Clio/The Drifting Cycle
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«Clio
The Drifting Cycle
Clio believes there are certain subjects where it is impossible to invite speculation without also inviting indignation. Take religion. Clio is simultaneously skeptical of all religions and dismissive of none; she believes in the right to worship either true gods or false gods without persecution, and she cares very little for speculation on who's whom in the heavens. Nonetheless there are statements which even Clio shudders to make for fear of the inevitable retribution. For example, she cannot help but wonder why those who worship the memory of the man Mohammed are so defensive of their faith. Do they fear for their future against the Christians? Are they uncertain of their own fundamentals? Or are they simply belligerent by nature? Clio admits that it is difficult - oh, this she knows well - to be a non-Christian in a predominantly Christian world. Yet she does not feel this is a situation that entitles one to engage in equally strident counter-propaganda. She does not approve of jihad, and she feels there can never be a sufficient cause for such a thing. But this was supposed to be about the calendar, wasn't it? Very well. The Islamic calendar is sometimes called the hijri calendar. Years in this calendar are often dated AH or Anno Hegirae, "year of the Hejira." For the calendar numbers its years beginning with the date when Mohammed, faced with increasing persecution for his teachings in the town of Mecca, fled to the town of Yathrib. This journey is today referred to as the Hejira, and the town Mohammed fled to later became known as Madinatul-Nabi - City of the Prophet - and even later became commonly shortened to Medina. This event, the Hejira, could be said to be the centerpiece of the Islamic faith. Both of the places involved are now considered holy sites, and a devout believer is expected to make a pilgrimage, or Hajj, to these sites at least once in his lifetime. The Hejira took place in 622 CE. In fact the main features of the Islamic calendar, as far as festivals and fasts are concerned, are the Festival of Sacrifice when the hajj should take place (pilgrims should visit these sites on 9 and 10 Dhi'l-Hijjih, respectively), the fasting month of Ramadan, and the Festival of Fast-Breaking which immediately follows it. The main feature of the Islamic calendar from Clio's point of view is that it drifts against the seasons deliberately. The calendar is the last purely lunar calendar still in widespread use among humans.
Following the Moon As has been amply explained elsewhere, in a calendar based solely on lunar months, the total length of the year is shorter than the solar year, which means that over time the same month will not always occur in the same season. The Islamic calendar is stabilized so that it always drifts at a constant rate. It uses a thirty-year cycle which involves several "leap years" - a day is inserted into the final month, Dhi'l-Hijjih, in eleven of those thirty years. The question is why the followers of Mohammed have not synchronized their calendar to a solar year so that it does not drift at all. Why worry about a more accurate lunar year when even the best lunar year will lose eleven days against every solar year? At the moment, the best answer is that they like it that way. Clio has seen documents by and for those of Islam which describe the beauty of this system. What is the virtue, they ask, of having Ramadan only in summer or winter? Why should a member of the faithful in London always celebrate the same events six months apart from a member of the faithful in Sydney? How monotonous! Under their system, they argue, all worshipers will eventually observe all the holy days at all the different times of the year. Although this sounds like a justification after the fact, Clio notes that the evidence suggests it is not.
The House of Wisdom By 800 CE, Europe had learned many things about keeping time ... and had forgotten them all. Europe had reverted to a state where learning was considered suspect and progress unwanted - the Dark Ages. The place of knowledge and discovery during this time was the Arab world, and the seat of that knowledge was Baghdad. During this period, scholars congregated in Baghdad, bringing with them texts from all over the known world. In 833 a great library was built, the House of Wisdom. Arab scholars were primarily interested in timekeeping and astronomy as an aid to good worship. Mohammed had decreed that the faithful should pray every day, at five set times. To further this synchronicity, it was decreed that they all face the Ka'aba, the most holy place in Mecca. This sometimes required a fair amount of calculation, especially as the Islamic faith began to spread outside the Arab world. The quality of Arab astronomy during this time suggests that if they had wanted to synchronize their calendar to the solar year, they could have. Observatories existed in Baghdad and Damascus; scientists of the time determined the size and circumference of the world to a high degree of accuracy. This was not a case of inadequate information. Furthermore the names of some of the Islamic months suggest that before the advent of Mohammed, the Arab calendar may have been lunisolar. For example, the second month, Safar, means "yellow." It originally came in autumn, when the leaves were changing color. The assumption, then, is that the Islamic calendar was deliberately made into a pure-lunar calendar in 634, by the caliph Umar. The devout say that this was by the express wish of Mohammed, quoting several verses of the Qur'an, this one among them:
Verily the transposing
Feasts and Fasts These are the months of the Islamic calendar. (Please see the notes for a comment on spelling.) They alternate between 30 and 29 days long: Muharram The one portion of the Islamic calendar that non-believers usually know about is Ramadan, the ninth month. Mohammed designated four sacred months, when people of Islam are forbidden to wage war, but Ramadan is the holiest of these. From dawn to dusk during Ramadan, many things are prohibited, the most notable being food and sex. The holiday Eid Al Fitr is three days long, with most of the festivities taking place on the first day of Shavval. This is primarily a celebration to mark the end of Ramadan. Its name in English is roughly Festival of Fast-Breaking. During Eid Al Fitr, the obligatory custom is to provide a gift, called Zakat Al Fitr, to the poor. The purpose of Zakat Al Fitr is to purify anyone who has committed any type of indecent act or speech while fasting. Or so says one explanation. There is another school of thought that says it is proper to set aside amounts of any income throughout the year as zakat, and that tying this obligation to a once-a-year event is incorrect. Clio, not being of this faith, merely presents both arguments. Eid Al Adha or Festival of Sacrifice is four days long, ending with the hajj or pilgrimage on 9 and 10 Dhi'l-Hijjih. It is traditional to offer a sacrifice by slaughtering a sheep, cow, or goat. The meat from the sacrifice is shared by friends, neighbors and relatives, or distributed to the poor. Both of these festivals are considered high cause for celebration, with various additional gift-giving, feasting, gatherings, and so forth. There are other holidays but none so major. The first day of the new year, Ras al-Sana, is observed; several days such as Ashura (10 Muharram) mark famous battles; the date of Mohammed's birth, Mawlid an-Nabawi, is observed on 12 Rabi'u'l-Avval, but this day has not been a holiday in the Islamic world until comparatively recently. One wonders if the difficulty in such an observance is due to a floating calendar; after all, Mohammed was obviously born at a given time in the solar year, but the date of his birth drifts. Actually, Clio believes that the drifting perspective has some features to commend it. Even with the stabilized calendar, it is impossible to truly predict the dates of Islamic holy times in advance. Each month begins when the new moon is observed. This is why one will frequently see information that says "Ramadan will begin on ___ this year, God willing." This appeals to Clio's outlook. She favors the idea that one never truly knows whether there will be a June until it is seen that May has ended. But then, Clio feels that nothing in the human world is truly certain.
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