Cultural aspects in Christian and Islamic religions - unesdoc - Unesco

The Lunar Calendar
The Glorious Koran states: “The total of months
with God is twelve months in the Book of God,
from the day that God created the heavens and
the earth. Of these, four are Sacred. This is the
correct religious practice. So do yourselves no
wrong therein” (Sura: Repentance (9), Verse 36).
The lunar month starts with the sight of the
crescent and ends when it is seen again signifying
the beginning of a new month. Its number of days
is twenty-nine days and a half. Since this fraction
of number is intricate, two months were counted
as a total of fifty nine days, where one month
has thirty days, the full month, and the other has
twenty nine, the incomplete month.
Prior to Islam, people used to chronicle history
based on their great events. Each nation would
chronicle what it saw and convened upon as the
great events they went through. In this context,
Arabs chronicled events starting with the history
of building al-Kaaba, until they separated. Every
time a people left Mecca, they chronicled as of the
day of their departure.
This situation remained as such until the death of
the grandfather of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)
as Meccans started to chronicle as of his death.
This remained so until the second Caliph, ‘Umar Ibn
Al-Khattab (R.A.A), (634 - 644 A.D.) decided, after
consulting the people, to start the lunar count with
the Hegira of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) from
Mecca to Medina in 622. But the chronicle did not
start with the day of the Hegira (12 Rabi’ al-‘Awwal)
but rather with the first month of the lunar year (the
month of Muharram) that Muslims call the year of
the Hegira.
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