This Day in History

(November 12)

Date: 11 November 2015 - 21:32

News ID: ۲۰۴۸۲

Today is Thursday; 21st of the Iranian month of Aban 1394 solar hijri; corresponding to 29th of the Islamic month of Muharram 1437 lunar hijri; and November 12, 2015, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
534 lunar years ago, on this day in 903 AH, the Iranian historian, Mohammad bin Khwandshah, popularly known as Mirkhwand, passed away in Herat, which was then part of Khorasan and is now in present day Afghanistan. He was from a well-known Seyyed family of Bukhara that traced its descent to Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Spending most of his life in Herat in the court of the last Timurid sultan, Hussain Bayqarah, Mirkhwand enjoyed he enjoyed the patronage of the renowned minister, Ali Shir Nava’i, a celebrated writer and poet himself. At the request of his patron, he wrote the general history titled "Rowzat os-Safa" (Garden of Purity). The work is composed of seven large volumes and a geographic appendix, sometimes considered an 8th volume. The history begins with the pre-Islamic Persian kings and surveys the major Muslim rulers of Iran up to his times. Mirkhwand’s maternal grandson, the historian Khwandamir, wrote a sequel to it, and in the 19th century the Iranian scholar Reza Qoli Khan Hedayat wrote a supplement to this work. Mirkhwand is often criticized for his highly embellished and bombastic style and for his uncritical approach to the sources, but his history preserves sections from earlier works that have since been lost. Volumes 5 and 6 are particularly reliable, for they utilize the abundant historiographic materials of the Mongol and Timurid periods and furnish independent information on events contemporary or near contemporary to the author’s lifetime.
286 solar years ago, on this day in 1729 AD, French navigator and scientist, Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born in Paris. He was also a man of action who fought in the Seven Years War and explored the Pacific Ocean. Accompanied by naturalists and astronomers, he made a voyage around the world from 1767 to 1769. He visited many of the islands of the South Pacific and compiling a scientific record of his findings. The largest of the Solomon Islands is named after him, as is the colourful tropical climbing plant bougainvillaea. He died on 31st August 1811 at the age 81.
249 solar years ago, on this day in 1766 AD, British colonialists led by Colonel Calliaud, imposed a treaty on Nizam Ali Khan Asaf Jah II of Haiderabad-Deccan, to occupy the districts of Elur, Chikakol, Guntur, Rajahmundry, and Muzaffarnagar on the Bay of Bengal coast, thus depriving India’s premier Muslim kingdom of access to international waters. The dubious treaty in order to involve Indian Muslim states in internecine warfare, allowed Nizam Ali Khan to attack Bangalore which was under the rule of Haider Ali Khan of Mysore. Until 1823, the Asaf Jahi dynasty actively claimed this region (known today as Andhra), which, along with the Rayalseema which first came under Muslim rule in 1471 during the eastward expansion of the Bahmani Empire of Iranian origin, and was later part of the Qotb-Shahi kingdom – also of Iranian origin.
175 solar years ago, on this day in 1840 AD, the acclaimed sculptor, Auguste Rodin, was born in Paris. In the following years, he created beautiful masterpieces, gaining fame as a major sculptor. He died in 1917.
122 solar years ago, on this day in 1893 AD, the treaty of the Durand Line delineating the border between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan was signed Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in British India, and the Afghan Amir Abdur-Rahman Khan. The Durand Line has gained international recognition as an international border between the two nations, although the Pashtun tribes inhabiting either side of the border, dispute it as a colonialist design to divide them.
119 solar years ago, on this day in 1896 AD, Indian ornithologist, Saleem Moiz od-Din Abdul Ali, popularly called the "Birdman of India,” for his conservation of India's biological diversity, was born in Bombay in a family of Ismaili Shi'ite Muslims. His love of birds began at age 10, when he started writing his observations. Eventually, he undertook professional education in ornithology. In 1930 he began a bird survey of the semi-independent state of Hyderabad-Deccan. By 1976, he had published several popular regional field guides of Indian birds for which he is famous. These surveys were based on extensive travels throughout India and Pakistan. The title of his autobiography "The Fall of a Sparrow” recalls the first sparrow that drew his interest as a boy. He died in 1987 at the age of 91.
118 solar years ago, on this day in 1897 AD, the Iranian poet, Ali Esfandiari, known by his penname of Nima Youshij, was born in the village of Yoush in Mazandaran Province, northern Iran. He later took up residence in Tehran, and learned French and Arabic. Upon the encouragement of one of his lecturers, he started composing modern poetry. He passed away in the year 1959 at the age of 62.
107 solar years ago, on this day in 1908 AD, Bulgaria, which was separated from the Ottoman Turkish Empire by the Russians and Europeans, thirty years earlier in 1878, was declared fully independent after over five centuries of Muslim rule. After World War II, Bulgaria became a socialist satellite state of the Soviet Union, and carried out a systematic persecution of its large Muslim population. After the end of communism, it adopted a capitalist system and became part of the European Union. Bulgaria covers an area of 111000 sq km, and is located in the Balkan region, in southeastern Europe. It shares borders with Romania, Republic of Serbia, Greece, Macedonia, and Turkey. Its capital is Sofia.
97 solar years ago, on this day in 1918 AD, Austria was declared a republic, following the defeat and collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I.
77 lunar years ago, on this day in 1360 AH, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, passed away. A product of the seminary of holy Najaf in Iraq, on his return home, he was active in the northwestern parts of Iran. He groomed many scholars, including his son, Seyyed Mohammad Hojjat Kuh-Kamarei, who was a a marja’ or Source of Emulation of his times.
59 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, Zionist troops committed another massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp in the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. This slaughter continued for several days even after announcement of ceasefire in the war Israel had imposed on Egypt in league with Britain and France. In this ruthless massacre, 110 Palestinian women, men, and children were martyred and almost 1,000 others injured.
59 solar years ago, on this day in 1956 AD, the largest iceberg on record was sighted by the USS Glacier, a Navy icebreaker, about 150 miles west of Scott Island in the Southern Hemisphere. It had broken from the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. Its size was about the size of Belgium – that is, 335 km long and 96 km wide. This record iceberg was many times larger than any seen in the Northern Hemisphere, where the largest iceberg on record was encountered near Baffin Island in 1882.
46 solar years ago, on this day in 1969 AD, Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s 1st President of Pakistan died in London at the age of 70 years. In 1958 he was deposed in a bloodless coup by General Ayub Khan, who was his own appointee as martial law enforcer 20 days earlier. Iskander Mirza belonged to the ruling family of Iranian origin of Murshidabad in Bengal. His body was brought to Iran and buried in the mausoleum of Seyyed Abdul-Azim al-Hassani in Rayy, near Tehran.
46 solar years ago, on this day in 1969 AD, during the Vietnam War, independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story Massacre, over a year and a half after the massacre was carried out. Of the 22 cowardly US soldiers involved in sadistic savagery at My Lai village on 16th March 1968, only Lt. William Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the cold-blooded killing of 109 Vietnamese men, women and children, including infants. Some of the bodies were later found to be mutilated and many women raped prior to the killings. The massacre prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in 1969. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Three US servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by several US Congressmen as traitors in an attempt to cover up the massacre. They received hate mail and death threats. The three were later widely praised and decorated by the army for their heroic actions. As for the chief culprit William Calley, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest before being released, which shows the highly flawed nature of justice in the US.
42 solar years ago, on this day in 1973 AD, Iranian scholar Reza Rouzbeh passed away at the age of 52 due to cancer as a result of radioactive effects of chemical experiments in laboratory. Born in Zanjan, after completing religious studies in jurisprudence, logics, and philosophy, he enrolled at the university and graduated in physics. He started his profession as a teacher but refused to teach at the university, and established an Islamic school for grooming youngsters. He authored several books, including "Proofs of Cognition of God”, "Vilayat” or divinely-decreed authority of the Infallible Imams, and "Arabic Simplified”.
19 solar years ago, on this day in 1996 AD, A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collided in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349 people. It is the deadliest mid-air collision to date
7 solar years ago, on this day in 2008 AD, Iran successfully test-fired the Sajjil, a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missile using solid fuel, making them more accurate than its predecessors. It has a range of about 2,000 km.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://english.irib.ir)