The Moslem Calendar
Moslems use an uncorrected lunar calendar, and as a result their holidays slip through the seasons at a rate of about 11 days per year. The reason is not ignorance of astronomy but a deliberate effort to follow a different schedule from that of any other faith.
This creates a problem with the month of Ramadan, during which faithful Moslems are expected not to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. When Ramadan falls in mid-winter, this imposes no great hardship, since days are short and cool. Fifteen years later, however, Ramadan falls in mid-summer, when days are long and the heat makes people quite thirsty. That is when Arab cities wait impatiently for the boom of the cannon which traditionally announces every evening the end of the fast.
The Persian Calendar
Ah, but my Computations, People say
Reduced the Year to better reckoning – Nay,
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday
Rubaiyat, verse #57, by Omar Khayyam (English by Edward Fitzgerald)
A calendar which tracks the solar year even better than the Gregorian one is the Persian (Iranian) calendar, the first version of which was devised by Omar Khayyam (1044-1123), author of the famous "Rubaiyat" poems, masterfully translated in 1839 into English by Edward Fitzgerald. It is also called the Jalali calendar, after the king Malik Shah Jalaludin who in 1074 assigned Omar and 7 other scholars to devise a new calendar.
Though the count of Persian years starts, like the Moslem one, from the flight of Mohammed to Medina in 622, establishing there the first strong base of Islam, the new year starts at the spring equinox, March 21, with the holiday of Nowruz.
How Nowruz is celebrated:
In Iran, the biggest holiday is Nowruz, New Year's Day.... It always begins on the first day of spring at the exact moment of the equinox. This means that every year Nowruz begins at a different time. One year it might be March 21 at 5:32 A.M., while the next year it might occur on March 20 at 11:54 P.M. Every Iranian knows the exact moment the jubilation begins.
The festivities are preceded by weeks of preparation. Everyone thoroughly cleans his house, buys or makes new clothes, and bakes traditional pastries. A ceremonial setting called a haftseen, which consists of seven symbols beginning with the sound "s," is displayed with other meaningful objects like mirror, colored eggs, and goldfish in a bowl. The objects represent health, renewal, prosperity, fertility and the usual universal hopes shared by people at any New Year's celebration....
For Nowruz, most businesses close and the streets are deserted. For twelve days after equinox, people visit relatives and friends, always starting with the eldest. Once all the elders have been visited, they in turn visit the younger members of the family. At every house, a tray of homemade sweets is offered along with wishes for the new year. Children receive money, always in the form of brand-new bills. I assume that since the wave of immigration after 1980 [the revolution in Iran] banks in America have noticed a sudden increase in demand for crisp bills in the month of March.
[from "Funny in Farsi -- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America" by Firoozeh Dumas, 187 pp., Villard Books 2003. A charming, sunny book about growing up in two cultures.]
Some people claim that the Jewish custom of the Passover plate is related to the Persian haftseen. That is a ceremonial plate with seven (or six) symbolic objects, the centerpiece of the table at the Passover dinner, perhaps the most important celebration of the Jewish year, commemorating an ancient event coinciding with the spring equinox.
The Persian year itself has 12 months--the first 6 have 31 days, the next 5 have 30 days, and the last has 28 or 29, depending on whether the year is or isn't a leap year. Each month corresponds to a sign of the zodiac. The number of days in each month (if not the order of months) is therefore the same as in the Western civil calendar. The difference is in the rule for determining leap year, which is more complex. Even the original Jalali calendar was more accurate than the Gregorian one; the current version assigns 683 leap years in a cycle of 2820 years and would take two million years before it shows a one-day inaccuracy!
An interesting calendar is used by the Coptic Christian church in Ethiopia, with 12 months of 30 days each, plus a 13th short month of 5 days. A tourist brochure once lured visitors with a promise "Come to Ethiopia and enjoy 13 months of sunshine a year."
The Mayan Calendar
The Maya Indians in Central America, living on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala (where Maya languages are still spoken), created an extensive civilization which peaked around the years 1200-1450. They developed an early system of symbolic writing ("glyphs") and simple mathematics, using a system like ours (including the zero!) based not on the number 10 but on 20. They did not, however, use fractions.
Their astronomy was well developed, and they noted the "zenial days" when the Sun was directly overhead ("at zenith") and a vertical stick cast no shadow. Their year had 365 days, but in the absence of leap years it slowly shifted with respect to the solstices. That year was divided into 18 named "months" of 20 days each (numbered from 0 to 19), plus the "short month" of Wayeb, whose days were considered unlucky.
Yucatan does not experience summer and winter the way middle latitudes do (e.g. Europe or most of the US), and therefore the Maya calendar was not strongly tied to the seasons the way ours is. The planet Venus received major attention, and its cycles were accurately measured by Maya astronomers. In addition the Maya also observed a "ritual year" of 260 days, consisting of 20 named "long weeks" of 13 numbered days each.
Exploring Further
- Astronomy Picture of the Day - About Julius Caesar and Leap Days provides brief explanation of leap days.
- Calendars Through the Ages - The Mayan Calendar, a series of web pages devoted to different calendars.
- Project Pluto - Inventory of Calendars.
- The Galileo Project - The Gregorian Calendar.
- About the Maya and Venus, see the chapter "Bringing Culture to the Physicists", p. 313 in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard Feynman, published 1997 by W. W. Norton.
- Maya World Studies Center - Welcome to the Maya Calendar.
- Mr. Sunspots' Answerbook - Calendars.
- "Tibaldo and the Hole in the Calendar" by Abner Shimony, 165 pp, Copernicus 1998.
The book tells the story of a boy in 16th-century Italy whose birthday celebration was set for one of the "lost" days, skipped over by the one-time jump in the calendar which Pope Gregory the 13th ordered. Reviewed by Stephen Battersby in Nature, p. 460, 3 April 1998, and by David Mermin in Physics Today, p. 63, June 1998.
- Wikipedia - Maya Calendar.
Related EoC Articles
Preview Image
"Symbols representing the months in a Mayan, 365-day year." - Eclipses Through Traditions & Cultures, Calendars and Eclipses, Eclipse 99, NASA-Quest.
Disclaimer: This article is taken wholly from, or contains information that was originally published by, David P. Stern - "Educational Web Sites on Astronomy, Physics, Spaceflight and the Earth's Magnetism." Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of the Cosmos may have edited its content or added new information. The use of information from David P. Stern should not be construed as support for, or endorsement by, that David P. Stern for any new information added by EoC personnel, or for any editing of the original content. The EoC has a specific working relationship with David P. Stern, and any changes to any of his content is to be done only with his approval or the approval of those appointed by him to represent his interests in this content.
Citation
Stern, David P. (Contributing Author); Bernard Haisch (Topic Editor). 2008. "Calendar: Moslem, Persian and Mayan." In: Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Eds. Bernard Haisch and Joakim F. Lindblom (Redwood City, CA: Digital Universe Foundation). [First published March 4, 2008].
<http://www.cosmosportal.org/articles/view/135478/>
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The Moslem Calendar
Moslems use an uncorrected lunar calendar, and as a result their holidays slip through the seasons at a rate of about 11 days per year. The reason is not ignorance of astronomy but a deliberate effort to follow a different schedule from that of any other faith.
This creates a problem with the month of Ramadan, during which faithful Moslems are expected not to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. When Ramadan falls in mid-winter, this imposes no great hardship, since days are short and cool. Fifteen years later, however, Ramadan falls in mid-summer, when days are long and the heat makes people quite thirsty. That is when Arab cities wait impatiently for the boom of the cannon which traditionally announces every evening the end of the fast.
The Persian Calendar
Ah, but my Computations, People say
Reduced the Year to better reckoning – Nay,
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday
Rubaiyat, verse #57, by Omar Khayyam (English by Edward Fitzgerald)
A calendar which tracks the solar year even better than the Gregorian one is the Persian (Iranian) calendar, the first version of which was devised by Omar Khayyam (1044-1123), author of the famous "Rubaiyat" poems, masterfully translated in 1839 into English by Edward Fitzgerald. It is also called the Jalali calendar, after the king Malik Shah Jalaludin who in 1074 assigned Omar and 7 other scholars to devise a new calendar.
Though the count of Persian years starts, like the Moslem one, from the flight of Mohammed to Medina in 622, establishing there the first strong base of Islam, the new year starts at the spring equinox, March 21, with the holiday of Nowruz.
How Nowruz is celebrated:
In Iran, the biggest holiday is Nowruz, New Year's Day.... It always begins on the first day of spring at the exact moment of the equinox. This means that every year Nowruz begins at a different time. One year it might be March 21 at 5:32 A.M., while the next year it might occur on March 20 at 11:54 P.M. Every Iranian knows the exact moment the jubilation begins.
The festivities are preceded by weeks of preparation. Everyone thoroughly cleans his house, buys or makes new clothes, and bakes traditional pastries. A ceremonial setting called a haftseen, which consists of seven symbols beginning with the sound "s," is displayed with other meaningful objects like mirror, colored eggs, and goldfish in a bowl. The objects represent health, renewal, prosperity, fertility and the usual universal hopes shared by people at any New Year's celebration....
For Nowruz, most businesses close and the streets are deserted. For twelve days after equinox, people visit relatives and friends, always starting with the eldest. Once all the elders have been visited, they in turn visit the younger members of the family. At every house, a tray of homemade sweets is offered along with wishes for the new year. Children receive money, always in the form of brand-new bills. I assume that since the wave of immigration after 1980 [the revolution in Iran] banks in America have noticed a sudden increase in demand for crisp bills in the month of March.
[from "Funny in Farsi -- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America" by Firoozeh Dumas, 187 pp., Villard Books 2003. A charming, sunny book about growing up in two cultures.]
Some people claim that the Jewish custom of the Passover plate is related to the Persian haftseen. That is a ceremonial plate with seven (or six) symbolic objects, the centerpiece of the table at the Passover dinner, perhaps the most important celebration of the Jewish year, commemorating an ancient event coinciding with the spring equinox.
The Persian year itself has 12 months--the first 6 have 31 days, the next 5 have 30 days, and the last has 28 or 29, depending on whether the year is or isn't a leap year. Each month corresponds to a sign of the zodiac. The number of days in each month (if not the order of months) is therefore the same as in the Western civil calendar. The difference is in the rule for determining leap year, which is more complex. Even the original Jalali calendar was more accurate than the Gregorian one; the current version assigns 683 leap years in a cycle of 2820 years and would take two million years before it shows a one-day inaccuracy!
An interesting calendar is used by the Coptic Christian church in Ethiopia, with 12 months of 30 days each, plus a 13th short month of 5 days. A tourist brochure once lured visitors with a promise "Come to Ethiopia and enjoy 13 months of sunshine a year."
The Mayan Calendar
The Maya Indians in Central America, living on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala (where Maya languages are still spoken), created an extensive civilization which peaked around the years 1200-1450. They developed an early system of symbolic writing ("glyphs") and simple mathematics, using a system like ours (including the zero!) based not on the number 10 but on 20. They did not, however, use fractions.
Their astronomy was well developed, and they noted the "zenial days" when the Sun was directly overhead ("at zenith") and a vertical stick cast no shadow. Their year had 365 days, but in the absence of leap years it slowly shifted with respect to the solstices. That year was divided into 18 named "months" of 20 days each (numbered from 0 to 19), plus the "short month" of Wayeb, whose days were considered unlucky.
Yucatan does not experience summer and winter the way middle latitudes do (e.g. Europe or most of the US), and therefore the Maya calendar was not strongly tied to the seasons the way ours is. The planet Venus received major attention, and its cycles were accurately measured by Maya astronomers. In addition the Maya also observed a "ritual year" of 260 days, consisting of 20 named "long weeks" of 13 numbered days each.
Exploring Further
- Astronomy Picture of the Day - About Julius Caesar and Leap Days provides brief explanation of leap days.
- Calendars Through the Ages - The Mayan Calendar, a series of web pages devoted to different calendars.
- Project Pluto - Inventory of Calendars.
- The Galileo Project - The Gregorian Calendar.
- About the Maya and Venus, see the chapter "Bringing Culture to the Physicists", p. 313 in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard Feynman, published 1997 by W. W. Norton.
- Maya World Studies Center - Welcome to the Maya Calendar.
- Mr. Sunspots' Answerbook - Calendars.
- "Tibaldo and the Hole in the Calendar" by Abner Shimony, 165 pp, Copernicus 1998.
The book tells the story of a boy in 16th-century Italy whose birthday celebration was set for one of the "lost" days, skipped over by the one-time jump in the calendar which Pope Gregory the 13th ordered. Reviewed by Stephen Battersby in Nature, p. 460, 3 April 1998, and by David Mermin in Physics Today, p. 63, June 1998.
- Wikipedia - Maya Calendar.
Related EoC Articles
Preview Image
"Symbols representing the months in a Mayan, 365-day year." - Eclipses Through Traditions & Cultures, Calendars and Eclipses, Eclipse 99, NASA-Quest.
Disclaimer: This article is taken wholly from, or contains information that was originally published by, David P. Stern - "Educational Web Sites on Astronomy, Physics, Spaceflight and the Earth's Magnetism." Topic editors and authors for the Encyclopedia of the Cosmos may have edited its content or added new information. The use of information from David P. Stern should not be construed as support for, or endorsement by, that David P. Stern for any new information added by EoC personnel, or for any editing of the original content. The EoC has a specific working relationship with David P. Stern, and any changes to any of his content is to be done only with his approval or the approval of those appointed by him to represent his interests in this content.
Citation
Stern, David P. (Contributing Author); Bernard Haisch (Topic Editor). 2008. "Calendar: Moslem, Persian and Mayan." In: Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Eds. Bernard Haisch and Joakim F. Lindblom (Redwood City, CA: Digital Universe Foundation). [First published March 4, 2008].
<http://www.cosmosportal.org/articles/view/135478/>
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