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The History
of the Islamic Calendar in the Light of the Hijra
Hakim Muhammad Said
Vol X No. 1 , Spring 1984
Reprinted, by courtesy of the editor, from
Hamdard Islamicus
,
vol. IV, no.3 {1981)
The course of history is generally thought to be along a progressive path,
but there are occasions when its progress seems to come to a standstill,
and it becomes quiescent and inactive. The release of energy in such situations
is converted into entropy, i.e. energy that cannot be used.
Such situations and occasions are those that are opposed and are antithetical
to the dynamism of history, its usual characteristic. When man, forgetting
his Creator and his Benefactor, takes to the worship of the outward phenomena
of nature and begins to ascribe the attributes of Deity to man and prostrates
himself before human beings who temporarily hold the reins of power, he
becomes increasingly prone to the violation of God's laws, thereby generating
conflict on earth and tending to ignore moral laws and ethics. He becomes,
then, averse to light and takes to the worship of darkness. The course
of history, in such a situation, becomes static. Such inertia is not the
one that is opposed to dynamics but represents that inactivity-as has its
birth in conflict and confusion. History in such a situation seems to assume
the state of a spectator gazing at this spectacle with amazement and disappointment,
and in utter dejection casts a look at the sky to find out what it has
further in store for it.
Perhaps, it is in such circumstances that the Heavenly Court decides
how to do away with the obstacles that lay athwart the path of progress
and to remove these impediments cluttering up the course of history. These
impediments are represented and epitomized by regressive, retrograde and
unnatural cultures.
God Almighty has Himself pointed to the condign punishments that visit
nations violating His laws. And so we are told:
So We took each one in his sin; of them was he on whom We sent a
hurricane, and of them was he who was overtaken by the (awful) cry, and
of them was he whom We caused the earth to swallow, and of them was he
whom We drowned. It was not for Allah to wrong them, but they wronged themselves.
(129: 40).
The period of life which the Prophet (peace be unto him) passed among
the hard-hearted and unrelenting people of Mecca represented an era in
which the caravan of history seems to have come to a stop, becoming static.
When we examine the age, it seems as if the ever moving caravan of life
is awaiting some terrible fate at the hands of heaven in the shadow of
the hot mountains and feverish rocks. Such a decision is at last manifested.
But the raison d'etre for such a judgement was the person whom God Himself
designated as
Rahma lil-'Alimin'
and the maximum extent to which
his anger and displeasure could go was to turn his countenance away from
his adversary. His compassion, his mercy, and his tolerance are also reflected
in the code of laws which were made to descend upon him. It was, therefore,
decided by God Himself that the polytheists of Mecca be spared destruction
used in all the other forms.
Al-Hurmuzan
, then, explained to them
how to use 'Umar, (however), said: "Give the people an era which they can
use in business and which permits them an exact indication of the date
in the mutual dealings". A Jewish convert to Islam who was present said:
"we (Jews) have a similar calculation which we ascribe to Alexander". The
others, however, did not like that era, because it was too far back. Some
were for the adoption of the Persian era. It was, however, objected that
the Persian era had no fixed epoch year and always stared entirely anew
with the ascension (to the throne) of each new king. An agreement was reached
to institute the era of the rule of Islam, beginning with the
Hijra
of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina. There are no such differences of opinion
with regard to the date of the
Hijra
as there are with regard to
the time when the call first came to Muhammad and with regard to the day
and year of his birth. And although the date of his death is fixed, it
is no pleasant thought to use (such a sad event) as the beginning of the
era. The
Hijra
, moreover, coincided in time with the success of
the religion (
millah
) of Islam, the frequent arrival of embassies,
and the Muslim ascent to Power. It is a time of blessings and a very impressive
(historical) event. The
Hijra
took place on Tuesday, Rabi 1, 8th.
The first of that year -that is, al-Muharram-fell on a Thursday according
to the average (calculation). After this had become generally known, it
was considered (the correct date). However, according to observation (of
the new moon) and astronomical(?) calculation, the day fell on a Friday.
The author of the
Nihayat al-idrak
said that (the
Hijra
)
was used, and for all future times the era was counted from it. Agreement
on this matter was reached in the year 17 of the
Hijra
, the fourth
year of the caliphate of 'Umar. Until then, each year (after the
Hijra
)
was called after its main event, and this was used for dating purposes.
The first year of the Prophet's residence in Medina was thus called: 'The
permission to travel'. The second year was called: 'The year of the command
to fight'. The third year: 'The year of the test', and so on. Afterwards,
the custom of naming the year after the main events was abandoned.
'Ubayd b. 'Umayr said: "Al-Muharram is the month of God. It is the beginning
of the year. It is used as the beginning of the era. In al-Muharram, the
Ka'bah is clothed, and money is coined. There is one day in al-Muharram
on which repenting sinners are forgiven".
A tradition regarding "the first month of the year being al-Muharram,"
ascribed to Muhammad appears in ad-Daylamis Firdaws. Ad-Daylami's son reported
the same tradition on the authority of 'Ali without the indication of a
chain of transmitters." (F. Rosenthal,
A History of Muslim Historiography
,
Leiden 1952, pp. 312-313).
At the dawn of history man tried to determine the significance of months
and years in his own way. History is not in a position to tell which nation
first divided the calendar into years, months, weeks and days-that is to
say, how, when, and where it was that a collection of seven days was called
a week, of thirty days a month, and twelve months a year. Despite the fact
that this fact lies buried in the haze of obscurity, we can still gain
access to it through a process of visualization; and we can take the aid
of reason to and that this River of Radiance should change its course.
Hijra
does not signify merely a journey between the two cities
(Mecca and Medina) of the Arabian peninsula but the movement by the caravan
of history again from a static state.
When the Prophet (peace be upon him) began to depart for Medina, his
steps were, on the face of things, treading on a journey, but in reality
they were setting the wheels of history into motion. And history, when
it witnessed this movement, again embarked upon a journey with fresh determination.
Fourteen hundred years have passed since this journey was embarked upon;
it is still on the move, and will be so till the end of the world.
What influence did
Hijra
exercise upon the history of man and
what it gave to mankind is something that lies outside the scope of this
paper. I now come to the theme of the history of the
Hijra
calendar.
When the need for toning up the administration of the Caliphate arose
during the time of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab and it became necessary to have
a calendar so as to fix the dates. The Caliph, who was so well aware of
the sunna of the Prophet and of his temperament, instead of fixing the
standard from the birth of the Prophet, which heralded an entirely new
chapter in the history of man or his death which had placed such a heavy
responsibility upon the shoulders of the Caliphs or some other event, he
ordered the adoption of the
Hijra
as the basic date for the Islamic
calendar.
Al-Hakim narrates the tradition on the authority of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri
that when the Prophet came to Medina, he ordered the introduction of the
Muslim era, but this tradition has been held to be weak in authority by
the
Muhaddithun
. The authoritative tradition, according to them,
says that the custom of imprinting dates upon deeds, documents and epistles
was given currency to during the time of the second Caliph according to
the instructions left by the Prophet himself. (F. Rosenthal,
A History
of Muslim Historiography,
Leiden 1952, p.309.).
Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sakhawi (d. 902) in his
al-I'lan bi'l-Tawbikh li-man dhamma ahl al-tawrikh
gives the following
details about the origin of the Islamic calendar:
"A report on the authority of Ibn ' Abbas states that there existed
no era in Medina when the Prophet arrived there. People came to use an
era a month or two after his arrival. This continued until Muhammad's death.
Then, the use of an era was discontinued, and there was none during the
caliphate of Abu Bakr and the first four years of the caliphate of 'Umar.
Then, the (Muslim) era was established.'Umar is reported to have said to
the assembled dignitaries among the men around Muhammad: "The income is
considerable. What we have distributed has been without fixed dates. How
can we remedy that?" One answer came from al-Hurmuzan. He had been king
of alAhwaz. After his capture during the conquest of Persia, he had been
brought to 'Umar and had become a Muslim. He said: "The Persians have a
(method of) calculation which they call
mahroz
and which they ascribe
to their Sassanid rulers. The word
mahroz
was arabicized as
mu'arrakh
,
and the infinitive
ta'rikh
was formed from it. It was also deduce
that, as civilization became more complex and when it became necessary
to devise ways and means of fixing periods and eras, man must have been
guided by his day-to-day phenomena of repetition, based upon an ever-continuing
rhythm-served as his guides. The flux and re-flux of the moon-tides must
have drawn man's attention towards it, since on specific days it is crescent-shaped,
on others gibbous, followed by increase in moonlight till it reaches its
maximum limit, with subsequent decrease in an ever-continuing rhythmic
cycle. This phenomenon was so clear and simple that it hardly required
any philosophization. Changes in the weather must also have struck man
as being related to the moon, as the twelve lunar cycles provided him with
a clue to the past weather. These were such clear and simple observations
that they did not demand any sophisticated argumentation. And, therefore,
despite the silence of history on this point, it can be said that the division
of time into months and years on the basis of the lunar concept is the
oldest insofar as history is concerned. There are other proofs for this
belief, based upon semantics and sound; and history has been making use
of them. Word-forms have. in the event, cultural and conceptual backgrounds.
History also provides us with alternative calendar systems for fixing
historical periods, e.g. some major war or some important event. It has
also happened that a calendar has had its origin in the enthronement of
a king etc. All these systems are, however, arbitrary and local. On the
other hand, the lunar calendar has a universal background, while the other
systems are limited to geographical boundaries. Festivals and religious
congregations also were specific to particular people or nations and did
not carry equal significance for all.
When man took to agriculture, it was discovered that the lunar system
did not fully correspond to the weather and the crops, and therefore some
modification was necessary. It was felt that if within one lunar month
a crop was harvested or some (particular) weather was witnessed, then after
four years neither that crop nor the weather was to be seen. According
to the astronomical principle, through waxing and waning of the moon there
is a difference of one month in one year every four years. For both seasons
and agricultural crops, the difference of one month bears some significance.
Seasons are related to the solar system, as also are agricultural crops.
Therefore, the lunar and solar systems were reconciled by adding a few
more days to the lunar months, and the two systems were thus reconciled.
Lawnd
or
Kabisa
This method whereby the lunar months are reconciled with the solar system
are designated as
lawnd
or
kabisa
. We get information about
this system from the ancient calendars of India, China, Egypt and Syria.
The Jewish calendar was also similar. Later on the lunar and solar calendars
were separated, although for religious festivals it was the lunar system
which was acknowledged as the guide, as in the case of the Christians Easter,
and
Diwali
of the Hindus, and
Yom Kippur
of the Jews. The
practical shape that this division took was that the lunar system was earmarked
for religious occasions and the solar system for business and administrative
transactions. We have thus both systems running side by side.
The Solar Calendar
There are a few things connected with the solar system requiring consideration.
We have to take into account the rotation of the earth which is of two
kinds: (1) on its own axis in such a way as to produce day and night and
(2) in an eliptical orbit round the sun giving rise to changes in seasons.
One full rotation along this eliptical orbit is completed in 365/5/48/46
days, and the period is designated as the solar year. But it is not equally
divisible into twelve months. The present-day solar calendar-the Gregorian-has
been so divided that seven months consist of 31 days, four months of 30
days, and one month of 28 days. In order to account for the fractions,
every fourth year a day is added to the month of February, called the leap-year.
But consideration will show that even this division does not do away with
the fraction. After every four hundred years seasonal changes occur and
probably because of this fact the solar calendar requires constant modification.
It is just not possible to remove this discrepancy.
The League of Nations had set up a Special Committee at Geneva in 1923
charged with the formulation of a calendar that would be universally acceptable
and would be reconcilable with seasonal changes. One of the recommendations
of this Committee was that the year was to be divided into 13 months. However,
such a calendar would not be devised as the seasons in the hemispheres
differ in their periodic occurrence. The proximity and the distance of
the sun in the East and the West naturally give rise to substantial differences.
Because of this inherent discrepancy, it was not possible for the solar
calendar to gain universal acceptance.
The lunar calendar system, on the other hand, is free from most of these
defects, and admits of broader acceptance. It is not connected with seasonal
changes. The appearance and disappearance of the moon twelve times in a
year can be easily observed. It revolves round the earth, and since its
orbit is eliptical and not totally circular, it comes close to the earth
and becomes distant from it. Its speed of rotation is also not the same;
hence it completes its trajectory sometimes in 30 and at others in 29 days.
The total period taken in its rotation round the earth is 354/48/34 days.
It is not visible at any place on the thirteenth time in less than this
period. This, then is the basis of the lunar system.
We have now to consider what the Qur'an has to say about the computation
of months and years. It is true that, having given man a code of conduct,
it has given full thought and rational freedom to man but has circumscribed
these limits. Insofar as the computation of months and years is concerned,
the Qur'an has provided a guideline in one of the verses which is as follows:
He it is who appointed the sun a splendour and the moon a light and
measured for her stages, that ye might know the number of the years, and
the reckoning.
(10:5)
The following verse directs us regarding the number of months:
Lo! the number of the months with Allah is twelve months by Allah's
ordinance in the day that He created the heavens and the earth...
(9:
36)
The purport of these Qur'anic verses is that we must take the moon to
be the source of the calendar, and any other system that would be unnatural
will not succeed, being non-natural and, therefore, it is that the Islamic
calendar is based on the lunar system. Its beginnings can be traced to
the Prophet, but, as a regular feature, it came into its own during the
time of the second Caliph 'Umar I. Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Bukhari report
through Maymun ibn Mihran that "an I.O.U. payable in Sha'ban was presented
to 'Umar I. Thereupon 'Umar asked which Sha'ban, last Sha'ban, or this
one or the coming one? Give the people something that they can understand."
(F. Rosenthal,
A History of Muslim Historiography
, Leiden 1952,
p.310). He then issued a regular directive and founded the present-day
calendar in 16 A.H. from which time the practice is being followed. Al-Suyuti,
in the chapter on "News and Ordinances" in his
Ta'rikh al-Khulafa'
(ed. Cairo 1351 A.H.) writes with reference to al-Musayyab that the second
orthodox Caliph had the
Hijra
dates inserted in all administrative
directives two and a half years after his assumption of the Caliphate on
the advice of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, and this became the practice from 16
A.H. onwards.
Al-Tabari in his
Ta'rikh al-Rusul wa'l Muluk
gives the following
exposition:
The Prophet on the occasion of the
Hajjat al Wada'
said:
O people! Time after undergoing a full revolution has returned to its
original state; the day Allah created the heavens and the earth. (vol.
iii, p.l50, Cairo 1969).
It will be essential to keep some historical facts about ourselves in
order to understand the pre-Islamic calendar. The Arabs were seized by
the fatal malady of idolatry three hundred years before the advent of the
Prophet, the Hajj for them was nothing more than a big festival. Their
calendar being lunar, this feast was sometimes held in seasons when the
crops had not been harvested and were not yet ready for sale. They, therefore,
devised the method of
kabzsa
, according to which a year sometimes
consisted of 13 months. The period of the Hajj was also not specified.
The responsibility for announcing the date of the Hajj was entrusted to
a man from Banu Kinana named Qalammas, who was to announce on the occasion
of the Hajj when the next pilgrimage was to be performed, and which month
the thirteenth month was to follow. The first Qalammas was an individual,
but then the name became specific to the announcer. We thus see a sizeable
number of the Qalammasa. The Qalammasi calendar was based upon lunar computation,
and another link in the historical chain is provided by the fact that among
the Arabs the months of Rajab, Dhu'l-Qa'da, Dhu'l-Hijja, and Muharram were
regarded as the months of peace and sanctity. But, with this calendar,
these months also began to undergo changes, and it was one of the responsibilities
of the Qalammasa to announce as to what months would be the sacred months
in the following year. They are called
al-nasi
' in Arabic.
The custom of kabisa was current among the Beduins but not among the
townsmen. The Arabs had, therefore, two calendars: one was with the kabisa,
the other without it. The Prophet in his address, to which we have referred,
announced the abrogation of both-i.e. the
kabisa
and
nasi'
.
Thus the time for the pilgrimage was fixed and the lunar calendar was to
be enforced without the kabisa.
The lunar calendar of the Muslims began with the
Hijra
of the
Prophet. The first day of the month of Muharram of the year of the
Hijra
i.e. the migration of the Prophet, was the first day of this calendar.
Despite its being known as the solar calendar beginning with the 20th of
September 622 C.E., according to the Gregorian calendar, before that, the
year of the Elephant was used by the Arabs as the epoch of their era. This
previous lunar calendar of the Arabs was totally abrogated in the 10th
year of the
Hijra
on the occasion of the Prophet's address at the
Hajjat al-Wada'
. The lunar calendar thus became current without
any addition or modification.
Hastings'
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
(vol. iii, p.
127) says that the Muslims have borrowed the concept of the week and the
festivals from the Jews. As regards festivals, yawn al-nahr derives its
importance from its association with the Prophet Abraham, from whom the
Prophet was directly descended. According to Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, it
is one of the attributes of the Prophet that this festival should have
vouchsafed to the Muslims the best of religions. It is, therefore, out
of the question that it should have been borrowed. The names of the Arabic
months were retained by the Muslims with slight modifications because of
their significance. The first month is al-Muharram and the last is Dhu'l-Hijja.
The names of the months are consecutively as follows: Muharram al-Haram,
,Safar, Rabi' alAwwal, RabiC al-Thani, Jumada al-Awwal, Jumada al-Thani,
Rajab, Sha'ban, Ramadan, Shawwal, Dhu'l-Qa'da and Dhu'l-Hijja.
The concept of the week in Islam derives from spiritual purgation and
self-reform, while the name of the last day, al-Jum'a, is Qur'anic. The
days have been serially named as yawm al-sabt, yawm al-a,had, yawm al-athnayn,
yawm al-thalatha, yawm al-arba'a, yawm al-khamls, and yawm al-jum'a.
Bibliography
1. Al-Sakhawi, Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Rahman,
al-I'lan
bi'l-Tawbikh li-man dhamma ahl al-tawrikh
, Damascus 1349 A.H., English
trans. in F Rosenthal,
A History of Muslim Historiography
, Leiden
1952, pp. 201-450. (Urdu transl.), Markazi Urdu Board, Lahore 1968.
2. Al-Tabari,
Ta'rikh al-Rusul wa'l Muluk
, Dar al-Ma'arif, Cairo,
2nd ed. 1969, iii. 150.
3. Al-Dinawari, Abu Hanifa,
Al-Akhbar al-Tiwal
, Cairo 1960, (Urdu
transl.), Markazi Urdu Board, Lahore 1968.
4. Hashimi, 'Abd al-Quddus,
Taqwim-i Tarikhi
(in Urdu) Central
Institute of Islamic Research, Karachi, 1965.
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