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Various Eras and Calendars used in the Countries of Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

S. H. Taqizadeh
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Extract

In the first part of this article we have discussed seven different -*- eras or (to be strictly correct) different kinds of time-reckoning with or without a common era. We are now going to deal with the fourteen remaining sections of our list. But before proceeding to the discussion of the next number, I want to insert here a small note relating to No. 3, i.e. the Kharājī era in Egypt, as a complement to what has already been said in the preceding number of this Bulletin (BSOS., pp. 914–15).

Professor A. S. Tritton called my attention to a few Kharājī dates occurring in an Arabic manuscript in the British Museum (Or. 1338). On examining these dates, which belong to the fifth and early sixth centuries A.H., I find some interesting points which supplement our knowledge about that era as used in that country in the time of the Fāṭimid caliphs. This anonymous book is a history of the Monophysite patriarchs of Alexandria, from St. Mark to Matthew the 87th patriarch who died 31st December, 1408, and it must have been composed by an unknown author soon after the latter date.Some of the Kh. dates in this book are given with their corresponding dates of the Diocletian era (era of the Martyrs). These are as follows:—

Moreover, the date of the death of the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Musta‘lī, which happened in the month of Ṣafar, A.H. 495 (Hilālī) = December, A.D. 1101, is given as 491 Kh. (fol. 284b).

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1940 , pp. 107 - 132
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1942

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References

page 107 note 1 An erratum which may cause confusion has slipped into the last page of the first part of this article (BSOS., IX, 4, p. 922) in the postscript note, where an unnecessary bracket is opened in the 8th line of the said note and is closed at the end of the note.

page 107 note 2 The book seems to be an abridgment of the famous history of the patriarchs of Alexandria by Severus (Ibn al-Muqaffa‘) with continuation to the time of the author. It ends on fol. 345 and is followed by a few pages on the same subject by a later author, who begins with the life of the 103rd patriarch enthroned in the year 1672–3 and concludes with the death of the latter's successor (the 104th patriarch) in 1725–6.

page 108 note 1 According to Nuwairī, (Nihāyat, Cairo ed. i, p. 164) the operation of “sliding” was practised in the early times of Islam ( )Google Scholar.

page 109 note 1 It is even doubtful whether this old Persian usage of intercalation which was certainly effected always in the religious (and not in the civil) year ever affected the matters relating to taxation, etc. as well.

page 109 note 2 The intercalation was considered to be the same as the nasī’ which is condemned in religion (Qur՚ān ix, 37).

page 111 note 1 Abū al-Fidā’ has also the same date for the calendar reform.

page 111 note 2 It is, of course, also possible that the decree came into force (i.e. the actual use of the new calendar began) only in A.H. 471, the beginning of the Malikī era. Also it is not impossible to suppose that Ulugh Bey found in his source the two dates given without any qualification, though both referred to the one and the same year, the one (471) being the Hilālī (lunar) and the other the Kharājī date of the same year, but taking both of the dates as of different lunar years he worked out the month and day of the equinox for the lunar year 468 (which month and day were not given in the said source) adding the words “5th Sha‘bān” to the date of the year.

page 112 note 1 Ibn al-Athīr reports this expressly also as an event happened in A.H. 467. This author states also that the work in the observatory, for which a large amount of money was spent, began by the famous astronomers in A.H. 467 and has continued till the death of the Sultan in A.H. 485.

page 112 note 2 Just as Mutawakkil and Mu‘taḍid tried to deal with both inconveniences, though by other means.

page 113 note 1 All these dates are found in the said Zīj.

page 113 note 2 This astronomer may have not had a clear idea of that recent innovation of his time as is shown by his giving the day corresponding to the autumnal equinox in A.H. 476 as the day Ashtād (the 26th) of the Malikī month Mihr and the 1st day of Jumādā I, whereas the equinox day and the first of Jumādā corresponded in that year to the day Ashtād of the Persian (Yazdegerdian) Mihr and not to that of the Malikī Mihr. The day was the 6th Mihr (Khordād) of the Malikī calendar.

page 113 note 3 Or, in other words, the equinox took place after noon but before 5.49 p.m.

page 115 note 1 The author apparently considers the first year of the Jalālian era as the 173rd year of the cycle which must, in his opinion, have begun in a year when the entry of the sun in Aries had happened (perhaps in Iṣfahān) just at noon or a very short time (say two or three minutes) before it.

page 115 note 2 A 220 yearly cycle with 53 leap years implies a length, for the solar year, of 365 d. 5 h. 46 min. and little more than 54–5 seconds, whereas with the length adopted by Khazinī (vide supra) the formula would be much nearer to perfection if a cycle of 429 years had been adopted which contained sixteen 25 yearly and one 29 yearly quinquennial and 86 quadrennial leap years. In this case the excess would have amounted to less than half a minute in a whole cycle (of course without taking into consideration the gradual shortening of the tropic year proved by modern astronomy).

page 115 note 3 Chalabī, Mīram (d. A.D. 1525) in his book Dastūr al-ՙamal fī taṣhīh al-Jadwal (Berlin MS., Wetzstein, ii, 1140)Google Scholar. This calculation is apparently based on the length of the year according to Zīj i Ilkhānī of Naṣīr ad-dīn Ṭūsī (365 d. 5 h. 49 min.), and curiously enough not on that given by Zīj i Ulugh Beg (Gūrkānī) of which his (Chalabi's) grandfather was the co-author and he himself the commentator (365 d. 5 h. 49 min. 15 sec. and a fraction of the second)Google Scholar.

page 115 note 4 Sharḥ i Sī-Faṣl, a commentary by an anonymous author to the Persian treatise Sī-Faṣl on the calendriographv by the famous Naṣīr ad-dīn Ṭūsī. The commentary was composed in A.H. 824 (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 7700).

page 116 note 1 Zīj i Ashrafi, composed about A.D. 1303 (Paris, suppl. Pers. 1488)Google Scholar.

page 116 note 2 Rabī‘al-mumajjimīn, also a commentary to Sī-Faṣl mentioned above.

page 116 note 3 Ulugh Bey, on the other hand, gives in his Zīj a table containing the number of days plus the fraction of a day elapsed since the beginning of the Jalālī era up to the end of each Jalālian year from the 1st to the 1,000th year, by adding always for each year 365 d. 5 h. 49 min. 15 sec, the length of the year according to his own observation.

page 117 note 1 e.g. Khāzinī.

page 117 note 2 According to Quṭb ad-dīn.

page 117 note 3 He speaks in his Gulistān of the Jalālian month Ardībihisht.

page 117 note 4 These names are to be found in Sī Faṣl of Naṣīr ad-dīn Ṭūsī and elsewhere.

page 118 note 1 It is unnecessary for me to try to give the spelling of these names in Roman letters.

page 118 note 2 This date, if it is correct, makes the accession of Chingīz fall in 1203, i.e. the first stage of the consolidation of power by Chingīz after his decisive defeat of the Kerāyits.

page 119 note 1 The Chinese year of the tiger (or cheetah) began on the 30th January, 1302, and 29th Jumādā i, A.H. 701.

page 120 note 1 While he always makes the 1st year of the Khānī era correspond to the 692nd Kharājī year, he gives in another passage (p. 435) the 3rd Khānī year as corresponding to 704 Kharājī. In another place, as it is stated above, he gives the beginning of the year 694 Kharājī, which is according to him the same as the third year Khānī, as 22nd Rajab, A.H. 702 (p. 404), and this implies the correspondence of 692 Kharājī and the first Khānī year with the novilunar year A.H. 700. He speaks also of the time between the death of Arghūn (d. 7 Rabi‘ i, A.H. 690) and the accession of his successor as the year 682 Kharājī (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 23517, fol. 296a), and of the Kharājī 6 (no doubt 686) as the early days of the reign of Ghāzān, who came to the throne towards the end of A.H. 694. Both these correspondences agree only with the Baghdādian reckoning of the Kharājī era in which only eight years divergence existed between the Kharājī and Hilālī Hijra dates as against the nine years difference in Persia.

page 120 note 2 Only two years after the Gregorian calendar reform.

page 120 note 3 Akbar came to the throne on the 3rd Rabī‘ ii, A.H. 963, and the equinox was on the 28th of the same month. ‘Allāmī curiously enough makes an error in giving the beginning of the second year of the Ilāhī era as corresponding to the 27th Rabī‘ ii, whereas it must be the 9th Jumādā i.

page 121 note 1 i.e. counting 29, 30, 31, or 32 days.

page 121 note 2 Though the calculations are different from each other the results of some of them agree approximately.

page 121 note 3 In a marginal note it is stated that the treatise is the same as Kitāb al-qirānāt and that the book is ascribed by some authors to Abū Ma‘shar and by some others to Ibn al-Bāziyār.

page 122 note 1 The text is not in good order and apparently one or two lines are omitted where the date is confused with the date of the departure of Mutawakkil for Damascus. The source of Ḥamza's statement was most probably the famous book of Abū Ma'shar entitled Kitāb al-ullūf w’al-adwār of which an abridged copy is contained in a volume in Brit. Mus. (Or. 3577) where in fol. 4α the same statement occurs.

page 122 note 2 A.Y. means the era of Yazdegerd.

page 122 note 3 The same number is also the result of the calculation given by Abū al-Faḍl in A’īn i Akbarī, where he puts the composition of the book in 4696 after the date of the Deluge as given by Abū Mā‘shar (Engl. translation by Jarrett, Calcutta, 1891, vol. ii, p. 22).

page 122 note 4 In al-Qānūn al-Mas‘ūdī of the same author (Brit. Mus. MS. Or. 1997, fol. 27α) the number is 1793 given in words. Possibly the word alf (thousand) is a miswriting for alfā (two thousand).

page 123 note 1 According to Kūshiyār the cycles began when there was a conjunction [of Saturn and Jupiter] and Saturn was in Crab. Therefore the first cycle of 360 years was the cycle of the Crab and Saturn and the second cycle also of the same length was the cycle of Leo and Jupiter and so forth. Thus every cycle was succeeded by that of the next sign and the next planet, and one whole course of the cycles concluded when the turn came again to Crab. Each cycle was under the influence of the planet and sign dominant in that period as is stated.

page 123 note 2 According to Abū Ma‘shar in his above-mentioned book on the effect of the conjunctions this was 287 years before the Deluge. Bīrūnī gives the interval as 229 years and 108 days (Chronology, p. 24).

page 124 note 1 The author adding 436 (solar) years and a fraction of a year, which is the interval between the Nabonassarian and Seleucidian eras, to the above-mentioned number (2,400) concludes that the interval between the latter era and the Deluge was 2,932! This number is apparently reached by converting the solar years into lunar years and dividing the real product (2,836) by 30 (!!) and adding the quotient to the dividend.

page 124 note 2 By the Jews in the books of Maccabees and Josephus.

page 124 note 3 Also by the Jews.

page 124 note 4 By the people of Tyre.

page 124 note 5 By Ptolemy in his Almagestes (ix, 7, and xi, 7), for the dates of three observations of the planets.

page 124 note 6 By Mānī in Shāpurakan (see below).

page 124 note 7 By later Greeks, e.g. Paschal Chronicle.

page 125 note 1 By the Syrian writers.

page 125 note 2 Also by the Syrians.

page 125 note 3 By the Syrian and Arabian writers.

page 125 note 4 By the Arab authors, Muslims, and Christians. Agapius uses this expression exclusively.

page 125 note 5 All these dates on the coins are believed to be Sel. because they are fitting according to that era, though the name of the era does not appear in the legends.

page 125 note 6 It was in current use, at least in the beginning of the present century, with the Nestorians as well with some Jewish communities in the East, such as those in South Arabia.

page 125 note 7 e.g. Aphraates uses it in his Demonstrations written between A.D. 337 and 345. With regard to the details relating to the Sel. era, cf. Hill, G. F., The Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Persia; Percy Gardner, Catalogue of Greek Coins—the Seleucid Kings of Syria; also The Parthian Coinage and The Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India by the same author, Ginzel, i, 136, 263, 305; ii, 59; iii, 40–2; Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans u. seine Nachbarländer, passim; Bouché Leclercq, Histoire des Seleucides, ii, 516; and Pauly's Realencyclopdāie (Aera)Google Scholar.

page 126 note 1 The Macedonian year was lunisolar and therefore its beginning has oscillated around the autumnal equinox. Some time after the conquest of Syria by the Romans the Macedonian months were made to correspond to the Julian months (Hyperberetaios = October and so forth) and the year became solar, beginning for the Syrians in general with the 1st October, but for some Western Syrians who followed the Greek indictions (after these had come into use in the Orient since the fourth century), with the 1st September.

page 126 note 2 The Babylonian New Year's Day oscillated in the post-Seleucidian period between 21st March and 22nd April.

page 126 note 3 The Oriental authors give not only the number of the days elapsed between the epoch of “the era of Alexander” and that of Hijra as well as that of Yazdegerdian era, but they state also that the former fell on a Monday. Both of these data agree only with the 1st October (Julian), 312 B.C. But it must be borne in mind that the said number and the week day are only reached by backward calculation based on the presupposed date of the era and not on tradition.

page 126 note 4 If Kugener's reading of the indiction number relating to the date of the ordination of Severus, the Monophysite Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriae text of the book of Michael the Syrian should prove to be correct, we have here another instance of the reckoning of the Sel. era from 311 B.C. Kugener in his Extraits relatifes à Sèvére, vii, 9 (Patrologia Orientalis, vol. 2, p. 314), gives the French translation of an extract from the list of the Jacobite bishops in the Syriae book on general history by the said Michael (late twelfth century). In that passage the date of the ordination of Severus is given as Tishrī ii, 823 (Sel.), indiction vi. The same occurs also in another anonymous Syriae note (p. 317 of the same volume, Notice I). The indiction number points to the year A.D. 512 and this implies that the era used began in 311 B.C. and excludes 312. In the second note (same page) the date of the ordination is given as 8th November, 820, “which is the year 509 of our Lord,” and this reduction again means the same beginning for the Sel. era. It is, however, curious that the indiction number in the French translation of Chabot in the Revue de l'orient chrétien, 1899, p. 446, from which Kugener professes to have taken the above-mentioned passage, as well as in the original Syriac text edited by ChabotGoogle Scholar (Chronique de Michsl le Syrien, tome iii, fasc. iii, Paris, 1910, p. 752Google Scholar), and in the French translation (the same volume, p. 448), is x and not vi, though this number (x) is not fitting in any of the years after 501–2 and before 516–17. (I learn from a Syriac scholar that Chabot's translation is a slip on his part due to his misreading of the Greek word number used in the Syriac text.) According to Comte de Mas-Latrie in his Trésor de Chronologie, col. 36, the Syrian Catholics use, even now, the era of Alexander as reckoned from 311 B.C.

page 127 note 1 It was used by Aphraates of the fourth century (Patrologia Syriaca, ed. Graffin, vol. i, col. 723–4, 942, 1043; vol. ii, col. 150), and in the proceedings of the Chalcedonian Council in the middle of the fifth century, where it is said “in the year 636 after Alexander …” (Mansi, Sacor. concil. collect., iv, 956), and also in the Acts of Martyrs as well as by Agathias (second half of the sixth century).

page 128 note 1 Though these two sources speak of the religion as flourishing for 300 years till Alexander's conquest of Persia, this does not prevent us from supposing that the period was counted from the birth of Zoroaster just as in common language one may hear it often said to-day that the Christian faith is now 1,939 years old.

page 128 note 2 In fact the astronomical year 629 B.C. is the historical 630. The date also fits with the story about the age of the famous Cypress of Kashmar which is said to have been 1,450 years old when it was cut down in 861 by order of the Abbasid Caliph Mutawakkil. The planting of the tree by Zoroaster or Gushtāsp would thus fall in 589 B.C.

page 128 note 3 BGA., viii, p. 98.

page 128 note 4 al-Qānūn al-Mas‘ūdī.

page 128 note 5 See the letter of Tanasar ed. Mīnovī 44, Mas‘udī (op. cit., p. 99), and Miskôye (GMS., vii, p. 125).

page 129 note 1 Bīrūnī had at the time of the composition of that book no clear idea as to the time of Alexander the Great or the real meaning of the “era of Alexander”. He takes the latter as beginning from the 26th year of Alexander‘s life (p. 28) and at the same time gives the interval between the accession of Cyrus and that of Alexander as 222 years (p. 18), which is correct.

page 130 note 1 e.g. Herzfeld in Pavry memorial volume, and AMI., ii, pp. 41–4.

page 130 note 2 al-mudhākarāt li Shādhān ibn Bahr. Cambridge Gg. 3, 19, fol. 4a.

page 131 note 1 As Ṣafadī correctly gives it and not on the 12th Rabī‘ al-awwal as Bīrunī and some others have it.

page 131 note 2 This is the correct date as it is given in the at-tafhīm by Birūni and not the 3rd April as given by the same author in the Chronology.

page 132 note 1 In the last years before its abolition (I believe since 1911) it was also often used with the solar Hijra dates.