Intercalation, adding an extra month
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Table 6. Intercalated Calendar “Leap Year” Based On Babylonian Method
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The Islamic historians are not agreed upon the nature of the intercalation practiced at Mecca. Some say seven months were interposed every nineteen years; others nine months every twenty-four years. But according to Muir: "both systems are evidently supposititions, being formed on a calculation of the true solar year; the first of these systems we know to have been introduced by the Jews only about the end of the fourth century, and it is not probable that it would be so immediately adopted at Mecca; and neither system would answer the requirement or bringing the month of pilgrimage in two centuries from Autumn back to Spring, at which season we find it in the time of the Prophet. Other Islamic writers say that the practice was to interpose a month at the close of every third year: and this is the system recognized, apparently on good grounds, by M.C. de Perceval."[1]
Hakim Muhammad Said, as mentioned above, relates that the Arabs had two calendars: one with intercalation, the other without. The custom of kabisa, intercalation, was current among the Bedouins but not among the townsmen (including Quraish).[2] The uncontested acceptance of the strictly lunar calendar by 'Umar in 639 CE suggests that a strictly lunar calendar was in continual use by a minority of people in Arabia.
According to M.C. de Perceval's theory, there were three calendars: Strictly lunar, Jewish lunar-solar (19 year), and Quraish's lunar-solar (3 year) innovation. The calendar in use by the Quraish originally was strictly lunar. Around 412 CE, the Quraish appointed their first Nasi, Sarir, who in approximation of the Jews interjected of a month at the close of every third year Nasa.[3] This change appears to be intended to make the season of pilgrimage correspond with the autumn, when a supply of food for the vast number of pilgrims would be easily procurable. But this intention would be defeated by the slight imperfection of the calculation. A solar year was still shorter by one day and a fraction than this lunar-solar year, and in time the pilgrimage began to drift slightly forward each year. After two centuries, when the Prophet Muhammad prohibited intercalation (approx. 631 CE), the days of pilgrimage had moved from October gradually backward to March.[4]
According to a theory that the author would like to propose, there were only two calendars: Strictly lunar and Jewish lunar-solar (19 year). The calendar in use by the Quraish nobles in Mecca and other townspeople became strictly lunar after the abolishment of the Sanhedrin (see Table 9, below). The Jews of Yatrib (Medina) practiced a form of intercalation based either on an arithmetic method, some locally appointed Nasi, or in conjunction with the Babylonian academies. The farmers and Bedouin began to adopt Medina’s lunar-solar calendar, as it was more useful for agricultural and livestock purposes. By 541 CE the Jewish lunar-solar calendar was almost universally adopted, even the Prophet himself adopted it upon his migration to Medina in 622 CE (see Ashura below). Due to various reasons the Prophet rejected the Jewish lunar-solar calendar in 631 CE and (re-)established precedence for the strictly lunar calendar of Quraish.
References
- ↑ Ibid 23, For (1) it exactly corresponds with the condition just noticed of making the month of pilgrimage retrocede from autumn to spring in two centuries, as is clearly shown in the chronological table attached to his first volume; and it also corresponds with the fact of that month having in 541 A.D. fallen at the summer solstice, when Belisarius on that account refused to let his Syrian allies leave him. (2.) It was the system previously tried by the Jews, who intercalated similarly a month called Ve-adar or the second Adar, at the close of every third year; and there is a priori every likelihood that the practice was borrowed from the Jews. (3.) The tradition in favor of this system is more likely than the others to be correct, because it does not produce an accurate solar cycle, and is not therefore likely to have originated in any astronomical calculation. (4.) Although it eventually changed the months to different seasons from those at which they were originally fixed, yet the change would be so slow that the months might meanwhile readily acquire and retain names derived from the seasons. Such nomenclature probably arose on the months first becoming comparatively fixed, i.e. in the beginning of the fifth century, and thus the names Rabi, Jumada, Ramadhan, signifying respectively rain and verdure, the cessation of rain, and heat, clung by the months long after they had shifted to other seasons.
- ↑ The History of the Islamic Calendar in the Light of the Hijra, Hakim Muhammad Said, Vol X No. 1 , Spring 1984
- ↑ The question has been thoroughly discussed by M. C. de Perceval, vol. i. p.242 et seq.; and in the Journal Asiatique, Avril 1843, p. 342, where the author has given a “Memoire sur le Calendrier Arabe avant l'islamisme.”
- ↑ Ibid 23.