Islamic Calendar depends on the movement of the moon. The beginning of each month is marked by the observance of a new moon seen for the first time. Visibility of the new moon depends on various factors such as weather hence; Islamic Calendar is only an estimate of the future Islamic events.
IslamicFinder provides the most accurate Islamic calendar with special Islamic days and events tracking. You can convert Hijri dates to Gregorian and vice versa and change Hijri date settings to adjust and customize your calendar within a few clicks. less
You can also explore the traditional "Deirat Al Doror" calendar in an interactive format through which you can learn about each Dur, the calculation of Suhail, Ṭāli's, Zodiacs, seasons, and the climatic and natural features of each of them.
The Hijri year (Arabic: سَنة هِجْريّة) or era (التقويم الهجري at-taqwīm al-hijrī) is the era used in the Islamic lunar calendar. It begins its count from the Islamic New Year in which Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina) in 622 CE. This event, known as the Hijrah, is commemorated in Islam for its role in the founding of the first Muslim community (ummah).
The Hijri era is calculated according to the Islamic lunar calendar, whose epoch (first year) is the year of Muhammad's Hijrah, and begins on the first day of the month of Muharram (equivalent to the Julian calendar date of July 16, 622 CE).[2] [b]
By the age of Muhammad, there was already an Arabian lunar calendar, with named months. Likewise, the years of its calendar used conventional names rather than numbers:[3] for example, the year of the birth of Muhammad and of Ammar ibn Yasir (570 CE) was known as the "Year of the Elephant".[4] The first year of the Hijra (622-23 CE) was named the "Permission to Travel" in this calendar.[3]
17 years after the Hijra,[3][5] a complaint from Abu Musa Ashaari prompted the caliph Umar to abolish the practice of named years and to establish a new calendar era. Umar chose as epoch for the new Muslim calendar the hijrah, the emigration of Muhammad and 70 Muslims from Mecca to Medina.[6] Tradition credits Othman with the successful proposal, simply continuing the order of the months that had already been established by Prophet Muhammad, beginning with Muharram,[citation needed] as there was no set order of months during the pre-Islamic era (Age of Ignorance - Jahiliya). Adoption of this calendar was then enforced by Umar.[7]
Given that the Islamic New Year does not begin January 1 and that a Hijri calendar year is about 11 days shorter than a Gregorian calendar year,[11][c] there is no direct correspondence between years of the two eras. A given Hijri year will usually fall in two successive Gregorian years. A CE year will always overlap two or occasionally three successive Hijri years. For example, the year 2008 CE maps to the last week of AH 1428,[13] all of 1429,[14] and the first few days of 1430.[15] Similarly, the year 1976 CE corresponded with the last few days of AH 1395, all of 1396, and the first week of 1397.
The Hijri year has twelve months, whose precise lengths vary by sect of Islam. Each month of the Islamic calendar commences on the birth of the new lunar cycle. Traditionally this is based on actual observation of the moon's crescent (hilal) marking the end of the previous lunar cycle and hence the previous month, thereby beginning the new month. Consequently, each month can have 29 or 30 days depending on the visibility of the moon, astronomical positioning of the earth and weather conditions. However, certain sects and groups, most notably Bohras Muslims namely Alavis, Dawoodis and Sulaymanis and Shia Ismaili Muslims, use a tabular Islamic calendar in which odd-numbered months have thirty days (and also the twelfth month in a leap year) and even months have twenty nine.
The Hijri calendar (Arabic: ٱلتَّقْوِيم ٱلْهِجْرِيّ, romanized: al-taqwīm al-hijrī), also known in English as the Muslim calendar and Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual fasting and the annual season for the great pilgrimage. In almost all countries where the predominant religion is Islam, the civil calendar is the Gregorian calendar, with Syriac month-names used in the Levant and Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine) but the religious calendar is the Hijri one.
This calendar enumerates the Hijri era, whose epoch was established as the Islamic New Year in 622 CE.[1] During that year, Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina and established the first Muslim community (ummah), an event commemorated as the Hijrah. In the West, dates in this era are usually denoted AH (Latin: Anno Hegirae, "in the year of the Hijrah").[a] In Muslim countries, it is also sometimes denoted as H[2] from its Arabic form (سَنَة هِجْرِيَّة, abbreviated ھ). In English, years prior to the Hijra are denoted as BH ("Before the Hijra").[3]
For central Arabia, especially Mecca, there is a lack of epigraphical evidence but details are found in the writings of Muslim authors of the Abbasid era. Inscriptions of the ancient South Arabian calendars reveal the use of a number of local calendars. At least some of these South Arabian calendars followed the lunisolar system. Both al-Biruni and al-Mas'udi suggest that the ancient Arabs used the same month names as the Muslims, though they also record other month names used by the pre-Islamic Arabs.[6][which?]
Different interpretations of the concept of Nasī' have been proposed.[9] Some scholars, both Muslim[10][11] and Western,[6][7] maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar. According to this view, Nasī' is related to the pre-Islamic practices of the Meccan Arabs, where they would alter the distribution of the forbidden months within a given year without implying a calendar manipulation. This interpretation is supported by Arab historians and lexicographers, like Ibn Hisham, Ibn Manzur, and the corpus of Qur'anic exegesis.[12]
Others concur that it was originally a lunar calendar, but suggest that about 200 years before the Hijra it was transformed into a lunisolar calendar containing an intercalary month added from time to time to keep the pilgrimage within the season of the year when merchandise was most abundant. This interpretation was first proposed by the medieval Muslim astrologer and astronomer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, and later by al-Biruni,[8][14] al-Mas'udi, and some western scholars.[15] This interpretation considers Nasī' to be a synonym to the Arabic word for "intercalation" (kabīsa). The Arabs, according to one explanation mentioned by Abu Ma'shar, learned of this type of intercalation from the Jews.[7][8][14] The Jewish Nasi was the official who decided when to intercalate the Jewish calendar.[16][full citation needed] Some sources say that the Arabs followed the Jewish practice and intercalated seven months over nineteen years, or else that they intercalated nine months over 24 years; there is, however, no consensus among scholars on this issue.[17][full citation needed]
The prohibition of Nasī' would presumably have been announced when the intercalated month had returned to its position just before the month of Nasi' began. If Nasī' meant intercalation, then the number and the position of the intercalary months between AH 1 and AH 10 are uncertain; western calendar dates commonly cited for key events in early Islam such as the Hijra, the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud and the Battle of the Trench should be viewed with caution as they might be in error by one, two, three or even four lunar months. This prohibition was mentioned by Muhammad during the farewell sermon which was delivered on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah AH 10 (Julian date Friday 6 March 632 CE) on Mount Arafat during the farewell pilgrimage to Mecca.[citation needed]
The three successive sacred (forbidden) months mentioned by Prophet Muhammad (months in which battles are forbidden) are Dhu al-Qa'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, and Muharram, months 11, 12, and 1 respectively. The single forbidden month is Rajab, month 7. These months were considered forbidden both within the new Islamic calendar and within the old pagan Meccan calendar.[20][6][21][22][23]
Each month of the Islamic calendar commences on the birth of the new lunar cycle.[24] Traditionally, this is based on actual observation of the moon's crescent (hilal) marking the end of the previous lunar cycle and hence the previous month, thereby beginning the new month. Consequently, each month can have 29 or 30 days depending on the visibility of the Moon, astronomical positioning of the Earth and weather conditions.[c]
F A Shamsi (1984) postulated that the Arabic calendar was never intercalated. According to him, the first day of the first month of the new fixed Islamic calendar (1 Muharram AH 1) was no different from what was observed at the time. The day the Prophet moved from Quba' to Medina was originally 26 Rabi' I on the pre-Islamic calendar.[30] 1 Muharram of the new fixed calendar corresponded to Friday, 16 July 622 CE, the equivalent civil tabular date (same daylight period) in the Julian calendar.[31][32] The Islamic day began at the preceding sunset on the evening of 15 July. This Julian date (16 July) was determined by medieval Muslim astronomers by projecting back in time their own tabular Islamic calendar, which had alternating 30- and 29-day months in each lunar year plus eleven leap days every 30 years. For example, al-Biruni mentioned this Julian date in the year 1000 CE.[33] Although not used by either medieval Muslim astronomers or modern scholars to determine the Islamic epoch, the thin crescent moon would have also first become visible (assuming clouds did not obscure it) shortly after the preceding sunset on the evening of 15 July, 1.5 days after the associated dark moon (astronomical new moon) on the morning of 14 July.[34]
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