September 5, 2004

Developing a system by which time is divided into fixed periods needs to be reviewed ona regular basis

THE time has come when one needs to rethink the dominant calendar system in vogue in the world. It is generally known as the Gregorian or Christian calendar, though there is hardly anything Christian about it. In fact, the genesis of the system as well as the names of most of the months used in the system predate Christianity’s advent.

Calendar is a system of measuring time for the needs of civil life, by dividing time into days, weeks, months and years. Calendar divisions are based on the movements of the Earth and the regular appearances of the Sun and the Moon. One day is the average time required for one rotation of the Earth on its axis. The measurement of a year is based on one revolution of the Earth around the Sun and is called a seasonal, tropical or solar year. A solar year contains 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 45.5 seconds.

A month was originally calculated by the people of days of yore as the time between two full moons or the number of days required of the moon to circle the earth (29.5 days). This measurement, called a synodic or lunar month, resulted in a lunar year of 354/355 days. In modern calendars, however, the number of days in a month is not based on the phases of the Moon, rather the length of the months is approximately one-twelfth of a year (28 to 31 days) and is adjusted to fit the 12 months into a solar year. The week was derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, requiring rest from labour every seventh day. It is not based on a natural phenomenon. The Romans named the days of the week in honour of the Sun, Moon, and various other planets.

The variations among the many calendars in use from ancient to modern times have been caused by the inaccuracy of the earliest determinations of the duration of the year, together with the fact that a year cannot be divided evenly by any of the other time units: days, weeks or months. The earliest calendars based on lunar months eventually failed to agree with the seasons. A month occasionally had to be intercalated or added to reconcile lunar months with the solar year. A calendar that makes periodic adjustments of this kind is called a lunisolar calendar.

There are many religious, regional and local calendars in the world, like the Jewish, the Indian, the Iranian, the Japanese and the Chinese ones, but are mostly used for determining the dates of local and religious festivals and events. The New Year celebrations in each region follow the traditional calendars, like Nauroz in Iran and Besakhi in India. This is not so for the Hijra calendar. Since the grandson of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), Imam Hussein and his companions were massacred at the advent of the lunar year 60 Hijra, the first 10 days of the lunar calendar are observed with reverence among the Muslims.

Nevertheless, the Islamic lunar calendar is most extensively used after the Gregorian calendar, mainly so because several of the rituals of the Islamic religion including the pilgrimage (Haj) and fasting depend on the lunar calendar. Moreover, Islamic history has mostly been recorded according to the Hijra calendar. The blessed nights of Lailatul-Qadr and the Shab-i-Mairaj also depend on the lunar calendar.

Although, there is little official correspondence, documentation or legislation that is based on the Hijra calendar, yet, still a few countries, notably Saudi Arabia are run under the Hijra calendar. Among the international organizations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), largely, and the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council partially, rely on the Hijra calendar.

The main problem with using the lunar calendar is the lag of around 10 days each year, since the lunar year is shorter by that margin from its solar counterpart. It means that a particular lunar date corresponding to a specific date in the solar calendar would be 10 days off the mark against the same, the following year. This then sums out to a month’s lag every three years and a difference of over three years in a century. To avoid this problem, there used to be several mechanisms in place.

In Arabia, every third year of the lunar calendar used to be of 13 months, to cover for the loss of one month. So the centuries and the seasons in the solar and lunar calendars remained more or less overlapping. Quite few people know that this system was discontinued on the orders of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in the year 7 Hijra.

This addition was not peculiar to the Arabian lunar calendar. Same was the case with the Egyptian and the Greek lunar calendars before that. As far away as in China, the year is traditionally divided into 12 lunar months, beginning at the second new moon after the winter solstice. As there is a shortfall of approximately 11 days between the lunar and the solar year, an intercalary month is added every 21/2 years. The Jewish calendar, one may add, is also like the preceding three calendars explained, lunisolar. It is based on lunar months of 29 days alternating with 30 days. An extra month is intercalated every three years, based on a cycle of 19 years. Israel officially uses this calendar side by side with the Gregorian calendar.

One may trace the origin of the present Gregorian calendar to the original Roman calendar, introduced in the 7th century BC. It had 10 months with 304 days in a year that began with March. This explains why November and December mean respectively the ninth and the tenth month. However, two more months, January and February, were added later in the same century at the end of the calendar, making the year consist of 12 months. Because the months were only 29 or 30 days long, an extra month had to be intercalated approximately every second year. The Roman calendar became hopelessly confused when officials to whom the addition of days and months was entrusted abused their authority to prolong their terms of office or to hasten or delay elections.

Romans were not alone in misusing the calendar system. The Greeks before them and the Arabs later on also practised such abuse of calendar. In Arabia, there were four holy months of Moharram, Rajab, Zi’Qaad and Zi’lHajj, wherein the centuries old customs expressly prohibited looting and plundering of caravans. The Arab chieftains played with the months declaring Rajab as Sha’aban and so on, at their convenience, so that the highwaymen belonging to their tribe do not lose their livelihood most of the year. This chaos may probably have been one of the reasons why the Holy Prophet banned the inclusion of the 13th month every third year at one’s leisure.

In the year 45 BC Julius Caesar, on the advice of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes, decided to use a purely solar calendar. This calendar, known as the Julian calendar, fixed the normal year at 365 days, and the leap year, every fourth year, at 366 days. Leap year is so named because the extra day causes any date after February in a leap year to “leap” over one day in the week and to occur two days later in the week than it did in the previous year, rather than just one day later as in a normal year. The Julian calendar also established the order of the months and the days of the week, as they exist in present day calendars. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar changed the name of the month Quintilis to Julius (July), after himself. The month Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) in honour of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, who succeeded Julius Caesar. Some authorities maintain that Augustus established the length of the months we use today. The Julian year was 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the solar year.

This discrepancy accumulated until 1582 when the vernal equinox occurred 10 days early and church holidays did not occur in the appropriate seasons. To make the vernal equinox occur on March 21, as it had in 325 AD, the year of the First Council of Nicaea, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree dropping 10 days from the calendar. To prevent further displacement he instituted a calendar, known as the Gregorian calendar that provided that century years divisible evenly by 400 should be leap years and that all other century years should be common years.

The Gregorian calendar or New Style calendar was slowly adopted throughout Europe. It is used today in most of the Western world and in parts of Asia. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain in 1752, another correction of an 11-day discrepancy was made; the day after Sept 2, 1752, became Sept 14. The British also adopted Jan 1 as the day when a new year begins, instead of March 21, that was still being observed in the British isles. The Soviet Union was the last European state to adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1918. Although Greece has adopted it in 1923 only for civil purposes, the Greek church still retains the Julian, or Old Style, calendar for the celebration of church feasts.

Because the Gregorian calendar still entails months of unequal length, so that dates and days of the week vary through time, numerous proposals have been made for a more practical, reformed calendar. Such proposals include a fixed calendar of 13 equal months and a universal calendar of four identical quarterly periods. Thus far, none has been adopted, probably because people resist changing their traditional economic, religious, and social activities. Critics of the Gregorian calendar point out that it has 12 months of unequal length; no month is exactly one-twelfth of a year; the number of weeks in the quarter-year and half-year is uneven; and dates and days of the week vary from one year to the next.

One of the best-known proposals for calendar reform is the so- called World calendar that was considered, but not adopted, by the United Nations in 1954. This calendar is based on a 52-week, 364-day year starting on Sunday, Jan 1, with the 365th day, called Year-End Day, intercalated, or added, without date or day of the week. In leap years an extra Leap-Year Day, also without date or day of the week, is inserted at the end of the 26th week, between the last day of June and the first day of July. The first month of each quarter has 31 days, and all the others have 30 days. The major disadvantage is that any winter season does not occur in a single year.

A few modifications are being suggested lately, principally that the past practice of the calendar starting from what is now the 21st of March, be resumed, making the day the first of the first month of the new universal calendar. The nomenclature for the months be changed and universalized by the United Nations so that the names do not represent Greek gods and goddesses but have more to reflect the common legacy of human history. The new year days in almost all the calendars would become identical. With minor adjustments in dates the Iranians, the Chinese, the Africans and the European world shall celebrate the new year the same day. More over the New Year shall coincide with the advent of the spring. Four seasons of 13 weeks/91 days would ensue. Each season will be marked by three months, the first of which would be of 31 days. This would, as explained above, total to 364 days, while the 365th one would be nameless. All the lunar calendars may be asked to become lunisolar, especially, the Islamic Hijra calendar. The ulema (Islamic jurists) may choose to have ijtihad (religious reform) to resume the lunisolar practice of the times of the Holy Prophet till 6 AH, as mentioned earlier.

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