Today is Monday; 17th of the Iranian month of Ordibehesht 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1439 lunar hijri; and May 7, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
2417 solar years ago, on this day in 399 BC, Greek philosopher Socrates was killed during imprisonment by being forced to drink poison because of rejecting the Athenian democratic regime’s tyranny and rejection of its demand to acknowledge its pantheon of gods. His preaching of moral virtue brought accusations of corrupting the youth.
1333 solar years ago, on this day in 685 AD, Marwan ibn al-Hakam, the fourth self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad regime died in Damascus at the age of 62, after nine months in power, which was limited mostly to Syria. He was killed by his most recent wife, a widow of the tyrant Yazid ibn Mu'awiyyah, who put a pillow on his face and sat over it till his breath was snuffed out. One of the most criminal characters in Islamic history, Marwan was the son of the hypocrite Hakam bin Aas, who because of ridiculing Islam was expelled from Medina by Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). He was the first cousin of Osman bin Affan, who on becoming caliph recalled him to Medina in violation of the Prophet’s Sunnah, gave his daughter in marriage to him, and entrusted him all affairs of the state. The resulting mismanagement and plunder of the public treasury ended some twelve years later in the killing of Osman by Muslim revolutionaries from Egypt. In the "Battle of Jamal" or Camel that the pledge-breakers led by Ayesha – a wife of the Prophet – imposed on the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali (AS), near Basra in Iraq, Marwan treacherously killed his own leader, Talhah Ibn Obaidollah, with an arrow shot at the unprotected thigh. When the Omayyads seized the caliphate he served as governor of Medina for intermittent periods, and stayed there after retirement until Abdullah ibn Zubayr rebelled against Yazid and made the mistake of allowing him and his son Abdul-Malik to leave for Damascus. In Syria, following Yazid’s death and abdication by his son Mu’awiyya II, in protest to his father’s crimes against Islam and humanity, including the tragic martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS) in Karbala, Marwan found himself propelled to the caliphate. His ascension pointed to a shift in the lineage of the Omayyad dynasty from descendants of Abu Sufyan to those of Hakam, both of whom were grandsons of Omayya. Some 67 years later, the Marwanids were thrown into the dustbin of history with the rise of the new dynasty of usurper caliphs, the Abbasids.
1185 solar years ago, on this day in 833 AD, the historian Abdul-Malik bin Hisham ibn Ayyub al-Himyari, died in Fustat (Cairo). His family was from Basra in southern Iraq and migrated to Egypt, where he became known as a grammarian and said to have mastered philology in a way which only the famous Iranian scholar of Arabic, Sibawayh had. Ibn Hisham compiled the "Sirah” or biography of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny). It is actually an edited version of the earlier "Sirah” compiled by Mohammad ibn Ishaq – grandson of Christian convert from Kufa. Ibn Hisham abbreviated, annotated, and altered the original text by adding what appealed to his inclination and removing several passages, however authentic. For instance, he deleted the hadith confirming Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) as "wasi” (or testamentary legatee), including the famous event in Mecca on revelation of ayah 214 of Surah Shu’ara when Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny) soon after his formal entrustment with prophethood, invited his kinsmen for meals and announced to them the message of Islam, declaring at the end of the function his young, pre-teen cousin, Imam Ali (AS) as brother, legatee and caliph. The historian Tabari has preserved such hadith, citing Ibn Ishaq's work as his source.
1054 lunar years ago,on this day in 385 AH, famous Islamic historian and bibliographer, Mohammad Ibn Is'haq Ibn an-Nadeem, passed away. He was a follower of the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt and the author of the famous encyclopedic work "al-Fehrist". In his own words, this work is "an Index of the books of all nations, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, which are extant in the Arabic language and script, on every branch of knowledge; comprising information as to their compilers and the classes of their authors, together with the genealogies of those persons, the dates of their birth, the length of their lives, the times of their death, the places to which they belonged, their merits and their faults, since the beginning of every science that has been invented down to the present epoch: namely, the year 377 of the Hijra." Ibn an-Nadeem's choice of the rather rare Persian word "pehrest" (Arabicized as fehrist/fehris) for the title of his masterpiece on Arabic literature is noteworthy. This work is ample testimony to his knowledge of pre-Islamic, Syriac, Greek, Sanskrit, Latin and Persian books. He gives the titles only of those books which he had seen himself or whose existence was confirmed by a trustworthy person.
587 lunar years ago, on this day in 852 AH, Ottoman Sultan Murad II decisively defeated a united European Christian Crusader army of 100,000 soldiers in the Second Battle of Kosovo, led by the king of Hungary, after three days of fierce fighting. The Crusaders arrived at the Kosovo Field, the same place the famous First Battle of Kosovo had occurred 60 years earlier between the Serbs and Ottomans, and resulted in Turkish domination of the Balkans. In this Second Battle of Kosovo, the 60,000-strong Muslim army completely destroyed the numerically superior Christian army, and five years later ended the existence of the tottering Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire by taking its capital Constantinople and renaming it Islambol (present day Istanbul).
531 solar years ago, on this day in 1487 AD, siege of the Spanish Muslim city of Malaqa was started by a huge Christian army of 20,000 cavalry, 50,000 infantry, and 8,000 support troops including thousands of mercenaries from other parts of Europe, as part of the attempts of Ferdinand of Aragon and his wife Isabel of Castile to occupy the prosperous Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The siege lasted about four months. Malaqa was the second important city after Granada, a major trading port on the Mediterranean. The city was prosperous, with elegant architecture, gardens and fountains. It was surrounded by fortifications. Above it was the citadel, connected via a covered way with the impregnable fortress of Gibralfaro. A landside suburb was also ringed by a strong wall. Towards the sea were orchards of olives, oranges, pomegranates, and vineyards. The city was well-supplied with artillery and ammunition. After the city surrendered, Ferdinand broke all terms and ordered that the survivors, numbering around 15,000 should be killed or enslaved. It is also worth noting that the Mamluks of Egypt, who had assembled a special force for assisting the Spanish Muslims, could not march to their aid, because of the divisive diplomacy of Christian powers, who fearful of the Ottoman advance into Italy and subsequently Spain, tempted the Turkish Sultan of Istanbul to get embroiled in an unwanted fratricidal war in Syria.
206 solar years ago, on this day in 1812 AD, English poet, Robert Browning, was born in London. His works include "The Piper of Hamelin" and "The Ring and the Book."
157 solar years ago, on this day in 1861 AD, India’s Bengali language poet and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore, was born. He travelled widely and wrote several books. He visited Iran and paid tributes to the famous Persian poet, Hafez Shirazi. Tagore travelled to Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran and Kermanshah in Iran, from where he went by road to Baghdad in Iraq. Tagore's personal diary and public interviews capture fascinating details of his political and social observations. At the mausoleum of Hafez, he wrote in his travelogue, "Sitting near the tomb, a signal flashed through my mind, a signal from the bright and smiling eyes of the poet on a long past spring day – akin to the springtime sunshine of today.” He celebrated his 71st birthday in Tehran and wrote a beautiful poem titled: "IRAN”, on the occasion. Part of his poem reads:
"Iran, thy brave sons have brought
Their priceless gifts of friendship
On this birthday of the poet of a far-away shore,
For they have known him in their hearts as their own,
And in return I bind this wreath of my verse
On thy forehead, and I cry: Victory of Iran!”
152 lunar years ago, on this day in 1287 AH, the great scholar, Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Najafi Isfahani, known as Masjid-Shahi, was born in the holy city of Najaf in Iraq. After attaining the status of Ijtihad, he came to Iran and settled in his ancestral city of Isfahan, where he engaged in teaching. In 1344 AH, on the invitation of Ayatollah Sheikh Abdul-Karim Ha’eri Yazdi, he went to holy Qom to help strengthen the revival of the Islamic seminary, and during his short stay of a year-and-a-half, before returning to Isfahan, he groomed several budding scholars, including the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA). Besides the principles of jurisprudence, Imam Khomeini and other scholars regularly studied under him the Critique of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Imam Khomeini had profound memories of Ayatollah Masjid-Shahi and in his book "Makaseb Muharramah” (Prohibited Professions) has quoted extensively from his teacher’s "Risalah Rawdhat al-Ghina”, which he considers the best work on the critique of music. He has also quoted this respected teacher as authority in his discourse on the terminology of the principles of jurisprudence concerning the sanctioned or lawful things. Ayatollah Masjid-Shahi, who authored some 34 books, was among the teachers who authorized Imam Khomeini to relate hadith as the latter has mentioned in his book "Arba’een” (Collection of Forty Hadith). Among Ayatollah Masjid-Shahi’s books is "Wiqayat al-Adhan”, "Naqd-e Falsafa-e Darwin” and "Amjadiyyah”. He was also an expert in Arabic literature, and a poet himself. He was laid to rest in the Takht-e Fulad Cemetery of Isfahan.
130 solar years ago, on this day in 1888 AD, on the pretext of trade, the crafty British established their foothold in what is now Zimbabwe, through the designs of the imperialist agent, Cecil Rhodes, who soon deceived the local African chiefs to declare the land as Britain’s colony. The British troops massacred thousands of black people and in 1898 named the land Southern Rhodesia – the land of Zambesi across the river of the same name was called Northern Rhodesia. In 1965 with the intensification of the freedom struggle by the black people, British agent, Ian Smith, seized power, brutally suppressed the people and involved them in civil war, as his white racist policy of divide and rule. In 1980, the country became independent as Rhodesia, and the colonial capital, Salisbury was renamed Harare. Today, independence leader, Robert Mugabe, is the president. Because of his independent policies, the US, Britain, and Western Europe, have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe’s economy, and indulge in feverish propaganda against him. Zimbabwe is rich in diamonds and minerals.
106 lunar years ago, on this day in 1333 AH, Ayatollah Mullah Mohammad Akhund Kashi, passed away at the age of 84 in Isfahan. A student of famous scholars such as Aqa Mohammad Reza Qomshe'i, Mullah Hassan Nouri, and Mullah Abdul-Jawad Khorasani, he became a prominent teacher and promoter of the philosophy of Mullah Sadra Shirazi. In addition to philosophy, he mastered mathematics, astronomy, jurisprudence, and Gnosis, and is reported to have displayed "karamaat” or supernatural abilities. He groomed several students he became outstanding ulema, such Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Abu’l-Hassan Isfahani, Ayatollah Seyyed Hassan Modarres, and Haj Aqa Rahim Arbab.
64 solar years ago, on this day in 1954 AD, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat and a Vietnamese victory after almost two months of fighting. The Viet Minh forces besieged Dien Bien Phu Castle, forcing Colonel Christian de Castries to surrender, thus ending French colonial rule over Vietnam. The meddlesome Americans, however, started interfering in Vietnam and on the pretext of spread of communism, landed troops, divided the country into two parts and imposed an unwanted war that dragged on till 1975, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Vietnamese, but ultimately ending in a humiliating defeat for the US.
27 solar years ago, on this day in 1991 AD, Iranian poet, author, and researcher, Mehrdad Avesta, passed away at the age of 62. He was an authority on the classical Persian poet Shaikh Sadi’s famous works "Bostan” and "Golestan”, in addition to Arabic grammar. He lectured on Iranian and global arts and literature at several colleges in Tehran. He started political activities against the repressive rule of the Pahlavi regime through his poems. He has written beautiful poems on the Islamic Revolution and in admiration of the Founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini (RA). He researched and published the works of prominent classical Persian poets, such as Hafez, Sa’di, Mowlavi, Khaqani, Sanaei, and Salman Saavoji.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)
1