April 3

April 3

Events

• 801 – King Louis the Pious captures Barcelona from the Moors after a siege of several months.

• 1997 – The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.

• 2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.

Births

• 1900 – Camille Chamoun, Lebanese lawyer and politician, 7th President of Lebanon (d. 1987)

• 1929 – Fazlur Rahman Khan, Bangladeshi engineer and architect, co-designed the Willis Tower and John Hancock Center (d. 1982)

• 1965 – Nazia Hassan, Pakistani pop singer-songwriter, lawyer and social activist (d. 2000)

• 1990 – Karim Ansarifard, Iranian footballer

• 1993 – Pape Moussa Konaté, Senegalese footballer

Deaths

• 1153 – al-Adil ibn al-Sallar, vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate

• 1325 – Nizamuddin Auliya, Sufi saint (b. 1238)

Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya (Urdu: سید محمد نظام الدین اولیاء‎‎; sometimes spelled Awliya; 1238 – 3 April 1325), also known as Hazrat Nizamuddin, and Mahbub-e-Ilahi (Urdu: محبوب الٰہی‎ lit. "Beloved of God") was an Indian Sunni Muslim scholar, Sufi saint of the Chishti Order, and is one of the most famous Sufis from the Indian Subcontinent.^[1] His predecessors were Fariduddin Ganjshakar, Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, and Moinuddin Chishti, who were the masters of the Chishti spiritual chain or silsila in the Indian subcontinent.

Nizamuddin Auliya, like his predecessors, stressed love as a means of realising God. For him his love of God implied a love of humanity. His vision of the world was marked by a highly evolved sense of religious pluralism and kindness.^[2] It is claimed by the 14th century historiographer Ziauddin Barani that his influence on the Muslims of Delhi was such that a paradigm shift was effected in their outlook towards worldly matters. People began to be inclined towards mysticism and prayers and remaining aloof from the world.^[3][4]

Holidays and Observances