It is my understanding that the Saudis keep time the way they do because they believe this method of timekeeping is prescribed by Islam. (Comments by those with greater knowledge are solicited.)
That doesn’t really answer the question, though. It explains why Saudi Arabia uses an alternate time-keeping system, but not why the system they use is so uck-fupped.*
*Say that carefully or it will come out wrong. 
The day starts when the sun goes down. Everything that needs to be done religiously is timed off that event.
It’s actually no different than the old timing concept of the Roman Catholic Church, which timed all the religious offices/services off of sunrise, and made the difference in time between them dependant upon the time of the year.
Welcome to the SDMB, OldManMolehill.
A link to the column you’re commenting on is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, being sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2779/why-is-india-30-minutes-out-of-step-with-everybody-else
I was confused about this too, so I did a little poking around online. You might be interested in a 1969 article from a Saudi Aramco-published magazine:
It also appears that Cecil’s information was several years out of date, even in 1981 when he wrote the column; according to the above article and this book, the Saudis abandoned sunset-based timekeeping in the late 1960s.
Unfortunately, detailed information on the history of timekeeping in Saudi Arabia is hard to come by on the internet. I know that Paul in Qatar (I think that’s his handle now) spent some time in the Kingdom, so hopefully he’ll stop by this thread and elaborate.
Also, Nepal is 45 minutes off the mark, not 40 as stated in the column. Cite.
The explanation I’ve always heard for this was their desire to distinguish themselves from India at all costs. They do often seem afraid of being swallowed up.
Australian Central Standard Time is also off by 30 min. I have no idea why, and I was born in that time zone.
And what obvious reasons are those? It sounds like quite the inconvenience to have people get jet lag going from one side of the country to the other, even though you don’t have to reset your watch.
But you wouldn’t get jetlag, because you don’t have to adjust your internal clock. If you usually go to bed at 11, you still go to bed when your internal clock thinks it’s 11 (rather than 10 or 12). Your alarm goes off when your body thinks it’s 6 a.m., not 5 or 7. Sure, the sun is at a different position than you might expect, but everyone around you is on the same rhythm, and in the modern world that’s going to be more important than where the sun happens to be in the sky.
My adopted country of Norway really straddles two time zones as well - the extreme northern part of the country is also a fair distance east of the southernmost areas and should really be on the same time zone as Finland, if you go by the position of the sun. But it isn’t, because the decision was made to keep the whole country in one time zone. As a result, people who live in the North don’t have to think about when they can phone government offices or business contacts in Oslo, national newspapers and gossip magazines print just one television schedule, and you don’t have to reset your watch if you’re flying from Oslo to Vadsø.
DSYoungEsq said:
Sure, I understand that part, but the part that was getting my commentary was this:
Midnight at sunset? WTF?
that’s the way They did it back in the old – really old – days. It’s the origin of the phrase “waiting for the eleventh hour.” Nowadays it’s either 11am, no time to worry yet, or 11pm, when all decent people are in bed already. Back then they were talking about an hour (more or less) before sunset.
Well, the column is making a bit of an editorial error there (paying attention, Little Ed? :D). They didn’t set it to “midnight”, they set it to 00:00, which happens in OUR system to be at mid-night. Or, if you prefer, they reset it to 12:00 on a standard clock face.
Where does the jet lag come in? Time is the same in Calcutta as it is in Bombay. No jet lag. No inconvenience.
I think the origin of the phrase “eleventh hour” is Matthew 20:5-9. I’m not sure how time was kept in Matthews time though. I doubt there was much concern about jet lag, that’s for sure.
Jewish time started at sunset, and then restarted at sunrise. Roman time was pretty much the same as it is now.
The whole reason is in Genesis. IT says, “Evening and morning, the first day”. Thus, the first day started in the evening. The Sabbath is still set up that way today.
But was there a number associated with hours beyond simple counting…? Was Sunset 12, for example?
I interpret the verse from Matthew as simple counting rather than a specific time so that the eleventh hour refers to the number of hours that had passed rather than a time of day.
And of course, China is the largest country, in terms of area at least, with only one time zone. Before 1949, they had five.
Malaysia should have two, but Mahathir decreed one way back when. I recall a travel agent in Penang haranguing me one time about what a great man Mahathir was, that he thought so much of families he would do this great thing. I never did figure out what that had to do with families.
Um, unless something drastic has happened, Russia is still about twice the size of China, and spans something like 9 time zones.
Yeah, but Russia isn’t just a single time zone, is it? China is.
OHHH, I read that wrong. :o