Pre-Islamic Arabian calendar

Several calendars have been used in pre-Islamic Arabia. Inscriptions of the ancient South Arabian calendars reveal the use of a number of local calendars, as do Safaitic inscriptions from the Harran desert in Syria and Jordan. At least some of the South Arabian calendars followed the lunisolar system, while the Safaitic calendar had fixed months and seasons and, very importantly, a seasonal star calendar strongly connected to the Zodiac and the position of the ʔanwāʔ. The ʔanwāʔ, a series of asterisms on or near the zodiac belt were the most important element in pre-Islamic astronomy. These stars were connected to the season, and they were used to forecast various phenomena such as rain, temperature, wind.[1] Before the rise of Islam, diviners invoked these stars in rainmaking rituals called istisqāʔ.[2] Rituals took place during specific times, when the sun was in one or the other of these ʔanwāʔ, some Safaitic texts speak of ritual cleansing while the sun is in Virgo (ngm) or Sagittarius (ṯbr); another text mentions a libation during the full moon of Gemini (gml).[3] It is thus obvious that Zodiac constellations, the position of stars and the mansion of the Sun were very important criteria and had an important impact on the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar and ritual life.

For Central Arabia, especially Mecca, there is a lack of epigraphic evidence, but details are found in the writings of Muslim authors of the Abbasid era.[4] Some historians maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in Central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar.[5][4][6] Others concur that the pre-Islamic calendar was originally a lunar calendar, but suggest that about 200 years before the Hijra it was transformed into a lunisolar calendar, which had an intercalary month added from time to time to keep the pilgrimage within the season of the year when merchandise was most abundant.[7][8] Safaitic evidence (discussed below) strongly suggests that it was not a Lunar calendar, however this evidence needs yet to be fully taken into account by current scholarship.

  1. ^ Varisco 1987: 251
  2. ^ Varisco 1991: 23
  3. ^ Al-Jallad 2016: 88
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference EI2-Tarikh was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Mahmud Effendi (1858), as discussed in Sherrard Beaumont Burnaby, Elements of the Jewish and Muhammadan calendars (London: 1901), pp. 460–470.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Moberg2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Bonner, Michael (2011). "Time has come full circle": Markets, fairs, and the calendar in Arabia before Islam" in Cook, Ahmed, Sadeghi, Behnam, Bonner, et al. The Islamic scholarly tradition : studies in history, law, and thought in honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011. ISBN 9789004194359. page 18.
  8. ^ see also Shah, Zulfiqar Ali and Siddiqi, Muzammil (2009). The astronomical calculations and Ramadan: a fiqhi discourse Washington, D.C.:The International Institute of Islamic Thought. ISBN 9781565643345. page 64.