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The Hijri year ( ar, سَنة هِجْريّة) or era ( ''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 Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the mon ...
and his followers migrated from
Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...
to Yathrib (now
Medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...
). This event, known as the
Hijrah The Hijrah or Hijra () was the journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date e ...
, is commemorated in
Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
for its role in the founding of the first Muslim community ('' ummah''). In the West, this era is most commonly denoted as AH ( la, Anno Hegirae , 'in the year of the Hijra') in parallel with the Christian (AD), Common (CE) and
Jewish era (from Latin "in the year of the world"; he, לבריאת העולם, Livryat haOlam, lit=to the creation of the world), abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of ...
s (AM) and can similarly be placed before or after the date. In predominantly Muslim countries, it is also commonly abbreviated H ("Hijra") from its Arabic abbreviation '' hāʾ'' (). Years prior to AH 1 are reckoned in English as BH ("Before the Hijrah"), which should follow the date. A year in the Islamic lunar calendar consists of twelve lunar months and has only 354 or 355 days in its year. Consequently its New Year's Day occurs ten days earlier each year relative to the
Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It was introduced in October 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years d ...
. The year  CE corresponds to the Islamic years AH – ; AH 1444 corresponds to 20222023 in the Common Era.


Definition

The Hijri era is calculated according to the Islamic lunar calendar, whose
epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided ...
(first year) is the year of Muhammad's
Hijrah The Hijrah or Hijra () was the journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date e ...
, and begins on the first day of the month of Muharram (equivalent to the
Julian calendar The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandri ...
date of April 19, 622 CE). The date of the Hijrah itself did not form the Islamic New Year. Instead, the system continues the earlier ordering of the months, with the Hijrah occurring around the 8th day of Rabi al-Awwal, 66 days into the first year.


History


Predecessors

By the age of Muhammad, there was already an Arabian
lunar calendar A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon's phases ( synodic months, lunations), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based only directly on the solar year. The most commonly used calendar, t ...
, with named months. Likewise, the years of its calendar used conventional names rather than numbers: for example, the year of the birth of Muhammad and of Ammar ibn Yasir (570 CE) was known as the " Year of the Elephant".Hajjah Adil, Amina, "''Prophet Muhammad''", ISCA, Jun 1, 2002, The first year of the Hijra (622-23 CE) was named the "Permission to Travel" in this calendar.


Establishment

17 years after the Hijra, a complaint from Abu Musa Ashaari prompted the
caliph A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
Umar to abolish the practice of named years and to establish a new
calendar era A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one '' epoch'' of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Coptic ...
. Umar chose as
epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided ...
for the new Muslim calendar the
hijrah The Hijrah or Hijra () was the journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date e ...
, the emigration of Muhammad and 70 Muslims from
Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...
to
Medina Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...
.
Tradition A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
credits Othman with the successful proposal, simply continuing the order of the months that had already been established by
Prophet Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monoth ...
, beginning with Muharram, 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.


Formula

Different ''approximate'' conversion formulas between the Gregorian (AD or CE) and Islamic calendars (AH) are possible: AH = 1.030684 × (CE − 621.5643) CE = 0.970229 × AH + 621.5643 or AH = (CE − 622) × 33 ÷ 32 CE = AH × 32 ÷ 33 + 622 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, 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, all of 1429, and the first few days of 1430. Similarly, the year 1976 CE corresponded with the last few days of AH 1395, all of 1396, and the first week of 1397.


Months

The Hijri year has twelve months, whose precise lengths vary by sect of Islam. Each month of the
Islamic calendar The Hijri calendar ( ar, ٱلتَّقْوِيم ٱلْهِجْرِيّ, translit=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 ...
commences on the birth of the new lunar cycle. Traditionally this is based on actual observation of the moon's crescent () 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
Sulaymani The Sulaymani branch of Tayyibi Isma'ilism is an Islamic community, of which around 70,000 members reside in Yemen, while a few thousand Sulaymani Bohras can be found in India. The Sulaymanis are sometimes headed by a ''Da'i al-Mutlaq'' from ...
s and
Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mos ...
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.


See also

* * * *


Notes


References


Further reading

* {{Cite journal , last=F. A. Shamsi , year=1984 , title=The Date of Hijrah , journal=Islamic Studies , volume=23 , pages=189–224 & 289–332 Arabic words and phrases Islamic calendar Islamic terminology Calendar eras Hijrah sv:Muslimska kalendern