It is inevitable for every nation
of the world or any human gathering to have a calendar of its
own, that is, by choosing a national occasion or a great famous
event to be helpful in regulating the incessant multitudes of
events lest they, perhaps become intervened with one
another.
Building on the foregoing, they were in need
of a criterion to get them remembered, recorded and kept stored -
together with their minutest details, dates, time and place of
their occurrence and to be relied on in what follows of other new
events or probably the events that preceded them, too with regard
to incidents, situations and rather daily affairs without which
life records may get shattered away and the events therein would
look messy and without discipline and this state of being will
necessitate dependence on what is called: "calendar" the
in-box memory of this nation, the store-house of its memoirs and
the time record of its events.
Moreover, the calendar represented its
civilization, history, culture and perhaps its religion as well.
This significant factor has made it a civilizational necessity
and an urgent need for abiding by it more and more as long as
life became complicated and daily dealings interwoven and life
itself developed particularly the systematic and administrative
sides.
Out of all this emerged, came into being the
A.D. Calendar with reference to the birthday of the holy Christ
and the Chinese, the Persian, the Roman and the Jewish
calendars.
The calendars of these nations differed in
exacting their timing of them and their starting-points. Some
arranged their calendar according to the months of the solar
system and others to the months of the lunar system as this is
distinct in what the Muslims follow up to now that is, they have
taken the movement of the moon as a criterion for counting their
years and exacting their events in accordance with days, months
and years which could be achieved according to this
movement.
"It is He Who made the sun a
shining thing and the moon as a light and measured out for it
stages that you might know the number of years and
reckoning.
Allah did not create this but in truth. He
explains the "Ayat" (proofs, evidences, lessons, signs,
revelations, etc.) in detail for a people who have
knowledge."(Younis: 5) considering the creation of 'daytime' is
but a motional generation of day and night and of a group which
reckons months and years.
The twelve months of the lunar system with
regard to the Islamic calendar is not innovated by an astrologist
or invented by a theological expert; it is but a subtle and
divinely ordained law: " Verily, the number of months with Allah
is twelve months (in a year) so was it ordained by Allah on the
Day when He created the heavens and the earth.; of them four are
Sacred (i.e. the 1st, the 7th, the 11th and the 12th months of
the Islamic calendar)" That is the right religion, so wrong
not yourselves therein and fight against the
'Mushrikin'(polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the
Oneness of Allah) as they fight against you
collectively.
But know that Allah is with those
who are Al-'Muttaqin' (the pious)."(Al-Tauba: 36) which has
arranged to them the way to reckon their days, months and years
accordingly and thus the calendar has become divinely
ordained- characterized with accuracy and exactness and
consequently, it won't be subjected to any man-made authority
whereas the astrologists or even some religious authorities dare
to fix or restrict or play with the other calendars in respect of
the lengths of their months and their locations.
The Arabs, in the pre-Islamic era
or at least, before the Prophetic Commission for about one
century period, had been reckoning their months according to the
motion caused by the lunar system-not according to the solar
system and they had got the same arrangement of the months that
they are now in use; so, they used to exact their data through
the first appearance of the crescent in the sky.
The beginning of the month
coincides with the first appearance of the crescent in the sky
and ends with the reappearance of the crescent in the sky. But
they really differed in the principle of their reckoning of this
calendar.
They used it to record numerous and diverse
events such as: the "Year of the Elephant" and that is the year
when Abraham Al-Habashi had launched an offensive over
(Al-Ka'ba)
And another about the Prophet
Abraham (P.B.U.H.) who was ordered to build the Honorable Ka'ba
when at a certain time, they chose to record the Collapse of
Ma'rib Dam in Yemen as an event from which their calendar stemmed
until Islam came to undertake the task of recording most of their
events and perhaps exacted and fixed the time of their
occurrences when the Messenger of Allah appointed his migration
from Macca to Al-Madina as the beginning of the Islamic
calendar.
Indeed, that was the first of the month of
Rabee Al-Awal in the thirteenth year of the Prophet's Commission
(the beginning of Allah's sending down His Heavenly Revelation to
His Messenger (P.B.U.H.) and making him hold the post of
Prophet-hood and appointing him as a prophet to all the people on
earth.
Then, the Prophet went on recording his
formal books depending on that calendar as the starting-point of
the Islamic history and since that date it came to be a reliable
date to the whole of the Islamic world considering their
migration with the holy Prophet as a significant event which was
regarded as a stage of transference from the location of
polytheism into the wide space of their freedom of practicing
their beliefs in Al-Madina which has been selected by the Prophet
as a starting-point of his movement toward sociological
change.
At this stage events increased and situations
became complicated with the passage of time and all this took
place during the third year of the migration and that in the
fifth year of the migration and so on till getting to the year
1437 H. and 1438 H.
The lunar months are: Muharram,
Safar, Rabee Al-Awal, Rabee Al-Thani, Jamadi Al-Ula, Jamadi
Al-Ukhra, Sha'ban, Ramadhan, Shawal, Thul-Qida and
Thul-Hijja.
Despite the Islamic lunar year
will be reckoned from the beginning of the month of Rabee-Al-Wal
but its beginning causes a change to the month of Muharram during
the rule of the second caliph by a sign from Ali bin Abu Talib
(P.B.U.H.) and that refers to two reasons:
The first, goes in agreement with
the Arabs custom before Islam and that is: by considering
Muharram as a beginning of their year and the second one is that:
by preventing the act of partitioning the year whose months are
not to be employed in war to two years through gathering them
together in one month according to their serial
number.
Sun -
22 Jamadilawal 1446H -
