful ruler of the Iran-based Seljuq empire that encompassed Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Turkey, Syria, Caucasus and Central Asia, died at the age of 42 after a 9-year reign, during which at the Battle of Manzikert he decisively defeated and captured Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes of Byzantine. His real name was Mohammad bin Dawoud Chaghri and his title Alp Arsalan means Brave Lion in Turkish. He was assisted in running his administration by the able Iranian vizier, Nizam ol-Molk Tusi.

597 solar years ago, on this day in 1421 AD, a seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as St Elizabeth's flood.

536 solar years ago, in 1482 AD, Gedik Ahmed Pasha, Kapudan (Chief Admiral) and 17th Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Sultan Mohammad II (conqueror of Constantinople) was killed in prison on the orders of Sultan Beyazid II. Of Serbian descent, he personally led the campaign in 1471 to defeat the last Anatolian Turkic beylik (dominion), the Karamanids, who as successors of the Seljuq Sultanate of Roum and control of the historic city of Konya, had been the strongest power in Anatolia for almost 200 years. Thus, Gedik Ahmed Pasha's victory over them and his conquest of the Mediterranean coastal region around Ermenek, Mennan and Silifke, proved crucial for the future of the Ottomans. He also fought against the Venetians and was dispatched in 1475 by the Sultan to aid the Crimean Khanate against Genoese forces. He rescued the Khan of Crimea, Menli I Giray, and as a result of his campaign, Crimea and Circassia entered into the Ottoman sphere of influence. In 1479 he was ordered to besiege Shkodra in Albania, and later that year to lead the Ottoman Navy in the Mediterranean as part of the war against the Italian states of Naples and Milan. Since Mohammad II had conquered Constantinople in 1453 he saw himself as the inheritor of the Roman Empire and seriously considered the conquest of Italy. As part of this plan, Gedik Ahmed Pasha was sent with a naval force to the heel of the Italian peninsula, and took the port city of Otranto in 1480, making the Pope consider fleeing from Rome. The death of Sultan Mohammad in May the next year ended the campaign, and his successor Beyazid II dismissed and imprisoned him.

417 solar years ago, on this day in 1601 AD, Tiryaki Hassan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, decisively defeated Habsburg forces commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa. The 50,000-strong Christian force attacked what was then Kanije in southwest Hungary, but the superior tactics of the Muslim defenders enabled the Turks to withstand the siege and ultimately counterattack and defeat the enemy forces. Hassan Pasha was an ethnic Bosnian and because of addiction to coffee was known as Tiryaki.

351 solar years ago, on this day in 1667 AD, The Treaty of Bongaja was forced upon Sultan Hassan od-Din of Gowa in what is now Indonesia by the invading forces of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), following the defeat of the Muslim army at Makassar on Sulawesi Island, mainly due to the siding of the animist warlord Arung Palakka with the Christians. Based on the terms of the treaty, Sultan Hassan od-Din conceded to the Dutch the territories of Buton, Makassar, Timor, Bima and the coasts of Java. For the next two centuries, Netherland’s control over the archipelago was tenuous outside of coastal strongholds and only in the early 20th century did Dutch dominance extend to what was to become Indonesia's present boundaries. In 1945, following end of World War 2 and Japanese occupation, Indonesia announced its independence, but was attacked by the Dutch, who in 1949, finally left the world’s most populous Muslim country.

231 solar years ago, on this day in 1787 AD, the French painter, inventor, and physicist, Louis Daguerre, was born. His most important invention was the camera in the year 1839. He managed to take the first clear photo with this camera. Interestingly, nearly concurrent with Daguerre, his compatriot, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, had also succeeded in inventing the camera. Daguerre died in 1851.

179 solar years ago, on this day in 1839 AD, the second phase of the Algerian people’s anti-colonial struggles against France started under the leadership of Seyyed Abdul-Qader bin Mohieddin al-Hassani, al-Jaza'eri, who claimed descent from Imam Hasan Mojtaba (AS), the elder grandson of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Abdul-Qader, who returned to Algeria, a few months before the Turks lost it to the French invaders in 1930, had during his 5-year journey abroad, met with, and was highly impressed by Imam Shamil of Daghestan – the leader of the struggle against Russian expansion in the Caucasus which recently had been seized by the Czar from the Qajarid rulers of Iran. As a Sufi scholar, Abdul-Qader now led the military struggle against France, and within two years was made an amir by tribes fighting the French. He organized guerrilla warfare and for a decade scored many victories. He often signed tactical truces with the French, but these did not last. His failure to get support from the eastern tribes, apart from the Berbers of western Kabylie led to the quelling of his uprising. On December 21, 1847, after being denied refuge in Morocco because of French pressure, he surrendered. It took more than a century for the French to leave Algeria as a result of the freedom war that started in the 1950s and triumphed in 1962, but not before France had massacred over a million Algerian Muslims.

119 solar years ago, on this day in 1899 AD, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Qasim Musavi Khoei, was born in Khoy in Iran’s West Azarbaijan Province. After initial studies in Tabriz, he left for holy Najaf in Iraq at the age of 13 to continue his studies. Here, his piety and knowledge attracted the attention of the Indian-based Iranian religious scholar, Mirza Ahmad Najafi-Tabrizi, who gave his daughter in marriage to him and lodged him in his own house. Mirza Ahmad used to frequent the semi-independent state of Banganapalle in south India, ruled by a Seyyed family of Iranian origin, who were patrons of scholars and learning. Soon Ayatollah Khoei mastered logic, rhetoric, theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, and in the process attained the status of Ijtehad. In 1971, he succeeded Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakim as the leading Marja’ of the Islamic world and thereafter groomed a large number of scholars from Iran, Iraq, the Subcontinent, Bahrain and Lebanon. Among his valuable books are "Lectures in the Principles of Jurisprudence”, in 10 volumes, "Islamic Law” in 18 volumes, and "Mu'jam Rijal al-Hadith" in 24 volumes. The last named is an authoritative work on evaluation of narrators of hadith. During the 8-year war imposed on Iran in the 1980s by the US through Saddam, he refused to yield to the Ba’thist minority regime’s pressures to denounce the Islamic Republic, even though his house was frequently subjected to water and electricity cuts. He passed away in Kufa in 1992, a year and some five months after Saddam brutally crushed popular uprising of the Iraqi people. It is believed the regime martyred him through poisoning.

115 solar years ago, on this day in 1903 AD, Panama Canal Treaty was concluded between the Republic of Panama and the US, on the basis of which, the strategic Canal was permanently leased to the US for a mere $10 million in cash and an annual payment of $250,000. The people of Panama, through their struggles, finally forced the US to revise the permanent lease contract in 1978, when US president, Jimmy Carter, and the president of Panama, Omar Torrijos, signed an agreement to give back the Canal to Panama towards the end of the year 1999. The Panama Canal is 68 km in length and links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. However, despite the US withdrawal, Panama continues to be considered by the US as its fiefdom.

101 solar years ago, on this day in 1926 AD, Irish thinker and playwright, George Bernard Shaw, refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." Instituted in 1895 by the Swedish chemist, who was dismayed by the epithet "merchant of death” which he acquired after inventing dynamite, the Nobel Prize was soon politicized and turned into a means for promotion of the West’s domineering, divisive, exploitative and murderous policies that led Bernard Shaw to criticize it. Interestingly, Shaw has made the following statements regarding Islam:

"If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam."

"I have always held the religion of (Prophet) Mohammad (SAWA) in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity.”

"I have prophesied about the faith of (Prophet) Mohammad (SAWA) that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”

72 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, Head of the Islamic seminary of holy Mashhad, Ayatollah Shaikh Morteza Ashtiyani, passed away at the age of 83 and was laid to rest in the mausoleum of Imam Reza (AS) – the 8th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). He completed his higher studies and reached the status of Ijtehad in holy Najaf, Iraq, where his teachers were the famous ulema, Mirza Habibollah Rashti, and Akhound Khorasani. On his return to Iran, he took up residence in Tehran for some years before shifting to holy Mashhad where he spent the last 25 years of his life, teaching and preaching.

62 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, Morocco became independent from the colonial rule of France, which had seized this Muslim country in 1921. Morocco covers an area of 458,730 sq km, and is located in northwestern Africa and the coastlines of Atlantic Ocean. Muslims constitute 99% of its population.

56 solar years ago, on this day in 1962, Danish scientist and physicist, Niels Bohr, died at the age of 82. He conducted atomic researches for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945.

55 solar years ago, on this day in 1963 AD, Colonel Abdus-Salaam Aref, with the help of the Ba'th Party, seized power in Iraq, by staging a coup and killing General Abdul-Karim Qasem. Abdus-Salaam Aref, after consolidating his power, purged the government of the Ba’th Party. In 1966, he was killed in a plane crash, while returning to Baghdad from Basra, where in a blasphemous speech he tried to ridicule the famous sermon of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), in the book "Nahj al-Balagha”, where Prophet Mohammad's (SAWA) 1st Infallible Successor censures the people of Basra for their unmanly characteristics in assisting the seditionists that had stirred the Battle of Jamal and shed Muslim blood. Abdus-Salaam Aref was replaced by his brother Abdur-Rahman Aref.

36 solar years ago, on this day in 1982 AD, Iraqi parties in exile met in Tehran to form the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) to free their homeland from the tyrannical rule of the Ba'th minority regime of Saddam. SAIRI was active in political and military circles against the Ba'thists during the 8-year war the US had imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran through Saddam. After the US and Britain turned against their protégé Saddam and dislodged him from power in 2003, SAIRI relocated its headquarters to Iraq, where a few months later, its charismatic leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Hakeem was martyred shortly after leading the Friday Prayer in Najaf in the holy shrine of the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS). It has now changed its name to Supreme Islamic Assembly of Iraq, and is led by Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Ammar Hakeem, nephew of Seyyed Mohammd Baqer Hakeem. The group is an active me7mber of the ruling coalition of Iraq.

(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)