Islamic Calendar

At pre-Islamic time Arabs used lunisolar calendar. The names of the month, speaking about their belonging to the spring, summer and winter seasons are indicative to the fact. For example Ramadan (from Ramida — to be burning) was every year in summer. At that time Arabs had 12 months a year, but they also practice insertion of the 13^th month.

Mohammed prohibited insertion of the 13^th month, after that lunisolar calendar became the lunar one. I.e. Islamic calendar does not pay attention to the Sun movement and is not based on the tropical year. That is why the months are gradually "moving" relatively seasons of the year and Ramadan, for example, does not obligatory happens in summer. New month started with the appearance of the New Moon sickle in the sky after the New Moon. One thing should be noted especially. Shari'a demands the beginning of a new month to be determined by the direct observation of Moon and not by calculations. Moon's visibility depends on many circumstances, that�s why it is impossible to foresee beforehand what will be the day, when New Moon starts, the number of days in months and to compose exact calendar; different number of days in one and the same month could happen in different Islamic countries.

In 638 C.E., the second successor of the Prophet Caliph `Umar ibn Al-Khattab began to number Islamic years from the year of the Hijra. Mohammed arrived in Medina on the 9^th of Rabi� al-Awwal (September 21, 622 C.E. of Julian calendar), but the 1st of Muharram, i.e. beginning of the year, was Friday July 16 (night from 15 to 16) 622 C.E. Since that day the counting of the years of the Lunar Hegira (Hegira means roaming from one place to another) has been started

The Calendar Converter realizes not the real Islamic calendar, which is impossible to program, but the tabular or schematic calendar developed by Muslim astronomers of the eighth century, which nowadays is only used to convert an Islamic date to a Julian date if no other information is available. This calendar is based on the 30-years (Arab) cycle, and the number of days in its months does not depend on the Moon visual observations.

Ordinal number of the month	Name of the month	Numbers of years in the 30-years cycle
		1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30	2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26, 29
		Number of days in the month	Number of days in the month
1	Muharram	30	30
2	Safar	29	29
3	Rabi� al-Awwal	30	30
4	Rabi� al-Thani	29	29
5	Jumada al-Awwal	30	30
6	Jumada al-Thani	29	29
7	Rajab	30	30
8	Sha�ban	29	29
9	Ramadan	30	30
10	Shawwal	29	29
11	Dhu al-Qi�dah	30	30
12	Dhu al-Hijjah	29	30
Total days in the year:		354	355

New days in the Islamic Moon calendar start at the Sunset. In the seven days week only Friday (the holy day of Moslems) and Saturday have their own names. All other days of the week are called simply by numbers, and the day after Saturday is called "the first day", then follows "the second day" and so on till Friday.

It is worth noting that there are various Islamic calendars. For example in Turkey a lunar calendar is used, which is based on the 8-years, so called Turkish cycle, which is not realized in this version of the Calendar Converter.

Try converting dates using the Calendar Converter.