Hijri calendar

“ The Attic calendar was not used. The Palmyrene is identical with the Jewish, except in the case of Kanun, and was adopted later by the Arabs. The Phœnicians seem to have retained the old Hebrew calendar, used before the Captivity, but the information at present available is fragmentary.
The Jewish festivals being those of the Bible require no special notice. ”

“ For the Jewish calendar is a natural one and regulated both by the sun and the moon. It begins with the new moon, and it also begins as nearly as possible with the spring equinox. But as twelve natural months fall short of a solar year by eleven days, a thirteenth month has to be intercalated from time to time; in every nineteen years, seven are years having an extra month. Now the 21st day of the fourth month must have fallen on or about July 22 according to our present reckoning, in order that the moon might have sufficient northing, and that involves a year beginning after April 1 ”

“ The Batak calendar is a product of decay, and is used exclusively for divination, not as a genuine calendar [906] ; but it is of great interest to observe how the soothsayers, since they do not possess the knowledge necessary for a proper management of the calendar, fall back upon primitive methods. It is significant that the indispensable thirteenth month has often been lost: the people do not even understand the difference between the months and the year, and yet they cannot avoid the necessity of the intercalation. ”

“ The Egyptian year therefore lies at the bottom of our year, which has been altered so as to remain in agreement with the seasons,—this being necessary in view of the spread of the historic sense among the people—but has also unfortunately been spoiled in the division into months, owing to the influence of the Roman months. The Egyptian calendar is the greatest intellectual fact in the history of time-reckoning ”

“ The same is the case with the knowledge of the revolutions of the spheres, of which the yearly calendar is but one fruit. The excellence of the calculation of the calendar is famous, and it is well known what deep root it has taken among these people, few in number, yet excellently equipped with model institutions. Could it be otherwise? On account of the smallness, humbleness, and dispersion of the people it is hardly noticed among the other nations, yet those relics of the Divine made it into one firmly established organization. ”

“ There are, indeed, independent grounds for thinking that the Arabs enjoyed the advantage of a comparatively well-regulated solar year before the prophet of God saddled them with the absurdity and inconvenience of a purely lunar calendar.557 Be that as it may, it is notable that some Mohammedan people of North Africa kindle fires and bathe in water at the movable New Year of their lunar calendar instead of at the fixed Midsummer of the solar year; while others again practise these observances at both seasons. New Year's Day, on which the rites are celebrated, is called Ashur ”

“ To carry out the reformation of any long established calendar is, we know, not a trifling undertaking. Even on secular grounds, any proposed reform encounters strong opposition. But the calendar in Babylonia was not only a civil, it was also a religious, institution. Its origin was attributed [16] to the Creator, and as the work of the Creator, it is described in one of the old Babylonian tablets. ”

“ Interestingly, this is a rare case in which the single rabbi's opinion is followed, as later in the Mishnah, various cases that require lashes are explained as needing 23 or even 70 judges. Intercalating the calendar is an important issue regarding the placement of the holidays and the lunar matchup with the solar year. Intercalating the month requires adding another month (known as Adar I - Adar II is the normal Adar usually found in the calendar) in order to offset the missing 11 days in the lunar calendar. ”

“ It is there where the calendar began after the six days of creation. Adam, then, began to name the days, as he did with all that dwelt on earth, and the following generations continued counting in the same way. This is the reason why there is no difference among mankind about the seven days of the week, which commenced at the hour when the inhabitants of the extreme west held noon. This was the hour of sunset for Palestine, and at this moment the first light was created, the sun being created later on. ”

“ It became necessary for Hillel II., Palestinian Patriarch, in 359, to establish a fixed calendar based on that of Samuel of Babylon, (p. 234) to guide the people as to the time of celebrating New Moon and Festivals, as in these troublous times they could not always transmit the news obtained by observing the heavens. But the [244] "second" day of the Festivals, for lands outside of Palestine, now no longer needed, was maintained as a matter of sentiment and is maintained still in conservative Judaism. ”

“ Through the gradual spread of Christianity in non-Semitic lands in the West, the necessity must soon have arisen of fixing the day of the Resurrection by the Julian Calendar, and of deciding according to it the day [51] on which Easter had to be celebrated. But, as we have said, it is very difficult to transfer a date from the Jewish to the Julian Calendar, and, in most cases, quite impossible when the date is that of an event already long past. ”

“ Although the Gregorian calendar has been in force ever since the 1st January, 1873, she has not yet been able to bring herself to adopt the Christian era. Not only would the use of this era symbolise to the Shintō Court of Japan the supremacy of a foreign religion;—it would be derogatory from a political point of view, the fixing of the calendar from time to time, together with the appointing of "year-names," [3] having ever been looked on in the Far East as among the inviolable privileges and signs of independent sovereignty, much as coining money is in the West. ”

“ Meyer has specially pointed out, must have begun to run its course in a year in which the rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day coincided, i. e. it began with a Sothic period.
The months within each season are numbered from I to IV. Among primitive peoples it frequently happens that a season gives its name to two months, which are distinguished as the first and second, but a numbering such as that of the Egyptian calendar is unexampled and shews once more a desire to get away from the moon-month. The so-called ‘months’ are rather subdivisions of the seasons. ”

“ The Basuto in determining the time of sowing are not guided by the lunar reckoning, but fall back upon the phases of Nature; intelligent chiefs however know how to correct the calendar by the summer solstice [1164] .
The differences in intelligence already make themselves felt at an early stage, and are still more plainly shewn when we come to a genuine regulation of the calendar. Some of the Bontoc Igorot state that the year has eight, others a hundred months, but among the old men who represent the wisdom of the people there are some who know and assert that it has thirteen [1165] . ”

“ Well, sometimes a nation finds out its mistake and alters its calendar. Russia has done this; the Russian New Year and Easter are not the same as ours. Pope Gregory, the thirteenth, ordered that the day after October 4, 1582, should be called October 15. He called it the Gregorian Calendar; but there are lots of other calendars besides--there's the Jewish and Mohammedan, and a variety of calendars in the East. All of them can't be right. The result is that none of them are right, and the world is in confusion. Some calendars mark off too many days, others mark off too few. ”

“ The Calendar Round was the real basis of Maya chronology, since its 18,980 dates included all the possible combinations of the 260 days with the 365 positions of the year. Although the Maya developed a much more elaborate system of counting time, wherein any date of the Calendar Round could be fixed with absolute certainty within a period of 374,400 years, this truly remarkable feat was accomplished only by using a sequence of Calendar Rounds, or 52-year periods, in endless repetition from a fixed point of departure. ”

“ Cæsar and his astronomers, knowing this fact and fixing on the 1st day of January, 45 years before Christ and 709 from the foundation of Rome, for the reformed calendar to take effect, were under the necessity of intercalating two months, together consisting of 67 days. Now, as the civil year would end on the 22d of October, true or solar time, it would be reckoned in the old calendar the 1st day of January; so they let the old calendar come to a stand while the Earth performs 67 diurnal revolutions, and thereby restored the concurrence of the solar and the civil year. ”

“ Goodman's Archæic Annual Calendar and Archæic Chronological Calendar (1897) are by far the best. By using either of the above the necessity of reducing the higher terms to units of the first order is obviated. On the other hand, the processes by means of which this is achieved in each case are far more complicated and less easy of comprehension than those of the method followed in this book, a method which from its simplicity might be termed perhaps the logical way, since it reduces all quantities to a primary unit, which is the same as the primary unit of the Maya calendar. ”

“ The old basis is however still preserved in the points of departure, the summer and winter nights. It is the same system as the Icelandic, built up on the week and the year, but differently modified: the idea of any borrowing cannot be entertained. The basis of this calendar, therefore, was once common to all Scandinavia, and the calendar must go back to heathen times. ”

“ As Hawksworth listened, he felt his heart begin to race.
The calculations at the observatory had a lot to say about your Panjika's lunar calendar. And they showed how unwieldy it is compared to the solar calendar the Arabs and Europeans use. A cycle of the moon doesn't divide evenly into the days in a year. So your astrologers have to keep adding and subtracting days and months to keep years the same length. It's almost impossible to relate a lunar calendar accurately to a solar year. Jamshid Beg, the astronomer from Samarkand, loved to check out the predictions in the Hindu Panjika. ”

“ Among the primitive peoples of the East Asiatic peninsula the seasons of the agricultural year are very much employed; in comparison with them the moon-month plays no important part. Moreover Indian and Islamite influences have penetrated deeply: the calendar in use arises from these. The facts are well illustrated by a notice from the Malay Peninsula. There are three ways of reckoning the months, (1) the Arabian, 29 and 30 days alternately, (2) the Persian, 30 days, and (3) that of Rum, 31 days; the first is the common method. ”

“ The fact that, e.g., the editions printed by Pigouchet in August and September 1498 have the 1488 to 1508 calendar is by itself sufficient to prove that they cannot do more than this. Unluckily a connection has often been assumed between the first year of the calendar and the year of publication—e.g. undated Horae with the calendar for 1488-1508 are frequently ascribed on that ground only to 1488, or with perverse ingenuity to 1487; as if a calendar of the moveable feasts were like an annual almanac, and must necessarily be printed in readiness for the new year. ”

“ Further, it appears that Clavius valued the celebration of the festival after the Jews, etc., more than astronomical correctness. He gives comparison tables which would startle a believer in the astronomical intention of his Calendar: they are to show that a calendar in which the moon is always made a day older than by him, represents the heavens better than he has done, or meant to do. But it must be observed that this diminution of the real moon's age has a tendency to make the English explanation often practically accordant with the Calendar. ”

“ These documents are all dated in such and such a month of such and such a year of some king’s reign; the months are the same (at first under their earlier Accadian names [3] ) as those we [5] find in the almanacs translated by Epping and Strassmaier, and we meet in them, and in other historical inscriptions, with the intercalary months, the second Elul, and the second Adar. It would seem, then, that it was the same calendar, worked in the same way, that held its place through these two thousand years. ”

“ Mahommedan Calendar.—The Mahommedan era, or era of the Hegira, used in Turkey, Persia, Arabia, &c., is dated from the first day of the month preceding the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, i.e. Thursday the 15th of July A.D. 622, and it commenced on the day following. The years of the Hegira are purely lunar, and always consist of twelve lunar months, commencing with the approximate new moon, without any intercalation to keep them to the same season with respect to the sun, so that they retrograde through all the seasons in about 321⁄2 years. ”

“ Such also is our shifting seven-day week, which, chiefly through the agency of Mohammedanism, has also been widely extended among peoples of a lower stage of development. These artificial periods, arising often from a natural period which for purposes of the calendar has been detached from its natural basis, belong to a highly developed stage of time-reckoning. Only among certain comparatively far-advanced, semi-primitive peoples does an artificial period of the simplest kind first appear, and then only one, the market-week, the origin of which it is very easy to understand. ”