Read history

A short book written at Huraymila

The composition of Kitab al-Tawhid is conventionally placed in 1736, though the sources support only a range. According to the early chronicler Ibn Ghannam, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab wrote it while residing at Huraymila in Najd.

The concise treatise set out his understanding of God's unity, of shirk, and of the religious consequences of particular acts and utterances, chiefly through Quranic passages and hadith reports.

It addressed theology and ritual rather than supplying a program of Islamic law for everyday life.

Read aloud, copied by hand

Students and sympathizers gathered to read its chapters with the author, and handwritten copies moved from one Najdi town to another.

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab had returned to the region after study and preaching elsewhere, especially in Basra, with a developed concern about practices he classified as violations of tawhid. Sources disagree about how directly particular teachers or writings produced the treatise.

What the year cannot carry

Abd Allah Salih al-Uthaymin's source study places the work in the Huraymila residence, says it was complete by the father's death in 1740, and states explicitly that how long before that it was finished cannot be determined. The workable bracket is probably after 1147 AH (1734/35) and completed by 1153 AH (1740).

The treatise was foundational to the movement, but it did not create a named, organized Wahhabism in a single moment.

Preaching had begun earlier; the book's wider prominence appears to have followed the father's death in 1740, and the alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud came around 1744.

16 December 1740: across the Silesian frontier

After quietly concentrating his army along the Oder, Frederick II led Prussian forces across the Habsburg Silesian frontier on 16 December 1740 without declaring war.

The troops entered in several columns near Grünberg, Frederick's own passing through Lasgen. By nightfall most of the army was on Silesian soil, spread across several columns to obtain quarters and supplies.

Proclamations, and the calculation behind them

Prussian proclamations posted and distributed during the advance claimed that the invaders came as friends and would protect peaceful Silesians' privileges.

Frederick invoked inherited claims, but his private notes emphasize opportunity, military superiority, territorial advantage and bargaining power. He wanted possession of Silesia before negotiating, and expected to negotiate through the winter with the province already in his hands.

What the columns actually held by January

The invasion force was roughly 27,000 to 28,000 troops, with Kurt Christoph von Schwerin commanding a major column. Maximilian Ulysses Browne had raised the Habsburg infantry in Silesia to about 7,000 by the crossing, up from around 3,000 infantry and 600 cavalry a month earlier.

Browne concentrated his limited defenders in fortified positions and withdrew other forces toward the southern frontier. Prussian columns advanced with little field resistance.

Silesia was not conquered on 16 December. Breslau accepted Prussian control in early January 1741, while Glogau, Brieg and Neisse remained contested.

1747: the return to Kandahar

In 1747, after Nader Shah's assassination, Ahmad Khan and other Afghan commanders returned toward Kandahar with troops and portable wealth. That left him with a decisive military and financial advantage over local rivals.

In the traditional account, a jirga of Pashtun chiefs assembled at the shrine of Sher-e Surkh, about 5 km southeast of Kandahar, selected Ahmad Khan as supreme chief, and soon afterwards crowned him Ahmad Shah.

Later coronation stories credit the religious figure Sabir Shah with placing wheat, barley shoots or greenery in Ahmad's turban or cap.

Nine men, or a national assembly

Jonathan Lee's more recent reconstruction rejects the national loya-jirga narrative. He describes a nine-man military council — seven Abdali commanders, one Tokhi Ghilzai representative and Nasir Khan of Kalat — that negotiated offices and privileges before publicly establishing an independent Sadozai kingdom.

Encyclopaedia Iranica retains the jirga account; Lee argues that contemporary evidence supports the closed council and that the national assembly at Sher-e Surkh is a later myth. Hajji Jamal Khan Barakzai challenged Ahmad's claim, and in Lee's account obtained an enduring governmental role for his lineage as part of the settlement.

Which month, and the name that came out of it

The date is not secure. Ganda Singh cites a letter dated 18 Rajab 1160 that already refers to Ahmad's coronation, placing it no later than July 1747, while Encyclopaedia Iranica puts the coronation near Kandahar in October.

The equation of 7 Shawwal 1160 with 1 October 1747 appears to use an Old Style conversion. Modern tabular Gregorian conversions give approximately 11 or 12 October, and observed lunar calendars can differ by a day.

At or soon after his accession Ahmad adopted the royal title Dorr-e Dorran, "Pearl of Pearls", and the Abdali confederation became known as Durrani.

20 May 1747, in the fore-hold of HMS Salisbury

On 20 May 1747, aboard HMS Salisbury with the Channel Fleet, the ship's surgeon James Lind selected twelve sailors who already had scurvy and began a prospective comparison of six treatments.

He described putrid gums, spots, lassitude and weak knees. Eighty of the roughly 350 men aboard had been affected during ten weeks away from shore.

Lind housed the twelve together in the fore-hold and put them on a common basic diet — gruel, broth, puddings, biscuit, barley, raisins, rice, currants, sago and wine — before assigning the six pairs different supplements.

Six remedies, two men each

The treatments were cider, elixir of vitriol, vinegar, seawater, oranges and lemons, and a compound containing ingredients such as garlic, mustard seed, horseradish, balsam of Peru and myrrh. Each was a remedy already advocated in Lind's time.

The citrus pair received two oranges and one lemon a day for as long as supplies lasted. They lasted six days.

What the six days showed, and what they did not

By the time the fruit ran out, one citrus-treated sailor was fit for duty and the other had recovered enough to nurse the remaining sick men. Lind judged cider the next-best treatment.

The comparison held quarters and base diet constant, but Lind reported no random allocation, no concealment, no blinding, no placebo and no untreated group. All twelve subjects were already ill, so what he tested was treatment rather than prevention.

The finding stayed shipboard evidence until Lind published his retrospective account in the 1753 first edition of A Treatise of the Scurvy, where it occupied only a few pages. The 20 May date comes from that account, not from a surviving day-of-trial protocol.

June 1751: the first delivery

Volume I of the Encyclopédie appeared in Paris in 1751 together with d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse. The University of Michigan's scholarly edition dates their appearance to 28 June.

The title page identified Denis Diderot as the work's organizer and publisher and Jean le Rond d'Alembert as responsible for its mathematical portion. Briasson, David l'aîné, Le Breton and Durand were the named Paris booksellers.

What came before the letter A

Ahead of the alphabetical entries, readers met d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse, a revised version of Diderot's prospectus, a contributor list, explanations of the system of knowledge, observations on Bacon's division of the sciences, and the celebrated knowledge tree.

Subscribers had already paid 60 livres; taking delivery of Volume I cost another 36. The prospectus had advertised ten folio volumes — eight of text and two of plates, containing 600 plates.

A print run overtaken within a month

Volume I was printed in a little over 2,000 copies. The critical ENCCRE edition reports nearly 1,500 subscribers by July 1751.

The exact day is not settled. June 28 comes from the University of Michigan edition and the title page is dated June 1751, but ENCCRE and the BnF give only June 1751, and another scholarly publication dates Le Breton's issue to 1 July.

The difference may be between appearance and formal release or sale.

27 January 1756, at Getreidegasse 9

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 at the family home at Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, to the Salzburg court musician Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Mozart, née Pertl.

He was their seventh and last child, and only the second — after Maria Anna, called Nannerl — to survive infancy. Two of the seven lived past their first years.

Not, in 1756, Austria

Salzburg was then an independent prince-archbishopric within the Holy Roman Empire rather than part of Austria. It lies in present-day Austria.

Leopold was a composer, violinist, teacher and musician in the Salzburg court establishment, and the family lived in the yellow house on the Getreidegasse. That building still preserves the birthplace rooms.

The name in the register

He was baptized in Salzburg Cathedral the next day, 28 January, under the Latinized names Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.

"Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" is the conventional modern name, not the exact form entered at baptism. Mozart himself later favoured forms including Wolfgang Amadé.

Before dawn, 13 September 1759

In the early hours of 13 September 1759, Major-General James Wolfe's British force landed at a cove west of Quebec, climbed the cliff path, overcame the small riverside guard and formed on the Heights of Abraham behind the city.

Soldiers in flat-bottomed boats had slipped beneath Quebec's cliffs while the fleet staged a diversion elsewhere. Disease was weakening Wolfe's army and the campaigning season was closing.

The volley on the plateau

The Marquis de Montcalm brought French regulars, Canadian militia and Indigenous allies out to confront Wolfe's army on the plateau. About 4,500 French troops took part; the British expedition numbered about 5,000.

Wolfe's regulars withheld their fire, then delivered disciplined volleys with double-loaded muskets. The French attack broke and retreated toward Quebec.

Two dying commanders, and a city that had not surrendered

Wolfe was mortally wounded and died on the field. Lieutenant Henry Browne, one of only four men known to have attended him, later wrote that Wolfe asked whether the enemy had been defeated and then died in his arms.

Montcalm was also mortally wounded, but reached Quebec and died on 14 September. Casualties were near-matched: about 640 French and about 650 British killed or wounded, by the National Army Museum's figures.

The British held the battlefield by the end of 13 September, but Quebec did not fall that day. Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay signed the city's capitulation on 18 September, with George Townshend and Admiral Charles Saunders signing for the British.

20 November 1759, off southern Brittany

On 20 November 1759, Admiral Sir Edward Hawke caught Hubert de Brienne, comte de Conflans, off southern Brittany while the French fleet was pursuing Commodore Robert Duff's smaller squadron.

Conflans broke off the pursuit and led his ships into reef-filled Quiberon Bay, expecting the storm, the shoals and the approaching darkness to deter Hawke. Hawke followed.

General chase, from about two in the afternoon

Hawke signalled line abreast and then a general chase, letting his captains attack without maintaining a conventional line of battle. The fleets engaged at about 14:00 — 23 British ships of the line against 21 French.

Formidable, the 80-gun flagship of the French rear division, struck its colours at about 16:00. Thésée and Superbe sank as worsening weather and gunfire threw the fleets into a confused melee.

Thésée heeled until seawater poured through her open lower gunports. About 600 men died, and Torbay's boats rescued 22.

What daylight found on the 21st

With darkness falling, Hawke disengaged for the night. French and British ships remained scattered among shoals, anchorages and groundings inside and around the bay, with sailors clinging to spars and improvised rafts in the surf.

On 21 November, Soleil Royal and Héros were burned, the British Resolution and Essex were found wrecked on the Four reef, and several French ships were trapped in the Vilaine.

Contemporary reports claimed roughly 10,000 people watched the battle from the nearby coast. The invasion for which 20,000 men had been assembled was abandoned.

8 September 1760: a signature, not an assault

On 8 September 1760, Governor General Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil signed articles capitulating Montreal and the French colonial government of Canada to Major-General Jeffery Amherst.

There was no storming of the city. Three armies had already converged — James Murray upriver from Quebec, Amherst down the St Lawrence from Lake Ontario, William Haviland by Lake Champlain and the Richelieu — bringing more than 18,000 British and allied troops against defenders who knew a bombardment would expose Montreal's civilians.

Arms on the parade ground

Under Article 1 the French troops had to lay down their arms and British troops were to take the gates immediately, the British garrison entering after the French evacuation.

Amherst refused the French regulars the customary honours of war. François-Gaston de Lévis protested that the condition dishonoured eight army battalions and two Marine battalions, but could not prevent the capitulation.

During the preceding night the French standard-bearers burned their regimental flags. On 8 September the troops deposited their weapons on the parade ground.

What the fifty-five articles covered

The terms let militia return home, protected property and Catholic religious practice, and arranged the departure of French officials and regular troops. In all, 55 articles addressed religion, property, archives, hospitals, officials and civilians.

3,116 French officers and soldiers were held as prisoners; with accompanying women, children and servants, more than 4,000 people passed into British care.

Organized French defence of Canada ended, but formal sovereignty awaited the 1763 peace treaty, and the document itself contemplated that Canada might be restored to France. The Restigouche garrison did not learn of the capitulation until 23 October and surrendered six days later.

Before dawn, 14 January 1761

Before dawn on 14 January 1761, Sadashivrao Bhau led the starving Maratha army south out of its encircled camp at Panipat, about 60 miles north of Delhi, to break Ahmad Shah Durrani's blockade. The armies met at about 8 a.m.

Durrani's October crossing of the Yamuna had cut the Marathas off from Delhi. After roughly two months of blockade their food was exhausted and soldiers were dying of starvation.

The hours when the Marathas looked like winning

Maratha cavalry broke through three lines of the Afghan centre, while Ibrahim Khan Gardi's French-trained infantry and artillery fought the Durrani right. Najib-ud-Daula's Rohilla contingent resisted a Maratha charge at a critical stage.

Ahmad Shah committed fresh troops as the attack lost momentum. At about 2:15 p.m. the Peshwa's son Vishwasrao was shot dead; Bhau then entered the close fighting and was killed, and Maratha resistance abruptly collapsed.

Through the night and into the 15th

Durrani's forces pursued the routed Marathas into their camp. Killing and plunder continued through the night and into 15 January; prisoners were executed and women and children were enslaved. Ibrahim Khan Gardi was captured after the battle and killed.

The expedition had numbered an estimated 45,000 to 60,000 soldiers, accompanied on the march by roughly 200,000 noncombatants. Deaths in the fighting are put at a disputed 60,000 to 70,000, and the historian T. S. Shejwalkar estimated that no fewer than 100,000 Maratha soldiers and noncombatants perished during and after the battle.

The often-repeated figure of about 40,000 prisoners killed comes through the account attributed to the eyewitness Kashi Raj. It remains an estimate.

6 June 1761: Venus crosses the Sun

Venus passed between Earth and the Sun in 1761 and appeared to cross the solar disk. At St Petersburg the event fell on 26 May in Russia's Julian calendar, equivalent to 6 June Gregorian; NASA labels the transit 5 June, because it straddled the civil-date boundary.

Astronomers at widely separated stations — the Cape of Good Hope, Newfoundland, Siberia, India, Rodrigues Island — recorded contact times and visual effects for solar-parallax calculations, following the program Edmond Halley had urged.

NASA's accounting gives 176 scientists at 117 stations, not the round 120 locations often quoted.

Getting to a station in wartime

Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon observed successfully from the Cape of Good Hope after a French attack prevented their expedition from reaching its intended destination in Sumatra.

Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche observed from Tobolsk in Siberia. John Winthrop, the Harvard professor, recorded the final portion of the transit from St John's, Newfoundland.

Lomonosov's bulge, and the argument about it

Mikhail Lomonosov observed from his own estate in St Petersburg, not the Imperial Academy's observatory, using a 4½-foot two-lens telescope and a deliberately light smoked-glass filter — he wanted to see the delicate moments when Venus touched the Sun's edge.

He reported a hair-thin brightness near ingress and a luminous bulge or flash near egress, and read them as refraction through a substantial atmosphere around Venus. He submitted his report on 4 July; 200 copies were published on 17 July 1761.

Priority is disputed. Pasachoff and Sheehan argue that Lomonosov was interpreting black-drop and instrumental effects; Shiltsev and later authors defend the atmospheric-aureole reading, and Chappe d'Auteroche, Torbern Bergman and Pehr Wargentin all reported effects that may have been genuine aureoles.

28 June 1762 Old Style, 9 July New

On 28 June 1762 in Russia's Julian calendar — 9 July Gregorian — Alexei Orlov brought Catherine from Peterhof to St Petersburg, where guards regiments acclaimed her as empress and swore allegiance.

She went on to the Winter Palace, where the Senate and Holy Synod recognized her and a manifesto and oath of allegiance were prepared. A decree issued in her name that day announced that she had taken the all-Russian throne and ordered officials to accept commands bearing only her signature.

Out of the capital in a guards uniform

Wearing a guards uniform, Catherine placed herself at the head of troops and moved toward Peterhof. Her memoirs claim about 14,000 guards and line soldiers in St Petersburg, and describe soldiers kissing her hands, feet and clothing as regiments transferred their loyalty.

Those memoirs are retrospective and self-justifying. Peter III, away from the capital, found that its political and military institutions had changed allegiance.

Abdication after proclamation

Catherine was proclaimed before Peter completed his abdication. He was arrested and forced to abdicate on 10 July Gregorian, then confined at Ropsha; her own formal coronation came later, in Moscow.

Peter died at Ropsha on 6 July Old Style, 17 July New Style — eight days after the coup. Murder is widely accepted, but the exact manner, the participants and Catherine's advance knowledge remain unresolved.

Catherine ended Peter's active alliance with Prussia, formally concluded on 19 June 1762, and withdrew Russian troops. She did not renew war against Frederick II.