15 Facts About Islamic calendar

1.

Hijri calendar, 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.

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2.

Islamic calendar tradition is unanimous in stating that Arabs of Tihamah, Hejaz, and Najd distinguished between two types of months, permitted and forbidden (haram) months.

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3.

Some scholars, both Muslim and Western, maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar.

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4.

The years of the Islamic calendar thus began with the month of Muharram in the year of Muhammad's arrival at the city of Medina, even though the actual emigration took place in Safar and Rabi' I of the intercalated calendar, two months before the commencement of Muharram in the new fixed calendar.

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5.

Islamic calendar, however, is based on a different set of conventions being used for the determination of the month-start-dates.

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6.

Major Muslim associations of France announced in 2012 that they would henceforth use a Islamic calendar based on astronomical calculations, taking into account the criteria of the possibility of crescent sighting in any place on Earth.

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7.

Isma'ili-Taiyebi Bohras having the institution of da'i al-mutlaq follow the tabular Islamic calendar prepared on the basis of astronomical calculations from the days of Fatimid imams.

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8.

Turkish Muslims use an Islamic calendar which is calculated several years in advance by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs.

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9.

From 1 Muharrem 1400 AH until 29 Zilhicce 1435 (24 October 2014) the computed Turkish lunar Islamic calendar was based on the following rule: "The lunar month is assumed to begin on the evening when, within some region of the terrestrial globe, the computed centre of the lunar crescent at local sunset is more than 5° above the local horizon and (geocentrically) more than 8° from the Sun.

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10.

Country uses the Umm al-Qura Islamic calendar, based on astronomical calculations, but this is restricted to administrative purposes.

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11.

The parameters used in the establishment of this Islamic calendar underwent significant changes during the decade to AH 1423.

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12.

Solar Hijri Islamic calendar is a solar Islamic calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan which counts its years from the Hijra or migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE.

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13.

Tabular Islamic calendar is a rule-based variation of the Islamic calendar, in which months are worked out by arithmetic rules rather than by observation or astronomical calculation.

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14.

Islamic calendar is used primarily for religious purposes, and for official dating of public events and documents in Muslim countries.

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15.

British author Nicholas Hagger writes that after seizing control of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi "declared" on 1 December 1978 "that the Muslim Islamic calendar should start with the death of the prophet Mohammed in 632 rather than the hijra in 622".

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