![]() ![]() However, even this was not enough to avoid further problems, which mostly arose from the fact that the Ottomans collected taxes according to the Julian year but paid salaries according the the lunar year. whenever the 1st of March did not fall within the religious Hegira year (please refer to schmOOnkie pOOnks' write-up above). After this, each maliyye year had, in theory, the same number as the Hegira year during which it began, with the omission of one year every 33 years, i.e. For this purpose, a practice of siwish ('changing') was adopted, whereby one solar year could be jumped over altogether.Īt first, the Ottomans retained the old Byzantine New Year on 1 September, but later on they moved the beginning of the year to 1 March. However, this new calendar presented another problem: since the Islamic year is shorter than the Julian one, the counting of taxational years lagged behind the years of the religious calendar and had to be corrected from time to time. The Maliye was a Julian year, with most of the old Syrian month names retained. This was an adaptation of earlier fiscal calendars combining the Hegira date with solar year, and was introduced into the Ottoman revenue administration in 1789 CE. ![]() This of course presented some problems for the ruler: how are you supposed to levy agricultural taxes every year if your harvest times don't match your calendar? To undermine this problem, Muslim governments from early times worked out a series of solar adaptations of the Hegira year with Iranian, Christian and other months. Remember, lunar calendar is not constant - for example, currently the fasting month of Ramadan falls roughly around late December or early January, but in a decade or so, it is going to take place during our summer. These were mainly used in the past but some are still significant today.īecause the Hegira calendar is purely lunar, it was inconvenient for fiscal and administrative purposes, especially during the pre-modern era, when most of the taxes collected were agricultural products. In addition to the normal Islamic lunar calendar, various important adaptations of it have been used in various areas of the Islamic world. Thus, the keeping of time by the lunar cycle is both critically important and distinctive to Islamic faith and culture, and provides an important reminder of the will of Allah. ![]() In this way, unbelievers add wrong practice to wrong belief, says the Qur’an. Such a person might fast at the wrong time and fail to keep fast at the right time, failing to submit to Allah’s will. Without knowing, for example, when Ramadan falls, no man can obey the Qur’an’s call to fast during that month. If they fail to do this, they are like the unbelievers: The only way for Muslims to know when these instructions apply is to carefully track the lunar months. The scripture sets out strict instructions on how Muslims are to live their lives during the sacred months. Third, the Islamic calendar enables believers to comply with the will of Allah as written in the Qur’an. To Westerners, the best-known of these is the month of Ramadan, during which believers fast from dawn to dusk and focus on worship and contemplation. Not only does the start of the calendar call Muslims to contemplate sacrifice, but so do the months therein. This notion stands in stark contrast to the Christian calendar, which nominally begins in the birth year of Jesus Christ, and symbolizes rebirth and redemption for all believers. Early Muslim holy men, when fashioning the modern Islamic calendar, chose to start it on July 16, 622 C.E., the year of the Hegira – Mohammed’s flight from Mecca – rather than Mohammed’s birth, ascension, or revelation. Second, their calendar serves much the same purpose as the Christian season of Lent – to remind the faithful of sacrifice and to prepare them for sacrifice in their own lives. ![]() Since Islamic culture had no need to mark the seasons – and some wags may suggest that Arabia, where Islam originated, has only one season anyway – they could abandon without consequence the solar calendar used by the unbelievers. The calendar is not tied to the seasons of the solar year, which agrarian societies depend on and which were the probable origin of the first human calendar systems. First, it is a reflection of the lack of agriculture in this nomadic society. The Islamic lunar calendar has historical and spiritual significance. In the Qur'an, Islamic scripture commands the faithful to mark time by the cycles of the moon: ![]()
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