Effendi
Effendi or Effendy is a title of nobility meaning a Lord or Master. It is a title of courtesy, equivalent to the English Sir, it was used in the Ottoman Byzantine Empire. It follows the personal name, when it is used, is given to members of the learned professions and to government officials who have high ranks, such as bey or pasha, it may indicate a definite office, as hekim efendi, chief physician to the sultan. The possessive form efendim is used by servants, in formal discourse, when answering the telephone, can substitute for "excuse me" in some situations. In the Ottoman era, the most common title affixed to a personal name; such a title would have indicated an "educated gentleman", hence by implication a graduate of a secular state school though at least some if not most of these efendis had once been religious students, or religious teachers. The Ottoman Turkish word افندي efendi, in modern Turkish efendi, is a borrowing of the Medieval Greek ἀφέντης afendēs, from Ancient Greek αὐθέντης authentēs, "master, doer, perpetrator".
This word was used as a Greek title for Byzantine nobles as late as 1465, such as in the letters of Cardinal Bessarion concerning the children of Thomas Paleologus. Effendi was considered a title for a man of high education or social standing in an eastern country, it was a title of Turkish origin, analogous to esquire, junior to bey in Egypt during the period of the Muhammad Ali dynasty. Effendi is still used as an honorific in Egypt and Turkey, is the source of the word أفندم؟ afandim?, Turkish: efendim, a polite way of saying, "Excuse me?", can be used in answering the phone. The colonial forces of British East Africa and German East Africa were built from a stock of Sudanese soldiers of the Egyptian army, nominally under the Ottoman Empire; these units entered East Africa with some officers who brought their title of effendi with them and, thus, it continued to be used for non-European officers of the two colonial forces. Up to the present the Swahili form afande is a way to address officers in the armies of Kenya, Tanzania and in Rwanda with the coming to power of RPF.
Effendi was the highest rank that a Black African could achieve in the British King's African Rifles until 1961. They were equivalent to the Viceroy's Commissioned Officers in the British Indian Army. An Effendi's authority was confined to other KAR troops, he could not command British troops; the KAR rank came into disuse during the 1930s and was reintroduced in 1956. Effendi was a non-European's officer rank in the Schutztruppe of German East Africa. Similar to the above British practice, Effendis were promoted by a governor's warrant, not by a kaiser's commission, as white commissioned officers were. Effendis had no authority over white troops. In the Schutztruppe this rank was used, together with other ranks of Ottoman origin like "Tschausch" and "Ombascha". In Bosnia and Herzegovina "Efendija" refers to Muslim clerics. In Indonesia and Malaysia, "Effendi" can be used as a first name. In Pakistan and India, "Effendi" is the surname of some families whose ancestors migrated from Turkey or Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, some members of the former ruling Barakzai clan of Durranis use "Effendi" or a variant "Affandi" as their surname. In China, "Effendi" refers to Nasreddin. Jazz pianist McCoy Tyner has one composition named "Effendi", it appears on Inception. Byzantine bureaucracy and aristocracy Ottoman titles Baranovitch, Nimrod. "From the Margins to the Center." China Quarterly 175: 726-750. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003. Drompp, Michael. Tang China And The Collapse Of The Uighur Empire: A History. Brill Academic Publishers, 2004. ReadLiterature.com - Definition of Efendi A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity
Mecca
Mecca spelled Makkah, is a city in the Hejazi region of the Arabian Peninsula, the plain of Tihamah in Saudi Arabia, is the capital and administrative headquarters of the Makkah Region. The city is located 70 km inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of 277 m above sea level, 340 kilometres south of Medina, its resident population in 2012 was 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the Ḥajj period held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah. As the birthplace of Muḥammad, the site of Muhammad's first revelation of the Quran, Mecca is regarded as the holiest city in the religion of Islam and a pilgrimage to it known as the Hajj is obligatory for all able Muslims. Mecca is home to the Kaaba, by majority description Islam's holiest site, as well as being the direction of Muslim prayer. Mecca was long ruled by Muhammad's descendants, the sharifs, acting either as independent rulers or as vassals to larger polities, it was conquered by Ibn Saud in 1925.
In its modern period, Mecca has seen tremendous expansion in size and infrastructure, home to structures such as the Abraj Al Bait known as the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel, the world's fourth tallest building and the building with the third largest amount of floor area. During this expansion, Mecca has lost some historical structures and archaeological sites, such as the Ajyad Fortress. Today, more than 15 million Muslims visit Mecca annually, including several million during the few days of the Hajj; as a result, Mecca has become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Muslim world, although non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the city. "Mecca" is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city, although the official transliteration used by the Saudi government is Makkah, closer to the Arabic pronunciation. The word "Mecca" in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, because of this some English speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive.
The Saudi government adopted Makkah as the official spelling in the 1980s, but is not universally known or used worldwide. The full official name is Makkah al-Mukarramah or Makkatu l-Mukarramah, which means "Mecca the Honored", but is loosely translated as "The Holy City of Mecca"; the ancient or early name for the site of Mecca is Bakkah. An Arabic language word, its etymology, like that of Mecca, is obscure. Believed to be a synonym for Mecca, it is said to be more the early name for the valley located therein, while Muslim scholars use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that surrounds and includes the Ka‘bah; this form is used for the name Mecca in the Quran in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24. In South Arabic, the language in use in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, the b and m were interchangeable. Other references to Mecca in the Quran call it Umm al-Qurā, meaning "Mother of All Settlements"/"mother of villages". Another name of Mecca is Ṫihāmah.
Another name for Mecca, or the wilderness and mountains surrounding it, according to Arab and Islamic tradition, is Faran or Pharan, referring to the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Old Testament at Genesis 21:21. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah and the site where Ishmael settled was Mecca. Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th century Syrian geographer, wrote that Fārān was "an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah." Mecca is governed by the Municipality of Mecca, a municipal council of fourteen locally elected members headed by a mayor appointed by the Saudi government. As of May 2015, the mayor of the city was Dr. Osama bin Fadhel Al-Bar. Mecca is the capital of the Makkah Region; the provincial governor was prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud from 2000 until his death in 2007. On 16 May 2007, prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud was appointed as the new governor; the early history of Mecca is still disputed, as there are no unambiguous references to it in ancient literature prior to the rise of Islam.
The Roman Empire took control of part of the Hejaz in 106 CE, ruling cities such as Hegra, located to the north of Mecca. Though detailed descriptions were established of Western Arabia by Rome, such as by Procopius, there are no references of a pilgrimage and trading outpost such as Mecca; the first direct mention of Mecca in external literature occurs in 741 CE, in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, though here the author places it in Mesopotamia rather than the Hejaz. Given the inhospitable environment and lack of historical references in Roman and Indian sources, historians including Patricia Crone and Tom Holland have cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost; the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes about Arabia in his work Bibliotheca historica, describing a holy shrine: "And a temple has been set up there, holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Claims have been made. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, closer to Petra and within the form
Mahmud I
Mahmud I, known as The hunchback, was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1730 to 1754. He was born at Edirne Palace, the son of Mustafa II. Mahmud I was the older brother of Osman III, he developed a humped back. On 28 September 1730, Patrona Halil with a small group of fellow Janissaries aroused some of the citizens of Constantinople who opposed the reforms of Ahmet III. Sweeping up more soldiers Halil led the riot to the Topkapı Palace and demanded the death of the grand vizer, Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha and the abdication of Ahmet III. Ahmet III acceded to the demands, had İbrahim Pasha strangled, agreed to his nephew, becoming sultan. Mahmud I was recognized as sultan by the mutineers as well as by court officials but for some weeks after his accession the empire was in the hands of the insurgents. Halil rode with the new sultan to the Mosque of Eyüb where the ceremony of girding Mahmud I with the Sword of Osman was performed. A Greek butcher, named Yanaki, had given credit to Halil and had lent him money during the three days of the insurrection.
Halil showed his gratitude by compelling the Divan to make Yanaki Hospodar of Moldavia. However, Yanaki never took charge of this office; the Khan of the Crimea assisted the Grand Vizier, the Mufti and the Aga of the Janissaries in putting down the rebellion. On 24 November 1731, Halil was strangled by the sultan's order and in his presence, after a Divan in which Halil had dictated that war be declared against Russia, his Greek friend, 7,000 of those who had supported him were put to death. The jealousy which the officers of the Janissaries felt towards Halil, their readiness to aid in his destruction, facilitated the exertions of Mahmud I's supporters in putting an end to the rebellion after it had lasted over a year; the rest of Mahmud I's reign was dominated by wars in Persia, with the collapsing Safavid dynasty and the ascendance of Nader Shah. Mahmud faced a notable war in Europe -- the Austro-Russian-Turkish War. Mahmud I entrusted government to his viziers and spent much of his time composing poetry.
He died at Constantinople. Nader Shah's devastating campaign against the Mughal Empire, created a void in the western frontiers of Persia, exploited by the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud I, who initiated the Ottoman–Persian War, in which the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah cooperated with the Ottomans and their ambassador Haji Yusuf Agha, these relations between the two empires continued until Muhammad Shah's death in 1748, his consorts were: Alicenab Kadın alias El-Hace Ayşe, the principal consort. Incorporates text from History of Ottoman Turks Peirce, Leslie P.. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-08677-5. Kal'a, Ahmet. İstanbul su külliyâtı: Vakıf su defterleri: Suyolcu 2. İstanbul Araştırmaları Merkezi. ISBN 978-9-758-21504-1. Şapolyo, Enver Behnan. Osmanlı sultanları tarihi. R. Zaimler Yayınevi. Necepoğlu, Gülrü. Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, Volume 19. BRILL. ISBN 978-9-004-12593-3. Sakaoğlu, Necdet. Bu mülkün kadın sultanları: Vâlide sultanlar, hâtunlar, kadınefendiler, sultanefendiler.
Oğlak Yayıncılık. ISBN 978-9-753-29623-6. Uluçay, Mustafa Çağatay. Padişahların kadınları ve kızları. Ankara, Ötüken
Sunday
Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. Sunday is a day of rest in most Western countries, as a part of the weeknight. For most observant Christians, Sunday is observed as a day of worship and rest, holding it as the Lord's Day and the day of Christ's resurrection. In some Muslim countries and Israel, Sunday is the first work day of the week. According to the Hebrew calendar and traditional Christian calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week, but according to the International Organization for Standardization ISO 8601, Sunday is the seventh day of the week. The name "Sunday", the day of the Sun, is derived from Hellenistic astrology, where the seven planets, known in English as Saturn, Mars, the Sun, Venus and the Moon, each had an hour of the day assigned to them, the planet, regent during the first hour of any day of the week gave its name to that day. During the 1st and 2nd century, the week of seven days was introduced into Rome from Egypt, the Roman names of the planets were given to each successive day.
Germanic peoples seem to have adopted the week as a division of time from the Romans, but they changed the Roman names into those of corresponding Teutonic deities. Hence, the dies Solis became Sunday; the English noun Sunday derived sometime before 1250 from sunedai, which itself developed from Old English Sunnandæg, cognate to other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian sunnandei, Old Saxon sunnundag, Middle Dutch sonnendach, Old High German sunnun tag, Old Norse sunnudagr. The Germanic term is a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, a translation of the Ancient Greek heméra helíou; the p-Celtic Welsh language translates the Latin "day of the sun" as dydd Sul. In most Indian languages, the word for Sunday is Ravivāra or Adityavāra or its derived forms — vāra meaning day and Ravi both being a style for Surya i.e. the Sun and Suryadeva the chief solar deity and one of the Adityas. Ravivāra is first day cited in Jyotisha, which provides logical reason for giving the name of each week day.
In the Thai solar calendar of Thailand, the name is derived from Aditya, the associated colour is red. In Russian the word for Sunday is Воскресенье meaning "Resurrection". In other Slavic languages the word means "no work", for example Polish: Niedziela, Ukrainian: Недiля, Belorussian: Нядзеля, Croatian: nedjelja and Slovenian: Nedelja, Czech: Neděle, Bulgarian: Неделя; the Modern Greek word for Sunday, Greek: Κυριακή, is derived from Greek: Κύριος due to its liturgical significance as the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, i.e. The Lord's Day. In Korean, Sunday is called 일요일 Il-yo-Il, meaning "day of sun"; the international standard ISO 8601 for representation of dates and times, states that Sunday is the seventh and last day of the week. This method of representing dates and times unambiguously was first published in 1988. In the Judaic, some Christian, as well as in some Islamic tradition, Sunday has been considered the first day of the week. A number of languages express this position either by the name for the day or by the naming of the other days.
In Hebrew it is called יום ראשון yom rishon, in Arabic الأحد al-ahad, in Persian and related languages یکشنبه yek-shanbe, all meaning "first". In Greek, the names of the days Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mean "second", "third", "fourth", "fifth" respectively; this leaves Sunday in the first position of the week count. The current Greek name for Sunday, Κυριακή, means "Lord's Day" coming from the word Κύριος, the Greek word for "Lord". In Portuguese, where the days from Monday to Friday are counted as "segunda-feira", "terça-feira", "quarta-feira", "quinta-feira" and "sexta-feira", while Sunday itself similar to Greek has the name of "Lord's Day". In Vietnamese, the working days in the week are named as: "Thứ Hai", "Thứ Ba", "Thứ Tư", "Thứ Năm", "Thứ Sáu", "Thứ Bảy". Sunday is called "Chủ Nhật", a corrupted form of "Chúa Nhật" meaning "Lord's Day"; some colloquial text in the south of Vietnam and from the church may still use the old form to mean Sunday. In German, Wednesday is called "Mittwoch" "mid-week", implying that weeks run from Sunday to Saturday.
The name is similar in the Romance Languages. In Italian, Sunday is called "domenica", which means "Lord's Day". One finds similar cognates in French, where the name is "dimanche", as well as Romanian and Spanish and Portuguese. Slavic languages implicitly number Monday as not two. Russian воскресение means "resurrection". In Old Russian Sunday was called неделя "free day" or "day with no work", but in the contemporary language this word means "week". Hungarian péntek is a Slavic loanword, so the correlation with "five" is not evident to Hungarians. Hungarians use Vasárnap for Sunday, which means "market day". In the Maltese language, due to its Siculo-Arabic origin, Sunday is called "Il-Ħadd", a corruption of "wieħed" meaning "one". Monday is "It-Tnejn" meaning "two". Tuesday is "It-Tlieta", Wednesday is "L-Erbgħa" and Thursday is "Il-Ħamis". In Armenian, Monday is meaning 2nd day of the week, Tuesday 3rd day, Wednesday 4th day, Thursday (Hingsh
31 March Incident
The 31 March Incident was the defeat of the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 by the Hareket Ordusu, the 11th Salonika Reserve Infantry Division of the Third Army stationed in the Balkans and commanded by Mahmud Shevket Pasha on 24 April 1909. The counter coup began on 31 March on the Rumi calendar, the official calendar of the Ottoman Empire, corresponding to 13 April 1909 on the Gregorian calendar now used in Turkey; the rebellion had begun on 13 April 1909 and was put down by 24 April 1909. Ottoman historiography link the two events under the name 31 March Incident but refers to the actions by the Hareket Ordusu, the subsequent restoration of the constitution for a third time and the deposition of Abdul Hamid II, replaced by his younger brother Mehmed V; the Young Turk Revolution, which began in the Balkan provinces, spread throughout the empire and resulted in the Sultan Abdul Hamid II announcing the restoration of the Ottoman constitution of 1876 on 3 July 1908. The Ottoman general election of 1908 took place during December of that year.
The Senate of the Ottoman Empire reconvened for the first time in over 30 years on 17 December 1908. The Chamber of Deputies' first session was on 30 January 1909; the Ottoman counter-coup of 13 April 1909 was a rebellion by conservative reactionaries in Constantinople against the restoration of the constitutional system. The counter-coup attempted to put an end to the nascent Second Constitutional Era in order to re-affirm the position of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II as the absolute monarch; the counter-coup, was instigated among some parts of the army by a certain Cypriot Islamic extremist Dervish Vahdeti, who reigned supreme in Constantinople for a few days. The CUP appealed to Mahmud Shevket Pasha, commander of the Ottoman Third Army based in Selanik to quell the uprising by Dervish Vahdeti and his supporters. With support from the commander of the Ottoman Second Army in Edirne, Mahmud Shevket combined the armies to create a strike force named Hareket Ordusu; the Army of Action numbered 20,000-25,000 Ottoman troops and were involved in events known as the 31 March Incident toward ending the coup.
The eleventh Reserve Division based in Selanik composed the advance guard of the Action Army and the chief of staff was Mustafa Kemal. The Action Army were joined by 15,000 volunteers including 4,000 Bulgarians, 2,000 Greeks and 700 Jews. Adding to those numbers were Albanians that supported the Action Army with Çerçiz Topulli and Bajram Curri bringing 8,000 Albanian men and Major Ahmed Niyazi Bey with 1,800 men from Resne. In short time CUP members Fethi Okyar, Hafız Hakkı and Enver Bey returned from their international posts at Ottoman embassies and joined Mahmud Shevket as his military staff prior to reaching Istanbul. Traveling by train the soldiers went to Çatalca Hademköy and reached Ayastefanos located on the edge of Istanbul. A delegation was sent to Army headquarters by the Ottoman parliament that sought to stop it from taking Istanbul through force; the Army of Action laid siege to Constantinople on 17 April 1909. The Sultan remained in the Yildiz and had frequent conferences with Grand Vizier Tewfik Pasha who announced: His Sublime Majesty awaits benevolently the arrival of the so called constitutional army.
He has nothing to gain or fear since his Sublimity is for the Constitution and is its supreme guardian. Negotiations continued for six days; the negotiators were Rear Admiral Arif Hikmet Pasha, Emanuel Karasu Efendi, Esad Pasha Toptani, Aram Efendi and Colonel Galip Bey. At the moment when the conflict showed signs of extending to the public, the Salonikan troops entered Constantinople. On April 24 the occupation of Istanbul by the Action Army began in the early morning through military operations directed by Ali Pasha Kolonja, an Albanian, that retook the city with little resistance from the mutineers; the barracks of Tașkışla and Taksim offered strong resistance and by four o'clock of the afternoon the remaining rebels surrendered. The Macedonian troops attacked the Tashkishla barracks. There was fierce street fighting in the European quarter where the guard houses were held by the First Army Corps. There was heavy fire from troops in the Tashkishla barracks against the advancing troops; the barracks had to be shelled and destroyed by the artillery located on the heights above the barracks before the garrison surrendered after several hours fighting and heavy losses.
Desperate was the defence of the Taksim barracks. The attack on the Taksim barracks was led by Enver Bey. After a short battle they gained control of the palace on 27 April. Sultan Abdul Hamid was deserted by most of his advisors; the parliament discussed the question as to whether he would be permitted to remain on the throne or be deposed or be executed. Putting the Sultan to death was considered unwise as such a step might rouse a fanatical response and plunge the Empire into civil war. On the other hand, there were those who felt that after all that had happened it was impossible that the Parliament could again work with the Sultan. On April 27 the Assembly held a meeting behind closed doors under the presidency of Said Pasha. A fetva drawn up in the form of question and answer and signed by the Sheikh ul Islam was read to the assembled members: If an imam of the Moslems tampers with and burns the sacred books. If he appropriates public money. If after killing imprisoning and exiling his subjects unjustly, he swears to amend his ways and perjures himself.
If he causes civil war and bloodshed among his own people. If it
Hebrew calendar
The Hebrew or Jewish calendar is a lunisolar calendar used today predominantly for Jewish religious observances. It determines the dates for Jewish holidays and the appropriate public reading of Torah portions and daily Psalm readings, among many ceremonial uses. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture and is an official calendar for civil purposes, although the latter usage has been declining in favor of the Gregorian calendar; the present Hebrew calendar is the product including a Babylonian influence. Until the Tannaitic period, the calendar employed a new crescent moon, with an additional month added every two or three years to correct for the difference between twelve lunar months and the solar year; the year in which it was added was based on observation of natural agriculture-related events in ancient Israel. Through the Amoraic period and into the Geonic period, this system was displaced by the mathematical rules used today; the principles and rules were codified by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah in the 12th century.
Maimonides' work replaced counting "years since the destruction of the Temple" with the modern creation-era Anno Mundi. The Hebrew lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar year and uses the 19-year Metonic cycle to bring it into line with the solar year, with the addition of an intercalary month every two or three years, for a total of seven times per 19 years. With this intercalation, the average Hebrew calendar year is longer by about 6 minutes and 40 seconds than the current mean tropical year, so that every 217 years the Hebrew calendar will fall a day behind the current mean tropical year; the era used. As with Anno Domini, the words or abbreviation for Anno Mundi for the era should properly precede the date rather than follow it. AM 5779 began at sunset on 9 September 2018 and will end at sunset on 29 September 2019; the Jewish day is of no fixed length. The Jewish day is modeled on the reference to "...there was evening and there was morning..." in the creation account in the first chapter of Genesis.
Based on the classic rabbinic interpretation of this text, a day in the rabbinic Hebrew calendar runs from sunset to the next sunset. Halachically, a day ends and a new one starts when three stars are visible in the sky; the time between true sunset and the time when the three stars are visible is known as'bein hashmashot', there are differences of opinion as to which day it falls into for some uses. This may be relevant, for example, in determining the date of birth of a child born during that gap. There is no clock in the Jewish scheme. Though the civil clock, including the one in use in Israel, incorporates local adoptions of various conventions such as time zones, standard times and daylight saving, these have no place in the Jewish scheme; the civil clock is used only as a reference point – in expressions such as: "Shabbat starts at...". The steady progression of sunset around the world and seasonal changes results in gradual civil time changes from one day to the next based on observable astronomical phenomena and not on man-made laws and conventions.
In Judaism, an hour is defined as 1/12 of the time from sunrise to sunset, so, during the winter, an hour can be much less than 60 minutes, during the summer, it can be much more than 60 minutes. This proportional hour is known as a sha'ah z'manit. A Jewish hour is divided into parts. A part is 1/18 minute; the ultimate ancestor of the helek was a small Babylonian time period called a barleycorn, itself equal to 1/72 of a Babylonian time degree. These measures are not used for everyday purposes. Instead of the international date line convention, there are varying opinions as to where the day changes. One opinion uses the antimeridian of Jerusalem. Other opinions exist as well; the weekdays proceed to Saturday, Shabbat. Since some calculations use division, a remainder of 0 signifies Saturday. While calculations of days and years are based on fixed hours equal to 1/24 of a day, the beginning of each halachic day is based on the local time of sunset; the end of the Shabbat and other Jewish holidays is based on nightfall which occurs some amount of time 42 to 72 minutes, after sunset.
According to Maimonides, nightfall occurs. By the 17th century, this had become three-second-magnitude stars; the modern definition is when the center of the sun is 7° below the geometric horizon, somewhat than civil twilight at 6°. The beginning of the daytime portion of each day is determined both by sunrise. Most halachic times are based on some combination of these four times and vary from day to day throughout the year and vary depending on location; the daytime hours are divided into Sha'oth Zemaniyoth or "Halachic hours" by taking the time between sunrise and sunset or between dawn and nightfall and dividing it into 12 equal hours. The nighttime hours are s
Islamic calendar
The Islamic, Muslim, or Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual period of fasting and the proper time for the pilgrimage to Mecca; the civil calendar of all countries where the religion is predominantly Muslim is the Gregorian calendar. Notable exceptions to this rule are Afghanistan, which use the Solar Hijri calendar. Rents and similar regular commitments are paid by the civil calendar; the Islamic calendar employs the Hijri era whose epoch was established as the Islamic New Year of 622 AD/CE. During that year and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib and established the first Muslim community, an event commemorated as the Hijra. In the West, dates in this era are denoted AH in parallel with the Christian and Jewish eras. In Muslim countries, it is sometimes denoted as H from its Arabic form. In English, years prior to the Hijra are reckoned as BH.
The current Islamic year is 1440 AH. In the Gregorian calendar, 1440 AH runs from 11 September 2018 to 30 August 2019. For central Arabia Mecca, there is a lack of epigraphical evidence but details are found in the writings of Muslim authors of the Abbasid era. Inscriptions of the ancient South Arabian calendars reveal the use of a number of local calendars. At least some of these South Arabian calendars followed the lunisolar system. Both al-Biruni and al-Mas'udi suggest that the ancient Arabs used the same month names as the Muslims, though they record other month names used by the pre-Islamic Arabs; the Islamic tradition is unanimous in stating that Arabs of Tihamah and Najd distinguished between two types of months and forbidden months. The forbidden months were four months during which fighting is forbidden, listed as Rajab and the three months around the pilgrimage season, Dhu al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram. Information about the forbidden months is found in the writings of Procopius, where he describes an armistice with the Eastern Arabs of the Lakhmid al-Mundhir which happened in the summer of 541 AD/CE.
However, Muslim historians do not link these months to a particular season. The Qur'an links the four forbidden months with Nasī’, a word that means "postponement". According to Muslim tradition, the decision of postponement was administered by the tribe of Kinanah, by a man known as the al-Qalammas of Kinanah and his descendants. Different interpretations of the concept of Nasī’ have been proposed; some scholars, both Muslim and Western, maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar. According to this view, Nasī’ is related to the pre-Islamic practices of the Meccan Arabs, where they would alter the distribution of the forbidden months within a given year without implying a calendar manipulation; this interpretation is supported by Arab historians and lexicographers, like Ibn Hisham, Ibn Manzur, the corpus of Qur'anic exegesis. This is corroborated by an early Sabaic inscription, where a religious ritual was "postponed" due to war.
According to the context of this inscription, the verb ns'’ has nothing to do with intercalation, but only with moving religious events within the calendar itself. The similarity between the religious concept of this ancient inscription and the Qur'an suggests that non-calendaring postponement is the Qur'anic meaning of Nasī’; the Encyclopaedia of Islam concludes "The Arabic system of can only have been intended to move the Hajj and the fairs associated with it in the vicinity of Mecca to a suitable season of the year. It was not intended to establish a fixed calendar to be observed." The term "fixed calendar" is understood to refer to the non-intercalated calendar. Others concur that it was a lunar calendar, but suggest that about 200 years before the Hijra it was transformed into a lunisolar calendar containing an intercalary month added from time to time to keep the pilgrimage within the season of the year when merchandise was most abundant; this interpretation was first proposed by the medieval Muslim astrologer and astronomer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, by al-Biruni, al-Mas'udi, some western scholars.
This interpretation considers Nasī’ to be a synonym to the Arabic word for "intercalation". The Arabs, according to one explanation mentioned by Abu Ma'shar, learned of this type of intercalation from the Jews; the Jewish Nasi was the official. Some sources say that the Arabs followed the Jewish practice and intercalated seven months over nineteen years, or else that they intercalated nine months over 24 years. Postponement of one ritual in a particular circumstance does not imply alteration of the sequence of months, scholars agree that this did not happen. Al-Biruni says this did not happen, the festivals were kept within their season by intercalation every second or third year of a month between Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram, he says that, in terms of the fixed calendar, not introduced until 10 AH, the first intercalation was, for example, of a month between Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram, the second of a month between Muharram and Safar, the third of a month between Safar and Rabi'I, so on. The intercalations were arranged.
The notice of interca
