My calendar is mentioning Islamic New Year, which is Monday evening. They’ve never mentioned it before. How did it become the New Year? What happened that date? And how is it celebrated?
The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, i.e. it’s based solely on the rotation of the Moon around the Earth. The year consists of 12 months, each of which has the length of one rotation of the Moon (either 29 or 30 days; it lasts from the time of the first sight of the new crescent after new moon until the beginning of the next month).
The entire year has 355 days, which is the reason why every year the Islamic calendar shifts about 10 days in comparison to our Gregorian calendar, which has 365 days plus the leap rules in order to fit as precisely as possible to the rotation of the Earth around the Sun.
The new year begins with the first day of muharram, the first month in the cycle. Why exactly this month has been chosen to be #1 I don’t know. The event upon which the count of the years is based is the Hijra, the emigration of the prophet Muhammad from Medina to Mecca in the year which we refer to as 622 AD.
Right, the Hijra year preceded the actual emigration of Mohammed (PBUH). Early in the history of Islam, The Powers That Be decided to change the year numbering system to make the Emigration Year One (or maybe Year Zero). But they did not set Day One to the actual date of the Emigration. Instead they just renumbered the years.
That is to say the Emigration did not happen on Day One of Year One. That is to say that also have no idea what sort of pre-Islamic thing Day One once represented.
The Hijrah took place in the month of Safar, the second month in the calendar.
The placement of al-Muharram as the first month derived from ancient Arabian tradition, and seems to have been part of the annual cycle of the sacred months and the pilgrimage.
The “sacred months” were a pre-Islamic Arabian tribal tradition. The tribes were in the habit of fighting (i.e. raiding) each other pretty much all the time. The Hajj was a sacred event that commanded respect over all the tribes. To allow for the mutual safety of pilgrims as they traveled, tribal warfare was prohibited by custom during the three months before, during, and after the Hajj: the 11th, 12th, and 1st months of the calendar. (The 7th month was also sacred, all on its own, I don’t know why.)
People who have done the Hajj report feeling cleansed and lighter in their souls. Maybe the feeling of being cleansed goes with the sense of a new beginning immediately afterward, and the month following the Hajj represents that new beginning. To answer the OP, it seems certain that the most ancient rites of Arabia, the Hajj, influenced the placement of the year’s beginning right after it, though I can only speculate as to what was the significance of this choice.
P.S. I forgot to mention, the name of the first month, al-Muharram, is an epithet meaning ‘the sacred one’. It replaced the original name of the month, Safar I. Originally the first 6 months of the Arabian calendar had only 3 names, doubled up. The first two months were Safar I and II, the second pair Rabi‘ I and II, and the third pair Jumada I and II. When Safar I was renamed al-Muharram because it was a sacred month, the second month kept the name Safar to itself.
Muslims do not observe their New Year’s Day in any way. It’s just a bare odometer number rollover. But ten days later they have something.
There was a religious meaning associated with the 10th day of al-Muharram that became sort of an all-purpose commemoration of many different events in Jewish sacred history: on the 10th of al-Muharram, Adam and Eve were forgiven, Noah’s ark landed, Moses received the Torah, I forget what all else, they associated a lot of Hebrew prophets’ stories with this date. The Jews in Arabia in Muhammad’s time observed Yom Kippur on the 10th of al-Muharram, making the analogy with the first of al-Muharram and Ro’sh ha-Shanah, the beginning of the new year. This was when the calendar still used the lunisolar system, and the month occurred in the same season every year). Muhammad took this Yom Kippur observance and instituted a voluntary fast as if to say that Muslims shared Moses with the Jews.
The 10th of al-Muharram was named ‘Ashura, based on the Arabic word for 10, ‘asharah. In Turkey it was the Noahic aspect of the day that became the most popular. Turks have a custom of making a big fruit compote in commemoration on that day, for the evening after the fast is broken. The story goes that when the Ark landed, Noah wanted to have a feast. Mrs. Noah went looking in the ship’s stores for food, and whatever she found she cooked all together in a big pot. The Turkish recipe for Aşure stew uses dried fruits (raisins, apricots, figs, apples, dates, etc.), garbanzos, wheat berries, and rosewater. I think the rosewater is a civilized touch, but all the basic ingredients are the sort of stores that could be packed for a long sea journey.
Perhaps coincidentally, the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali took place on the 10th of al-Muharram in the year 61 AH (September 30, 681). This fed right into the multiple layers of sacred associations the date already had, intensifying the Shi‘ite devotion to al-Husayn.
That Islamic holidays are now printed on ordinary American calendars says something about the evolution of American society. I wonder how much longer before the greeting card racks at Safeway and CVS will have Ramadan and ‘Id greeting cards alongside the Christmas and Pesach cards. I think it won’t be long now.
Wow, thanks for all this information. I haven’t studied religions, but I may start.
Must the crescent moon actually be sighted before the New Year can begin? If so, where must it be seen? Mecca? I doubt we’ll be able to see it this evening (Monday) in Sydney given that the interval between sunset and moonset is only about half an hour.
Yes, according to most opinions in Islamic law, the moon must be sighted by human eyeballs for the month to officially begin. At the moment called “new moon” indicated on calendars and almanacs, the sun and moon are in conjunction at the same degree of longitude. The dark side of the moon being 100% toward the earth, it’s completely invisible. The moon has to separate from the sun by a minimum of about 10 degrees of longitude (depending on other variables like declination or atmospheric conditions) before enough of the lit side shows for the crescent to become visible. It usually takes more than 10 degrees between the moon and sun for visibility. Since the moon moves through the zodiac at about 14 degrees per day, in practical terms it takes a whole more day before the crescent can been seen. If your calendar is like mine, it has the New Moon and Chinese New Year indicated for today, Sunday the 29th. Muslim New Year is placed on Tuesday the 31st. The elapse of time between the two dates is explained by the time needed for the moon to separate enough from the sun to show a crescent.
Good question about local lunar dates, cunctator. There’s been much confusion and debate over this issue, because people originating from different countries got on the phone to their home countries and following different starting and ending dates for Ramadan. Currently the most mainstream practice in North America is to accept scientifically verifiable moon sightings from North America only. Reports from other countries are discarded.
This is a continuation of venerable Muslim practice, before global instant telecommunications, when each locality had no choice but to follow its own local sightings. The concept that all Muslims have to follow the Mecca calendar (published by the Saudi government, the official name of which is Taqwim Umm al-Qura) is a modern idea that may have been considered some years ago but is probably not very popular any more. Anyway, the decision to reckon the calendar using local moon data is probably the only practical and fair way to handle it in modern conditions, with people of different national origins in America still feeling allegiance to lots of different countries, where the Islamic lunar dates are often manipulated by rival governments for political purposes.
The confusion isn’t only Muslim. Outside an ISKCON temple I met an American convert to Hare Krsna who told me he was estranged from the temple community because he disagreed with their lunar calendar (used for setting Hindu religious dates). He said they followed the lunar dates as seen from India, on the other side of the world, while he thought it should be locally reckoned. It makes a difference in the corresponding solar dates. So he stayed marginalized from the community over this.
I understand that if you sight the Ramadan moon you are supposed to call the local authorities, who then (supposedly) question you to ensure you are not just making it up.
Of course funny stories circulate around here about local customs. I take them with a large bit of salt.
Paul, I know that’s the traditional practice, and people do keep it up, but under the Saudi government it’s all a farce. They pretend to take people’s data, but the decision always follows the lunar dates of the official Taqwim Umm al-Qura, which is published years in advance. The government drones who prepared the TUQ calendar had no clue about the recent advances in accurate moonsighting science researched by Muslim astronomers.
So instead they defaulted to whatever date was published for the sun-moon conjunction in almanacs. It was easy to look up and didn’t take much thought or number crunching. Of course, this guarantees inaccurate data, because by this method they always start the month the day before the moon becomes visible. The irony is how the Saudis puff themselves so arrogantly that they are the only Muslims who follow the Prophet so perfectly and strictly and all. Here they institutionalized a violation of the Prophet’s practice, just because they were too dumb to figure out how not to.
A famous recent example for this occured during Operation Desert Storm, the American bombings on Iraq in December 1998. The air strikes began a few days before the beginning of Ramadan. The Iraqi government declared the sighting of the crescent one day earlier than “scheduled,” hoping that the Bristish and American governments would stop the attacks with the beginning of the sacred month with respect to sentiments in the Arab world.
I thought Desert Storm was in 1991. Did they recycle the name over 7 years later?
One was Desert Storm, the other one was Desert Fox. I’m not 100 % which way it was round, but I think the 1991 one was Fox. I might be wrong though.
Did someone ask a codeword question? I live for those! Copyright me, from my book …
DESERT FOX (U.S./U.K. 98) The joint American/British air and missile attack on Iraq launched on the night of 16 December, 1998. The targets included a number of buildings the Iraqis refused to allow United Nations inspectors to enter. In four nights more cruise missiles hit Iraq than were used during operation DESERT STORM seven years before. Much was made of the fact that this operation marked the first use of female American naval aviators in combat. DESERT FOX also was the first time the B-1 Lancer bomber was used in combat. The United States Army and Air Force had had female pilots in combat previously. See SHINING PRESENCE and NOBLE SHIRLEY.