Islamic calendar

The Islamic calendar or Muslim calendar (also called 'Hijri calendar') is the calendar used to date events in predominantly Muslim countries, and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Muslim holy days. It is a purely lunar calendar having 12 lunar months in a year of about 354 days. Because this lunar year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, Muslim holy days, although celebrated on fixed dates in their own calendar, usually shift 11 days earlier each successive solar year, such as a year of the Gregorian calendar. Islamic years are also called Hijra years because the first year was the year during which the Hijra occurred—Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina. Thus each numbered year is designated either H or AH, the latter being the initials of the Latin anno Hegirae (in the year of the Hijra).

Numbering the years

Abraha, a governor of Yemen, then a province of the Christian nation of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia), attempted to destroy the Kaaba with an army which included an elephant (possibly several). Although the raid was unsuccessful, the elephant so impressed the Meccans that that year became known as the Year of the Elephant, which was also the year that Muhammad was born. (See surat al-Fil.) Although most Muslims equate it with the Western year 570, a minority equate it with 571. Later years were numbered from the Year of the Elephant, whether for the years of the pre-Islamic lunisolar calendar, the lunisolar calendar used by Muhammad before he forbade the intercalary month, or the first few years of the lunar calendar thus created. In 638 (AH 17), the second Caliph Umar began numbering the years of the Islamic calendar from the year of the Hijra, which was postdated AH 1. The first day of the first month (1 Muharram) of that proleptic Islamic year, that is, after the removal of all intercalary months between the Hijra and Muhammad's prohibition of them nine years later, corresponded to July 16, 622 (the actual emigration took place in September). The first surviving attested use of the Hijri calendar is on a papyrus from Egypt in 22 AH, PERF 558.

Related Topics:
Yemen - Christian - Ethiopia - Kaaba - Elephant - Year of the Elephant - Sura - Al-Fil - 570 - 571 - 638 - Umar - July 16 - 622 - PERF 558

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