This Day in History (April 17)

Date: 16 April 2018 - 20:29

News ID: ۵۱۸۲۷

Today is Tuesday; 28th of the Iranian month of Farvardin 1397 solar hijri; corresponding to 30th of the Islamic month of Rajab 1439 lunar hijri; and April 17, 2018, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1274 solar years ago, on this day in 744 AD, Waleed II, the 11th self-styled caliph of the usurper Omayyad regime, was killed after a reign of a year and two-and-a-half months, because of his immoral habits. On assuming power he had ordered his forces in Khorasan to harass Yahya Ibn Zayd, the grandson of Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) – the 4th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). Yahya was martyred in a battle in Jowzajan, which is presently in Afghanistan, and his severed head was sent to Damascus, where it is believed to be buried in the Omayyad Mosque in the spot which is mistakenly known today as the tomb of Prophet Yayha (John the Baptist). He built in his palace a fountain of wine in which he used to take dips. On one occasion he threw the holy Qur’an and riddled it with a volley of arrows. Once, in the state of intoxication and in the act of cohabiting with a drunken concubine, when he heard the call for the Fajr Prayer, he promptly asked the ritually unclean woman to put on his clothes, enter the mosque, and lead the Morning Prayer. In a famous hadith, Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) had foretold about this ungodly Omayyad ruler by name, and called him the Pharaoh of the ummah. Eventually Waleed II was besieged in al-Aghdaf in what is now Jordan and killed by his own forces.
1235 lunar years ago, on this day in 204 AH, the jurisprudent, Mohammad bin Idris ash-Shafe’i, who founded the Shafe’i School, passed away in Fustat, Egypt at the age of 54, as a result of injuries sustained from an attack by supporters of a scholar named Fityan, who was follower of the Maleki School of Jurisprudence. Born near Asqalan in Gaza, in the Banu Muttalib clan – a sister clan of the famous Banu Hashem – he lost his father in childhood and grew up in poverty. His Yemeni mother moved to Mecca where he had his basic education, before shifting to Medina to learn about Islam. He became a student of Malek ibn Anas, who had studied for sometime under Imam Ja’far as-Sadeq (AS), the 6th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (SAWA), before deviating and founding the Maleki School. He was taken in chains to the tyrant Haroun Rashid in Raqqa in Syria on charges of supporting the Alawis or descendants of Imam Ali (AS).The Chief Judge, Shaybani, used his influence to acquit him. He settled in Baghdad, where he set up his own school of jurisprudence in opposition to the schools of Abu Hanifa and Malek. Under pressure from the Hanafis, he left Baghdad for Egypt in 198 AH. Perhaps, because of fear of the repressive Abbasid regime, Shafe’i failed to establish direct contact with Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS) and Imam Ali ar-Reza (AS), respectively the Prophet’s 7th and 8th Infallible Heirs, and thus could not ascertain the authenticity of the legal code he had learned and collected. Nonetheless, in obedience to the Prophet’s famous Hadith Thaqalayn, he was deeply influenced by the blessed Ahl al-Bayt, and has explicitly stated that the daily ritual prayer is invalid if salawaat or blessings are not sent on the Prophet’s progeny in the tashahhud. He says in this regard in a quatrain:
"O Ahl Bayt of the Prophet of Allah! Allah has decreed your love obligatory for us in the revealed Qur'an; It is sufficient for your dignity (that); His (ritual) prayer is invalid, if there is no blessings sent upon you."
In many of his Arabic poems, Shafe’i has shown his devotion to the Prophet’s divinely-decreed vicegerent Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS),
"They say: You are a Rafedhi (heretic), I say: No; Never did I reject my religion or my belief; But in my heart without the least doubt; There is much love (and respect) for the Greatest Leader (Imam Ali); If loving the Wali of Allah (Friend of God) is Rafdh; Then I am the foremost Rafedhi!
He has also said:
"When I saw different creeds and jurisprudential schools steering towards ignorance and misguidance; I embarked in the Name of God on the Ark of Salvation; That is the progeny of Mustafa the Seal of Prophets; And got hold of the Divine Rope which is the very love of them; Indeed, God commands us to hold fast to the (Divine) Rope.
Today, the Shafe’i School of jurisprudence is followed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, southern parts of India, and the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.
669 solar years ago, on this day in 1349 AD, with the murder of Fakhr od-Dowla Hassan II, the Bavand dynasty of Mazandaran came to its end, and Kiya Afrasiyab, who had defeated the Bavandid army crowned himself the first ruler of the new Afrasiyabi dynasty – which ended 155 years later in 1504 with the annexation of Mazandaran by Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid Empire.
621 solar years ago, on this day in 1397 AD, Geoffrey Chaucer of England recited for the first time his magnum opus "The Canterbury Tales” at the court of King Richard II, in the colloquial language of the ordinary English masses, rather than the church language Latin or the court language French, thus paving the way for emergence of English as the official language of the people of England.
228 solar years ago, on this day in 1790 AD, US politician, inventor, diplomat, and printer, Benjamin Franklin, died at the age of 84. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America that was set up by the 13 rebellious New England colonies, he was born in Boston to British parents. He became widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented the lightning rod, and a type of stove – still being manufactured – to give more warmth than open fireplaces. Bifocal eyeglasses were his ideas as well. When the colonies rebelled against the British crown, he became an ardent supporter of independence, served as diplomat both at home and in Europe, and was regarded as second only to President George Washington in power and prestige. Franklin emphasized that the US could survive only if the people were virtuous, followed religious rules in both personal and civic life, and abstained from corruption, oppression, violence, and immoralities – all of which are dragging the US today towards its eventual doom.
138 solar years ago, on this day in 1880 AD, British archeologist of Mesopotamia, Charles Leonard Woolley, was born. His excavations during 1922-to-1934 of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur in modern Iraq and the burial sites, greatly advanced knowledge of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, enabling scholars to trace the history of the city from its final days during the 4th century BC back to its prehistoric beginnings (around 4000 BC). His finds revealed much about everyday life, art, architecture, literature, government, and religion in the cradle of civilization. In royal tombs dating from about 2700 BC, he uncovered the practice of the sacrificial burial of a deceased king's personal retinue. He discovered tombs of great material wealth, gold and silver jewelry, large paintings of ancient Mesopotamian culture at its zenith, and other furnishings. The most extravagant tomb of Queen Pu-Abi was untouched by the hands of looters through the millennia, with many well-preserved items, including a cylindrical seal bearing her name in Sumerian. His widely read book titled "Ur of the Chaldees” is a record of seven years of excavation, described his findings in a manner both informative to specialists and accessible by lay-persons.
123 solar years ago, on this day in 1895 AD, Japan forced upon China the Treaty of Shimonoseki, marking the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, and compelling the defeated Qing Empire to renounce its claims on Korea and to concede the southern portion of the Fengtien province, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands to Japan. Japan’s arrogantly imperialist attitude towards China and Korea led to destructive wars and massive killing of people.
103 solar years ago, on this day in 1915 AD, chemical gases were used for the first time in a war. In this inhuman measure, which took place during World War I, German forces attacked British and French forces with chemical gas, killing a large number of them. Following the end of World War I, the use of chemical weapons was banned as per international treaties, but this did not prevent the US to use chemicals against the Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s. The US, along with Germany, also supplied internationally-banned chemical weapons to Saddam for use against Iran during the 1980-88 imposed war. In addition to martyring and maiming a large number of Iranian civilians and combatants, while the UN and the West turned a blind eye to his crimes, Saddam also used chemical weapons on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabche massacring over 5,000 men, women, and children, and maiming more than 10,000 others, for welcoming the Iranian combatants as liberators from Ba’thist rule.
72 solar years ago, on this day in 1946 AD, the last French troops left Syria following formal recognition of its independence earlier in the year. Bilaad ash-Shaam or Greater Syria, which for four centuries had been occupied by the Ottoman Turks, was seized by the Allied powers of Britain and France in 1917 during World War I. The victors divided Syria between them, with the British creating Jordan and Palestine, and the French creating present-day Syria and Lebanon. Following independence from colonial rule, Syria went through instability for 24 years with frequent coups, counter-coups and overthrow of military and civilian governments that saw the rise and fall of more than a dozen regimes. The situation was stabilized and progress became possible, only with the coming to power in 1970 of President Hafez al-Assad, who during his 30-year rule made Syria a strong bulwark of resistance against the designs of the West and the illegal Zionist entity. He was succeeded in 2000 by his son, Dr. Bashshar al-Assad, who for the past 18 years has ably led the country, although at present he is facing an insurrection and state-sponsored terrorism incited by the US, Britain, France, Israel, Turkey and Arab reactionary states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
57 solar years ago, on this day in 1961 AD, following failure of their diversionary landing near Baracoa, Oriente Province, over 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban anti-revolutionaries, launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Cuban forces killed 200 rebels and captured 1,197 in less than 72 hours. The command vessel Marsopa and supply ship Houston were sunk and an entire battalion was lost. A single copy of a CIA report written by inspector general Lyman Kirkpatrick was made public in 1998. The operation, which had been devised during the Eisenhower Administration, was nonetheless endorsed by the new president, John F. Kennedy.
43 solar years ago, on this day in 1975 AD, the US-backed Lon Nol regime of Cambodia surrendered to the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodia). Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, occupied the capital Phnom Penh ending Cambodia's five-year war. He renamed the country "Democratic Kampuchea”, thus beginning his brutal rule that resulted in the death of some three million people or approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population, through executions, forced labour, malnutrition and poor medical care.
14 solar years ago, on this day in 2004 AD, Palestinian activist and Leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Dr. Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, was martyred when the car carrying him was targeted with missiles by Zionist choppers. Born in Palestine in 1947, he graduated in medicine from Egypt’s Alexandria University in 1967, and joined the struggle against the usurper state of Israel. He was imprisoned, tortured and exiled to "no man’s land” on the frontier of Occupied Palestine with southern Lebanon, where the contact of Rantisi and his group with members of the legendry anti-terrorist movement, the Hezbollah, positively changed their outlook, and infused new spirit into Hamas.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)