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News ID: 39615
Publish Date : 16 May 2017 - 21:05

This Day in History (May 17)



Today is Wednesday; 27th of the Iranian month of Ordibehesht 1396 solar hijri; corresponding to 20th of the Islamic month of Sha’ban 1438 lunar hijri; and May 17, 2017, of the Christian Gregorian Calendar.
1071 solar years ago, on this day in 946 AD, al-Qa’em-be-Amrillah, the second self-styled caliph of the Fatemid Shi’a Muslim dynasty of Ifriqiya or what are now Tunisia, Algeria and Libya in northern Africa, died at the age 51 in Mahdiya in present day Tunisia after a 12-year reign, and was succeeded by his son, Ismail al-Mansur. Born in Salamiyah in Syria and named Abdur-Rahman by his father Abdullah who in 910 seized power in Ifriqiya and styled himself al-Mahdi-Billah in order to deceive the unsuspecting Berber Muslims, he led several unsuccessful campaigns into Abbasid Egypt from 914-to-921 that ended in heavy casualties. In 934, on the death of his father he became caliph after which he never again left the royal residence at Mahdia. In his reign, the Fatemid realm became an important power in the Mediterranean. After conquering Sicily, he carried out successful campaigns in the Byzantine province of Calabria and the southern coasts of Italy and France. But from 944 to 947 the realm was plunged into crisis by the revolt of the Kharejite or renegade from Abu Yazid, who led Berber tribes of the Aures Mountains of eastern Algeria. The Fatemids, who eventually conquered Egypt, founded the city of al-Qahera or Cairo, and occupied Syria and Hijaz, during their ruler of over two-and-a-half centuries, claimed descent from Ismail, the predeceased son of Imam Ja’far as-Sadeq (AS), the 6th Infallible Heir of Prophet Mohammad (blessings of God upon him and his progeny).
1053 lunar years ago,on this day in 385 AH, the 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.
586 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 Istanbul).
477 solar years ago, on this day in 1540 AD, the Battle of Bilgram near the town of the same name in northern India led to the resounding defeat of Mughal Emperor, Naseer od-Din Humayun, by the Afghan warlord Sher Khan Suri, who now became the master of Delhi and Agra and assumed the title of Sher Shah. Humayun, who could not use his artillery during the surprise attack because of heavy rains, barely escaped with his life and became a fugitive, finally fleeing to Iran to the court of Shah Tahmasp Safavi. Later, with Iranian military help, he returned to the Subcontinent and on the death of Sher Shah reclaimed the throne of Delhi.    
268 solar years ago, on this day in 1749 AD, English physician and surgeon, Edward Jenner, who discovered vaccination for smallpox, was born. There was a common story among farmers that if a person contracted a relatively mild and harmless disease of cattle called cowpox, immunity to smallpox would result. On 14 May 1796, he removed the fluid of cowpox from dairymaid Sarah Nelmes and inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, who soon came down with cowpox. Six weeks later, he inoculated the boy with smallpox. The boy remained healthy, proving the theory. He called his method vaccination, using the Latin words "vacca”, meaning cow, and "vaccinia”, meaning cowpox. Jenner also introduced into English the word "virus”.
212 solar years ago, on this day in 1805 AD, the Albanian general, Mohammad Ali Pasha, who was dispatched to Egypt by the Ottoman Sultan, following the withdrawal of Napoleon Bonaparte and his occupying French forces in 1801, officially proclaimed himself the "Khedive” (Persian for Viceroy or Ruler) of Egypt and Sudan by eliminating all rivals. During his almost half-a-century rule he transformed Egypt into a regional power which he saw as the natural successor to the decaying Ottoman Empire. He initiated wide ranging reforms and established for the first time a professional bureaucracy. In the 1820s, he sent the first educational mission of Egyptian students to Europe. This contact resulted in the birth of literature that is considered the dawn of the Arabic literary renaissance, known as the "an-Nahdha”. To support the modernization of the industry and the military, Mohammad Ali set up a number of schools in various fields where French texts were studied. Rifa'a at-Tahtawi supervised translations from French to Arabic on topics ranging from sociology and history to military technology. In 1835, Mohammad Ali Pasha founded the first indigenous press in the Arab World, the Bulaq Press, which published the official gazette of the government. Bulaq also published rare old Arabic books, as well as Persian and Turkish. He pursued military campaigns initially on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmoud II, in Arabia and Greece (capturing Athens in 1827 before the combined attack of the British-French forced him to retreat). Later he came into open conflict with the Ottoman Empire, because of his personal ambitions, which brought Syria under his control for ten years and made him advance as far as Konya in 1832. He launched the expedition into the Hijaz to liberate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from desert brigands of the Najd led by Abdullah ibn Saud, who followed the heretical Wahhabi cult and had desecrated the holy shrines. After purging the Hijaz of the Wahhabis, Mohammad Ali Pasha sent his son, Ibrahim, in 1812, to completely destroy and rout out the Aal-e Saud from Najd itself. After a two-year campaign, the Aal-e Saud clan was crushed and most of them captured. The leader, Abdullah ibn Saud, was sent to Istanbul, and executed for having desecrated the holy shrine of Imam Husain (AS) in Karbala, before his sacrilegious attack on the Hijaz. In short, Mohammad Ali established the dynasty that lasted till the military coup of 1952 and the ouster of King Farouq by General Mohammad Najib and Colonel Jamal Abd an-Nasser.
152 solar years ago, on this day in 1865 AD, in the presence of representatives of twenty countries in Paris and following the conclusion of first international contract in the domain of communications, the International Telegraph Union was founded and its international bylaw was prepared and approved. For this reason, this day is named as the International Communications Day. In 1932, according to decisions of the Madrid Conference, the International Telegraph Union was renamed International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and all its bylaws were reviewed. In 1947, ITU became a UN affiliate.
151 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.
108 solar years ago, on this day in 1909 AD, Dutch orientalist, Michael Jan de Goeje, died at the age of 73 after half-a-century of research and publication of several valuable Arabic works of Islamic geographers and historiographers, such as Seyyed Mohammad al-Hasani al-Idrisi of Sicily, and the Iranians Abu’l-Qasim Ibn Khordadbeh and Abu Ja’far Tabari. Born in Dronrijp, Friesland, he devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic. From 1860 to his death in 1909 he devoted himself to the edition – alone or in collaboration – of twenty Arabic texts, all with extensive indexes and Arabic-Latin glossaries. He also contributed to the work of other orientalists by careful proofreading and by revising books like William Wright’s "Grammar of the Arabic Language” and his edition of the "Re?la” or "Travels of Ibn Jobayr”. At the age of seventy-one, de Goeje accepted the editorship of the first edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam but was soon forced to resign owing to ill health; he did not live to see the first volume in print.
105 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.
78 solar years ago, on this day in 1939 AD, the British occupation authorities of Palestine released a so-called White Paper on the threshold of World War II for illegally settling 100,000 more European Zionists, as a prelude to the planting of the usurper state of Israel. The Palestinians rejected the plan, which they sensed was a prelude for complete occupation of their homeland. In 1942, in a conference held in the US, European Zionists formally called for the establishment of a usurper Jewish state in Palestine called Israel.
30 solar years ago, on this day in 1987, during the 8-year war imposed by the US on Islamic Iran through Saddam, Iraqi jetfighters fired missiles at the US Warship "Stark” killing 37 American soldiers and wounding scores of others. The Ba'th minority regime of Baghdad immediately offered apology to the US, and Washington which was in league with Saddam against Iran, quickly responded by calling the attack and the death of its soldiers as a case of mistaken identity. Experts believe Iraq’s missile attack on the USS Stark and the death of US personnel was preplanned by both Washington and Baghdad to portray the Persian Gulf region as unsafe so as to enable the US send more warships for intimidating the Islamic Republic of Iran.
8 solar years ago, on this day in 2009 AD, the prominent Source of Emulation, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Bahjat Foumani, passed away in Holy Qom at the age of 94 years. He was born in the city of Fouman, Gilan Province, in northern Iran, and completed his preliminary studies in his hometown. After learning Arabic, he left for the seminary of Holy Najaf in Iraq in 1929 for higher studies. He returned to Iran in 1945, and settled in Qom, lecturing on jurisprudence and theology, and grooming numerous students. His most important characteristic was his spotless piety that influenced every one. He was a highly knowledgeable Islamic scholar, and it is said he had been gifted by God with the vision for the unseen. He has left behind a large number of valuable compilations, including "Kitab-e Salaat” and "Jama'e al-Masa’el”.
(Courtesy: IRIB English Radio – http://parstoday.com/en)