What calendar is used by Muslims?

The Islamic, Muslim, or Hijri calendar ( "at-taqwīm al-hijrī") is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual period of fasting and the proper time for the pilgrimage to Mecca. The civil calendar of almost all countries where the religion is predominantly Muslim is the Gregorian calendar. Notable exceptions to this rule are Iran and Afghanistan, which use the Solar Hijri calendar. Rents, wages etc. are generally paid by the civil calendar.

Islamic calendar

The Islamic calendar employs the Hijri era whose epoch was established as the Islamic New Year of 622 AD/CE. During that year, Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina) and established the first Muslim community ("ummah"), an event commemorated as the Hijra. In the West, dates in this era are usually denoted AH (, "in the year of the Hijra") in parallel with the Christian (AD), Common (CE) and Jewish eras (AM). In Muslim countries, it is also sometimes denoted as H from its Arabic form (, abbreviated ). In English, years prior to the Hijra are reckoned as BH ("Before the Hijra").

The current Islamic year is 1440 AH. In the Gregorian calendar, 1440 AH runs from approximately 11 September 2018 to 30 August 2019.

For central Arabia, especially Mecca, there is a lack of epigraphical evidence but details are found in the writings of Muslim authors of the Abbasid era. Inscriptions of the ancient South Arabian calendars reveal the use of a number of local calendars. At least some of these South Arabian calendars followed the lunisolar system. Both al-Biruni and al-Mas'udi suggest that the ancient Arabs used the same month names as the Muslims, though they also record other month names used by the pre-Islamic Arabs.

The Islamic tradition is unanimous in stating that Arabs of Tihamah, Hejaz, and Najd distinguished between two types of months, permitted ("ḥalāl") and forbidden ("ḥarām") months. The forbidden months were four months during which fighting is forbidden, listed as Rajab and the three months around the pilgrimage season, Dhu al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, and Muharram. Information about the forbidden months is also found in the writings of Procopius, where he describes an armistice with the Eastern Arabs of the Lakhmid al-Mundhir which happened in the summer of 541 AD/CE. However, Muslim historians do not link these months to a particular season. The Qur'an links the four forbidden months with "Nasī’", a word that literally means "postponement". According to Muslim tradition, the decision of postponement was administered by the tribe of Kinanah, by a man known as the "al-Qalammas" of Kinanah and his descendants (pl. "qalāmisa").

Different interpretations of the concept of "Nasī’" have been proposed. Some scholars, both Muslim and Western, maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar. According to this view, "Nasī’" is related to the pre-Islamic practices of the Meccan Arabs, where they would alter the distribution of the forbidden months within a given year without implying a calendar manipulation. This interpretation is supported by Arab historians and lexicographers, like Ibn Hisham, Ibn Manzur, and the corpus of Qur'anic exegesis.

This is corroborated by an early Sabaic inscription, where a religious ritual was "postponed" ("ns'’w") due to war. According to the context of this inscription, the verb "ns'’" has nothing to do with intercalation, but only with moving religious events within the calendar itself. The similarity between the religious concept of this ancient inscription and the Qur'an suggests that non-calendaring postponement is also the Qur'anic meaning of "Nasī’". The "Encyclopaedia of Islam" concludes ""The Arabic system of [Nasī’] can only have been intended to move the Hajj and the fairs associated with it in the vicinity of Mecca to a suitable season of the year. It was not intended to establish a fixed calendar to be generally observed."" The term "fixed calendar" is generally understood to refer to the non-intercalated calendar.

Others concur that it was originally a lunar calendar, but suggest that about 200 years before the Hijra it was transformed into a lunisolar calendar containing an intercalary month added from time to time to keep the pilgrimage within the season of the year when merchandise was most abundant. This interpretation was first proposed by the medieval Muslim astrologer and astronomer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, and later by al-Biruni, al-Mas'udi, and some western scholars. This interpretation considers "Nasī’" to be a synonym to the Arabic word for "intercalation" ("kabīsa"). The Arabs, according to one explanation mentioned by Abu Ma'shar, learned of this type of intercalation from the Jews. The Jewish "Nasi" was the official who decided when to intercalate the Jewish calendar. Some sources say that the Arabs followed the Jewish practice and intercalated seven months over nineteen years, or else that they intercalated nine months over 24 years; there is, however, no consensus among scholars on this issue.

Postponement ("Nasī’") of one ritual in a particular circumstance does not imply alteration of the sequence of months, and scholars agree that this did not happen. Al-Biruni also says this did not happen, and the festivals were kept within their season by intercalation every second or third year of a month between Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram. He also says that, in terms of the fixed calendar that was not introduced until 10 AH (632 AD/CE), the first intercalation was, for example, of a month between Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram, the second of a month between Muharram and Safar, the third of a month between Safar and Rabi'I, and so on. The intercalations were arranged so that there were seven of them every nineteen years. The notice of intercalation was issued at the pilgrimage, the next month would be "Nasī’" and Muharram would follow. If, on the other hand, the names relate to the intercalated rather than the fixed calendar, the second intercalation might be, for example, of a month between Muharram and Safar allowing for the first intercalation, and the third intercalation of a month between Safar and Rabi'I allowing for the two preceding intercalations, and so on. The time for the intercalation to move from the beginning of the year to the end (twelve intercalations) is the time it takes the fixed calendar to revolve once through the seasons (about 32 1/2 tropical years). There are two big drawbacks of such a system, which would explain why it is not known ever to have been used anywhere in the world. First, it cannot be regulated by means of a cycle (the only cycles known in antiquity were the octaeteris (3 intercalations in 8 years) and the enneadecaeteris (7 intercalations in 19 years). Secondly, without a cycle it is difficult to establish from the number of the year (a) if it is intercalary and (b) if it is intercalary, where exactly in the year the intercalation is located.

Although some scholars (see list above) claim that the holy months were shuffled about for convenience without the use of intercalation, there is no documentary record of the festivals of any of the holy months being observed in any month other than those they are now observed in. The Qu'ran (sura 9.37) only refers to the "postponement" of a sacred month. If they were shuffled as suggested, one would expect there to be a prohibition against "anticipation" as well. If the festivities of the sacred months were kept in season by moving them into later months, they would move through the whole twelve months in only 33 years. Had this happened, at least one writer would have mentioned it. Sura 9.36 states "Verily, the number of months with Allah is twelve months" and sura 37 refers to "adjusting the number of months". Such adjustment can only be effected by intercalation.

There are a number of indications that the intercalated calendar was similar to the Jewish calendar, whose year began in the spring. There are clues in the names of the months themselves:

In the intercalated calendar's last year (AD/CE 632), Dhu al-Hijjah corresponded to March. The Battle of the Trench in Shawwal and Dhu'l Qi'dah of AH 5 coincided with "harsh winter weather". Military campaigns clustered round Ramadan, when the summer heat had dissipated, and all fighting was forbidden during Rajab, at the height of summer. The invasion of Tabak in Rajab AH 9 was hampered by "too much hot weather" and "drought". In AH 1 Muhammad noted the Jews of Yathrib observing a festival when he arrived on Monday, 8 Rabi'I. Rabi'I is the third month and if it coincided with the third month of the Jewish calendar the festival would have been the Feast of Weeks, which is observed on the 6th and 7th days of that month.

In the tenth year of the Hijra, as documented in the Qur'an (Sura At-Tawba (9):36–37), Muslims believe God revealed the "prohibition of the Nasī’".

The prohibition of Nasī’ would presumably have been announced when the intercalated month had returned to its position just before the month of Nasi' began. If Nasī' meant intercalation, then the number and the position of the intercalary months between AH 1 and AH 10 are uncertain; western calendar dates commonly cited for key events in early Islam such as the Hijra, the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud and the Battle of the Trench should be viewed with caution as they might be in error by one, two, three or even four lunar months. This prohibition was mentioned by Muhammad during the farewell sermon which was delivered on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah AH 10 (Julian date Friday 6 March, 632 AD/CE) on Mount Arafat during the farewell pilgrimage to Mecca.

The three successive sacred (forbidden) months mentioned by Prophet Muhammad (months in which battles are forbidden) are Dhu al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, and Muharram, months 11, 12, and 1 respectively. The single forbidden month is Rajab, month 7. These months were considered forbidden both within the new Islamic calendar and within the old pagan Meccan calendar.

Four of the twelve Hijri months are considered sacred: Rajab (7), and the three consecutive months of Dhū al-Qa‘dah (11), Dhu al-Ḥijjah (12) and Muḥarram (1). As the lunar calendar lags behind the solar calendar by about ten days every Gregorian year, months of the Islamic calendar fall in different parts of the Gregorian calendar each year. The cycle repeats every 33 lunar years.

Each month of the Islamic calendar commences on the birth of the new lunar cycle. Traditionally this is based on actual observation of the crescent ("hilal") marking the end of the previous lunar cycle and hence the previous month, thereby beginning the new month. Consequently, each month can have 29 or 30 days depending on the visibility of the moon, astronomical positioning of the earth and weather conditions. However, certain sects and groups, most notably Bohras Muslims namely Alavis, Dawoodis and Sulaymanis and Shia Ismaili Muslims, use a tabular Islamic calendar (see section below) in which odd-numbered months have thirty days (and also the twelfth month in a leap year) and even months have 29.

In Arabic, the "first day" of the week corresponds with Sunday of the planetary week. The Islamic weekdays, like those in the Hebrew and Bahá'í calendars, begin at sunset. The Christian liturgical day, kept in monasteries, begins with vespers (see vesper), which is evening, in line with the other Abrahamic traditions. Christian and planetary weekdays begin at the following midnight. Muslims gather for worship at a mosque at noon on "gathering day" (, meaning "day") which corresponds with Friday.

Thus "gathering day" is often regarded as the weekly day of rest. This is frequently made official, with many Muslim countries adopting Friday and Saturday (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia) or Thursday and Friday as official weekends, during which offices are closed; other countries (e.g., Iran) choose to make Friday alone a day of rest. A few others (e.g., Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, Nigeria) have adopted the Saturday-Sunday weekend while making Friday a working day with a long midday break to allow time off for worship.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, it was customary to identify a year after a major event which took place in it. Thus, according to Islamic tradition, Abraha, governor of Yemen, then a province of the Christian Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia), attempted to destroy the Kaaba with an army which included several elephants. The raid was unsuccessful, but that year became known as the "Year of the Elephant", during which Muhammad was born (sura al-Fil). Most equate this to the year 570 AD/CE, but a minority use 571 CE.

The first ten years of the Hijra were not numbered, but were named after events in the life of Muhammad according to Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī:

In AH 17 (638 AD/CE), Abu Musa Ashaari, one of the officials of the Caliph Umar in Basrah, complained about the absence of any years on the correspondence he received from Umar, making it difficult for him to determine which instructions were most recent. This report convinced Umar of the need to introduce an era for Muslims. After debating the issue with his counsellors, he decided that the first year should be the year of Muhammad's arrival at Medina (known as Yathrib, before Muhammad's arrival). Uthman ibn Affan then suggested that the months begin with Muharram, in line with the established custom of the Arabs at that time. The years of the Islamic calendar thus began with the month of Muharram in the year of Muhammad's arrival at the city of Medina, even though the actual emigration took place in Safar and Rabi' I of the intercalated calendar, two months before the commencement of Muharram in the new fixed calendar. Because of the Hijra, the calendar was named the Hijri calendar.

F A Shamsi (1984) postulated that the Arabic calendar was never intercalated. According to him, the first day of the first month of the new fixed Islamic calendar (1 Muharram AH 1) was no different from what was observed at the time. The day the Prophet moved from Quba' to Medina was originally 26 Rabi' I on the pre-Islamic calendar. 1 Muharram of the new fixed calendar corresponded to Friday, 16 July 622 AD/CE, the equivalent civil tabular date (same daylight period) in the Julian calendar. The Islamic day began at the preceding sunset on the evening of 15 July. This Julian date (16 July) was determined by medieval Muslim astronomers by projecting back in time their own tabular Islamic calendar, which had alternating 30- and 29-day months in each lunar year plus eleven leap days every 30 years. For example, al-Biruni mentioned this Julian date in the year 1000 AD/CE. Although not used by either medieval Muslim astronomers or modern scholars to determine the Islamic epoch, the thin crescent moon would have also first become visible (assuming clouds did not obscure it) shortly after the preceding sunset on the evening of 15 July, 1.5 days after the associated dark moon (astronomical new moon) on the morning of 14 July.

Though Cook and Crone in "" cite a coin from AH 17, the first surviving attested use of a Hijri calendar date alongside a date in another calendar (Coptic) is on a papyrus from Egypt in AH 22, PERF 558.

Due to the fact that the Islamic calendar relies on certain variable methods of observation which are used to determine its month-start-dates, the start-dates of its months sometimes vary slightly from the month-start-dates of the astronomical lunar calendar, which are based directly on astronomical calculations. Still, the Islamic calendar seldom varies by more than three days from the astronomical-lunar-calendar system, and roughly approximates it. Both the Islamic calendar and the astronomical-lunar-calendar take no account of the solar year in their calculations, and thus both of these strictly lunar based calendar systems have no ability to reckon the timing of the four seasons of the year.

In the astronomical-lunar-calendar system, a year of 12 lunar months is 354.37 days long. In this calendar system, lunar months begin precisely at the time of the monthly "conjunction", when the Moon is located most directly between the Earth and the Sun. The month is defined as the average duration of a revolution of the Moon around the Earth (29.53 days). By convention, months of 30 days and 29 days succeed each other, adding up over two successive months to 59 full days. This leaves only a small monthly variation of 44 minutes to account for, which adds up to a total of 24 hours (i.e., the equivalent of one full day) in 2.73 years. To settle accounts, it is sufficient to add one day every three years to the lunar calendar, in the same way that one adds one day to the Gregorian calendar every four years. The technical details of the adjustment are described in Tabular Islamic calendar.

The Islamic calendar, however, is based on a different set of conventions being used for the determination of the month-start-dates. Each month still has either 29 or 30 days, but due to the variable method of observations employed, there is usually no discernible order in the sequencing of either 29 or 30 day month lengths. Traditionally, the first day of each month is the day (beginning at sunset) of the first sighting of the hilal (crescent moon) shortly after sunset. If the hilal is not observed immediately after the 29th day of a month (either because clouds block its view or because the western sky is still too bright when the moon sets), then the day that begins at that sunset is the 30th. Such a sighting has to be made by one or more trustworthy men testifying before a committee of Muslim leaders. Determining the most likely day that the hilal could be observed was a motivation for Muslim interest in astronomy, which put Islam in the forefront of that science for many centuries. Still, due to the fact that both lunar reckoning systems are ultimately based on the lunar cycle itself, both systems still do roughly correspond to one another, never being more than three days out of synchronisation with one another.
This traditional practice for the determination of the start-date of the month is still followed in the overwhelming majority of Muslim countries. Each Islamic state proceeds with its own monthly observation of the new moon (or, failing that, awaits the completion of 30 days) before declaring the beginning of a new month on its territory. But, the lunar crescent becomes visible only some 17 hours after the conjunction, and only subject to the existence of a number of favourable conditions relative to weather, time, geographic location, as well as various astronomical parameters. Given the fact that the moon sets progressively later than the sun as one goes west, with a corresponding increase in its "age" since conjunction, Western Muslim countries may, under favorable conditions, observe the new moon one day earlier than eastern Muslim countries. Due to the interplay of all these factors, the beginning of each month differs from one Muslim country to another, during the 48 hour period following the conjunction. The information provided by the calendar in any country does not extend beyond the current month.

A number of Muslim countries try to overcome some of these difficulties by applying different astronomy-related rules to determine the beginning of months. Thus, Malaysia, Indonesia, and a few others begin each month at sunset on the first day that the moon sets after the sun (moonset after sunset). In Egypt, the month begins at sunset on the first day that the moon sets at least five minutes after the sun. A detailed analysis of the available data shows, however, that there are major discrepancies between what countries say they do on this subject, and what they actually do. In some instances, what a country says it does is impossible.

Due to the somewhat variable nature of the Islamic calendar, in most Muslim countries, the Islamic calendar is used primarily for religious purposes, while the Solar-based Gregorian calendar is still used primarily for matters of commerce and agriculture.

If the Islamic calendar were prepared using astronomical calculations, Muslims throughout the Muslim world could use it to meet all their needs, the way they use the Gregorian calendar today. But, there are divergent views on whether it is licit to do so.

A majority of theologians oppose the use of calculations (beyond the constraint that each month must be not less than 29 nor more than 30 days) on the grounds that the latter would not conform with Muhammad's recommendation to observe the new moon of Ramadan and Shawal in order to determine the beginning of these months.

However, some jurists see no contradiction between Muhammad's teachings and the use of calculations to determine the beginnings of lunar months. They consider that Muhammad's recommendation was adapted to the culture of the times, and should not be confused with the acts of worship.

Thus the jurists Ahmad Muhammad Shakir and Yusuf al-Qaradawi both endorsed the use of calculations to determine the beginning of all months of the Islamic calendar, in 1939 and 2004 respectively. So did the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) in 2006 and the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) in 2007.

The major Muslim associations of France also announced in 2012 that they would henceforth use a calendar based on astronomical calculations, taking into account the criteria of the possibility of crescent sighting in any place on Earth. But, shortly after the official adoption of this rule by the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) in 2013, the new leadership of the association decided, on the eve of Ramadan 2013, to follow the Saudi announcement rather than to apply the rule just adopted. This resulted in a division of the Muslim community of France, with some members following the new rule, and others following the Saudi announcement.

Isma'ili-Taiyebi Bohras having the institution of "da'i al-mutlaq" follow the tabular Islamic calendar (see section below) prepared on the basis of astronomical calculations from the days of Fatimid imams.

Turkish Muslims use an Islamic calendar which is calculated several years in advance (currently up to 1444 AH/2022 CE) by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı). From 1 Muharrem 1400 AH (21 November 1979) until 29 Zilhicce 1435 (24 October 2014) the computed Turkish lunar calendar was based on the following rule: "The lunar month is assumed to begin on the evening when, within some region of the terrestrial globe, the computed centre of the lunar crescent at local sunset is more than 5° above the local horizon and (geocentrically) more than 8° from the Sun." In the current rule the (computed) lunar crescent has to be above the local horizon of Ankara at sunset.

Saudi Arabia uses the sighting method to determine the beginning of each month of the Hijri calendar. Since AH 1419 (1998/99), several official hilal sighting committees have been set up by the government to determine the first visual sighting of the lunar crescent at the beginning of each lunar month. Nevertheless, the religious authorities also allow the testimony of less experienced observers and thus often announce the sighting of the lunar crescent on a date when none of the official committees could see it.

The country also uses the Umm al-Qura calendar, based on astronomical calculations, but this is restricted to administrative purposes. The parameters used in the establishment of this calendar underwent significant changes over the past decade.

Before AH 1420 (before 18 April 1999), if the moon's age at sunset in Riyadh was at least 12 hours, then the day "ending" at that sunset was the first day of the month. This often caused the Saudis to celebrate holy days one or even two days before other predominantly Muslim countries, including the dates for the Hajj, which can only be dated using Saudi dates because it is performed in Mecca.

For AH 1420–22, if moonset occurred after sunset at Mecca, then the day beginning at that sunset was the first day of a Saudi month, essentially the same rule used by Malaysia, Indonesia, and others (except for the location from which the hilal was observed).

Since the beginning of AH 1423 (16 March 2002), the rule has been clarified a little by requiring the geocentric conjunction of the sun and moon to occur before sunset, in addition to requiring moonset to occur after sunset at Mecca. This ensures that the moon has moved past the sun by sunset, even though the sky may still be too bright immediately before moonset to actually see the crescent.

In 2007, the Islamic Society of North America, the "Fiqh" Council of North America and the European Council for "Fatwa" and Research announced that they will henceforth use a calendar based on calculations using the same parameters as the "Umm al-Qura" calendar to determine (well in advance) the beginning of all lunar months (and therefore the days associated with all religious observances). This was intended as a first step on the way to unify, at some future time, Muslims' calendars throughout the world.

Since 1 October 2016, as a cost-cutting measure, Saudi Arabia no longer uses the Islamic calendar for paying the monthly salaries of government employees but the Gregorian calendar.

The Solar Hijri calendar is a solar calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan which counts its years from the Hijra or migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD/CE.

The Tabular Islamic calendar is a rule-based variation of the Islamic calendar, in which months are worked out by arithmetic rules rather than by observation or astronomical calculation. It has a 30-year cycle with 11 leap years of 355 days and 19 years of 354 days. In the long term, it is accurate to one day in about 2,500 solar years or 2,570 lunar years. It also deviates up to about one or two days in the short term.

Microsoft uses the "Kuwaiti algorithm", a variant of the tabular Islamic calendar, to convert Gregorian dates to the Islamic ones. Microsoft claimed that the variant is based on a statistical analysis of historical data from Kuwait, however it matches a known tabular calendar.

Important dates in the Islamic (Hijri) year are:

Days considered important predominantly for Shia Muslims:

Days considered important for Sunni Muslims (especially in India & parts of Asia):

Conversions may be made by using the Tabular Islamic calendar, or, for greatest accuracy (one day in 15,186 years), via the Jewish calendar. Theoretically, the days of the months correspond in both calendars if the displacements which are a feature of the Jewish system are ignored. The table below gives, for nineteen years, the Muslim month which corresponds to the first Jewish month.

This table may be extended since every nineteen years the Muslim month number increases by seven. When it goes above twelve, subtract twelve and add one to the year AH. From 412 AD/CE to 632 AD/CE inclusive the month number is 1 and the calculation gives the month correct to a month or so. 622 AD/CE corresponds to BH 1 and AH 1. For earlier years, year BH = (623 or 622) – year AD/CE).

An example calculation: What is the civil date and year AH of the first day of the first month in the year 20875 AD/CE?

We first find the Muslim month number corresponding to the first month of the Jewish year which begins in 20874 AD/CE. Dividing 20874 by 19 gives quotient 1098 and remainder 12. Dividing 2026 by 19 gives quotient 106 and remainder 12. 2026 is chosen because it gives the same remainder on division by 19 as 20874. The two years are therefore (1098–106)=992×19 years apart. The Muslim month number corresponding to the first Jewish month is therefore 992×7=6944 higher than in 2026. To convert into years and months divide by twelve – 6944/12=578 years and 8 months. Adding, we get 1447y 10m + 20874y – 2026y + 578y 8m = 20874y 6m. Therefore, the first month of the Jewish year beginning in 20874 AD/CE corresponds to the sixth month of the Muslim year AH 20874. The worked example in Conversion between Jewish and civil dates, shows that the civil date of the first day of this month (ignoring the displacements) is Friday, 14 June. The year AH 20875 will therefore begin seven months later, on the first day of the eighth Jewish month, which the worked example shows to be 7 January, 20875 AD/CE (again ignoring the displacements). The date given by this method, being calculated, may differ by a day from the actual date, which is determined by observation.

A reading of the section which follows will show that the year AH 20875 is wholly contained within the year 20875 AD/CE, also that in the Gregorian calendar this correspondence will occur one year earlier. The reason for the discrepancy is that the Gregorian year (like the Julian, though less so) is slightly too long, so the Gregorian date for a given AH date will be earlier and the Muslim calendar catches up sooner.
An Islamic year will be entirely within a Gregorian year of the same number in the year 20874, after which year the number of the Islamic year will always be greater than the number of the concurrent civil year. The Islamic calendar year of 1429 occurred entirely within the civil calendar year of 2008. Such years occur once every 33 or 34 Islamic years (32 or 33 civil years). More are listed here:

Because a Hijri or Islamic lunar year is between 10 and 12 days shorter than a civil year, it begins 10–12 days earlier in the civil year following the civil year in which the previous Hijri year began. Once every 33 or 34 Hijri years, or once every 32 or 33 civil years, the beginning of a Hijri year (1 Muharram) coincides with one of the first ten days of January. Subsequent Hijri New Years move backward through the civil year back to the beginning of January again, passing through each civil month from December to January.

The Islamic calendar is now used primarily for religious purposes, and for official dating of public events and documents in Muslim countries. Because of its nature as a purely lunar calendar, it cannot be used for agricultural purposes and historically Islamic communities have used other calendars for this purpose: the Egyptian calendar was formerly widespread in Islamic countries, and the Iranian calendar and the 1789 Ottoman calendar (a modified Julian calendar) were also used for agriculture in their countries. In the Levant and Iraq the Aramaic names of the Babylonian calendar are still used for all secular matters. In Morocco, the Berber calendar (another Julian calendar) is still used by farmers in the countryside. These local solar calendars have receded in importance with the near-universal adoption of the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. The Saudi Arabia uses the lunar Islamic calendar. In Indonesia, the Javanese calendar, created by Sultan Agung in 1633, combines elements of the Islamic and pre-Islamic Saka calendars.

British author Nicholas Hagger writes that after seizing control of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi "declared" on 1 December 1978 "that the Muslim calendar should start with the death of the prophet Mohammed in 632 rather than the hijra (Mohammed's 'emigration' from Mecca to Medina) in 622". This put the country ten solar years behind the standard Muslim calendar. However, according to the 2006 "Encyclopedia of the Developing World", "More confusing still is Qaddafi's unique Libyan calendar, which counts the years from the Prophet's birth, or sometimes from his death. The months July and August, named after Julius and Augustus Caesar, are now Nasser and Hannibal respectively." Reflecting on a 2001 visit to the country, American reporter Neil MacFarquhar observed, "Life in Libya was so unpredictable that people weren't even sure what year it was. The year of my visit was officially 1369. But just two years earlier Libyans had been living through 1429. No one could quite name for me the day the count changed, especially since both remained in play. ... Event organizers threw up their hands and put the Western year in parentheses somewhere in their announcements."

Islamic calendar

The Islamic, Muslim, or Hijri calendar ( "at-taqwīm al-hijrī") is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual period of fasting and the proper time for the pilgrimage to Mecca. The civil calendar of almost all countries where the religion is predominantly Muslim is the Gregorian calendar. Notable exceptions to this rule are Iran and Afghanistan, which use the Solar Hijri calendar. Rents, wages etc. are generally paid by the civil calendar.

The Islamic calendar employs the Hijri era whose epoch was established as the Islamic New Year of 622 AD/CE. During that year, Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib (now Medina) and established the first Muslim community ("ummah"), an event commemorated as the Hijra. In the West, dates in this era are usually denoted AH (, "in the year of the Hijra") in parallel with the Christian (AD), Common (CE) and Jewish eras (AM). In Muslim countries, it is also sometimes denoted as H from its Arabic form (, abbreviated ). In English, years prior to the Hijra are reckoned as BH ("Before the Hijra").

The current Islamic year is 1440 AH. In the Gregorian calendar, 1440 AH runs from approximately 11 September 2018 to 30 August 2019.

For central Arabia, especially Mecca, there is a lack of epigraphical evidence but details are found in the writings of Muslim authors of the Abbasid era. Inscriptions of the ancient South Arabian calendars reveal the use of a number of local calendars. At least some of these South Arabian calendars followed the lunisolar system. Both al-Biruni and al-Mas'udi suggest that the ancient Arabs used the same month names as the Muslims, though they also record other month names used by the pre-Islamic Arabs.

Different interpretations of the concept of "Nasī’" have been proposed. Some scholars, both Muslim and Western, maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar. According to this view, "Nasī’" is related to the pre-Islamic practices of the Meccan Arabs, where they would alter the distribution of the forbidden months within a given year without implying a calendar manipulation. This interpretation is supported by Arab historians and lexicographers, like Ibn Hisham, Ibn Manzur, and the corpus of Qur'anic exegesis.

There are a number of indications that the intercalated calendar was similar to the Jewish calendar, whose year began in the spring. There are clues in the names of the months themselves:

In the intercalated calendar's last year (AD/CE 632), Dhu al-Hijjah corresponded to March. The Battle of the Trench in Shawwal and Dhu'l Qi'dah of AH 5 coincided with "harsh winter weather". Military campaigns clustered round Ramadan, when the summer heat had dissipated, and all fighting was forbidden during Rajab, at the height of summer. The invasion of Tabak in Rajab AH 9 was hampered by "too much hot weather" and "drought". In AH 1 Muhammad noted the Jews of Yathrib observing a festival when he arrived on Monday, 8 Rabi'I. Rabi'I is the third month and if it coincided with the third month of the Jewish calendar the festival would have been the Feast of Weeks, which is observed on the 6th and 7th days of that month.

In the tenth year of the Hijra, as documented in the Qur'an (Sura At-Tawba (9):36–37), Muslims believe God revealed the "prohibition of the Nasī’".

The three successive sacred (forbidden) months mentioned by Prophet Muhammad (months in which battles are forbidden) are Dhu al-Qa‘dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, and Muharram, months 11, 12, and 1 respectively. The single forbidden month is Rajab, month 7. These months were considered forbidden both within the new Islamic calendar and within the old pagan Meccan calendar.

Four of the twelve Hijri months are considered sacred: Rajab (7), and the three consecutive months of Dhū al-Qa‘dah (11), Dhu al-Ḥijjah (12) and Muḥarram (1). As the lunar calendar lags behind the solar calendar by about ten days every Gregorian year, months of the Islamic calendar fall in different parts of the Gregorian calendar each year. The cycle repeats every 33 lunar years.

Each month of the Islamic calendar commences on the birth of the new lunar cycle. Traditionally this is based on actual observation of the crescent ("hilal") marking the end of the previous lunar cycle and hence the previous month, thereby beginning the new month. Consequently, each month can have 29 or 30 days depending on the visibility of the moon, astronomical positioning of the earth and weather conditions. However, certain sects and groups, most notably Bohras Muslims namely Alavis, Dawoodis and Sulaymanis and Shia Ismaili Muslims, use a tabular Islamic calendar (see section below) in which odd-numbered months have thirty days (and also the twelfth month in a leap year) and even months have 29.

In Arabic, the "first day" of the week corresponds with Sunday of the planetary week. The Islamic weekdays, like those in the Hebrew and Bahá'í calendars, begin at sunset. The Christian liturgical day, kept in monasteries, begins with vespers (see vesper), which is evening, in line with the other Abrahamic traditions. Christian and planetary weekdays begin at the following midnight. Muslims gather for worship at a mosque at noon on "gathering day" (, meaning "day") which corresponds with Friday.

Thus "gathering day" is often regarded as the weekly day of rest. This is frequently made official, with many Muslim countries adopting Friday and Saturday (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia) or Thursday and Friday as official weekends, during which offices are closed; other countries (e.g., Iran) choose to make Friday alone a day of rest. A few others (e.g., Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, Nigeria) have adopted the Saturday-Sunday weekend while making Friday a working day with a long midday break to allow time off for worship.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, it was customary to identify a year after a major event which took place in it. Thus, according to Islamic tradition, Abraha, governor of Yemen, then a province of the Christian Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia), attempted to destroy the Kaaba with an army which included several elephants. The raid was unsuccessful, but that year became known as the "Year of the Elephant", during which Muhammad was born (sura al-Fil). Most equate this to the year 570 AD/CE, but a minority use 571 CE.

The first ten years of the Hijra were not numbered, but were named after events in the life of Muhammad according to Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī:

Though Cook and Crone in "" cite a coin from AH 17, the first surviving attested use of a Hijri calendar date alongside a date in another calendar (Coptic) is on a papyrus from Egypt in AH 22, PERF 558.

Due to the fact that the Islamic calendar relies on certain variable methods of observation which are used to determine its month-start-dates, the start-dates of its months sometimes vary slightly from the month-start-dates of the astronomical lunar calendar, which are based directly on astronomical calculations. Still, the Islamic calendar seldom varies by more than three days from the astronomical-lunar-calendar system, and roughly approximates it. Both the Islamic calendar and the astronomical-lunar-calendar take no account of the solar year in their calculations, and thus both of these strictly lunar based calendar systems have no ability to reckon the timing of the four seasons of the year.

A number of Muslim countries try to overcome some of these difficulties by applying different astronomy-related rules to determine the beginning of months. Thus, Malaysia, Indonesia, and a few others begin each month at sunset on the first day that the moon sets after the sun (moonset after sunset). In Egypt, the month begins at sunset on the first day that the moon sets at least five minutes after the sun. A detailed analysis of the available data shows, however, that there are major discrepancies between what countries say they do on this subject, and what they actually do. In some instances, what a country says it does is impossible.

Due to the somewhat variable nature of the Islamic calendar, in most Muslim countries, the Islamic calendar is used primarily for religious purposes, while the Solar-based Gregorian calendar is still used primarily for matters of commerce and agriculture.

If the Islamic calendar were prepared using astronomical calculations, Muslims throughout the Muslim world could use it to meet all their needs, the way they use the Gregorian calendar today. But, there are divergent views on whether it is licit to do so.

A majority of theologians oppose the use of calculations (beyond the constraint that each month must be not less than 29 nor more than 30 days) on the grounds that the latter would not conform with Muhammad's recommendation to observe the new moon of Ramadan and Shawal in order to determine the beginning of these months.

However, some jurists see no contradiction between Muhammad's teachings and the use of calculations to determine the beginnings of lunar months. They consider that Muhammad's recommendation was adapted to the culture of the times, and should not be confused with the acts of worship.

Thus the jurists Ahmad Muhammad Shakir and Yusuf al-Qaradawi both endorsed the use of calculations to determine the beginning of all months of the Islamic calendar, in 1939 and 2004 respectively. So did the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) in 2006 and the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) in 2007.

The major Muslim associations of France also announced in 2012 that they would henceforth use a calendar based on astronomical calculations, taking into account the criteria of the possibility of crescent sighting in any place on Earth. But, shortly after the official adoption of this rule by the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) in 2013, the new leadership of the association decided, on the eve of Ramadan 2013, to follow the Saudi announcement rather than to apply the rule just adopted. This resulted in a division of the Muslim community of France, with some members following the new rule, and others following the Saudi announcement.

Isma'ili-Taiyebi Bohras having the institution of "da'i al-mutlaq" follow the tabular Islamic calendar (see section below) prepared on the basis of astronomical calculations from the days of Fatimid imams.

Turkish Muslims use an Islamic calendar which is calculated several years in advance (currently up to 1444 AH/2022 CE) by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı). From 1 Muharrem 1400 AH (21 November 1979) until 29 Zilhicce 1435 (24 October 2014) the computed Turkish lunar calendar was based on the following rule: "The lunar month is assumed to begin on the evening when, within some region of the terrestrial globe, the computed centre of the lunar crescent at local sunset is more than 5° above the local horizon and (geocentrically) more than 8° from the Sun." In the current rule the (computed) lunar crescent has to be above the local horizon of Ankara at sunset.

Saudi Arabia uses the sighting method to determine the beginning of each month of the Hijri calendar. Since AH 1419 (1998/99), several official hilal sighting committees have been set up by the government to determine the first visual sighting of the lunar crescent at the beginning of each lunar month. Nevertheless, the religious authorities also allow the testimony of less experienced observers and thus often announce the sighting of the lunar crescent on a date when none of the official committees could see it.

The country also uses the Umm al-Qura calendar, based on astronomical calculations, but this is restricted to administrative purposes. The parameters used in the establishment of this calendar underwent significant changes over the past decade.

Before AH 1420 (before 18 April 1999), if the moon's age at sunset in Riyadh was at least 12 hours, then the day "ending" at that sunset was the first day of the month. This often caused the Saudis to celebrate holy days one or even two days before other predominantly Muslim countries, including the dates for the Hajj, which can only be dated using Saudi dates because it is performed in Mecca.

For AH 1420–22, if moonset occurred after sunset at Mecca, then the day beginning at that sunset was the first day of a Saudi month, essentially the same rule used by Malaysia, Indonesia, and others (except for the location from which the hilal was observed).

Since the beginning of AH 1423 (16 March 2002), the rule has been clarified a little by requiring the geocentric conjunction of the sun and moon to occur before sunset, in addition to requiring moonset to occur after sunset at Mecca. This ensures that the moon has moved past the sun by sunset, even though the sky may still be too bright immediately before moonset to actually see the crescent.

In 2007, the Islamic Society of North America, the "Fiqh" Council of North America and the European Council for "Fatwa" and Research announced that they will henceforth use a calendar based on calculations using the same parameters as the "Umm al-Qura" calendar to determine (well in advance) the beginning of all lunar months (and therefore the days associated with all religious observances). This was intended as a first step on the way to unify, at some future time, Muslims' calendars throughout the world.

Since 1 October 2016, as a cost-cutting measure, Saudi Arabia no longer uses the Islamic calendar for paying the monthly salaries of government employees but the Gregorian calendar.

The Solar Hijri calendar is a solar calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan which counts its years from the Hijra or migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD/CE.

The Tabular Islamic calendar is a rule-based variation of the Islamic calendar, in which months are worked out by arithmetic rules rather than by observation or astronomical calculation. It has a 30-year cycle with 11 leap years of 355 days and 19 years of 354 days. In the long term, it is accurate to one day in about 2,500 solar years or 2,570 lunar years. It also deviates up to about one or two days in the short term.

Microsoft uses the "Kuwaiti algorithm", a variant of the tabular Islamic calendar, to convert Gregorian dates to the Islamic ones. Microsoft claimed that the variant is based on a statistical analysis of historical data from Kuwait, however it matches a known tabular calendar.

Important dates in the Islamic (Hijri) year are:

Days considered important predominantly for Shia Muslims:

Days considered important for Sunni Muslims (especially in India & parts of Asia):

Conversions may be made by using the Tabular Islamic calendar, or, for greatest accuracy (one day in 15,186 years), via the Jewish calendar. Theoretically, the days of the months correspond in both calendars if the displacements which are a feature of the Jewish system are ignored. The table below gives, for nineteen years, the Muslim month which corresponds to the first Jewish month.

This table may be extended since every nineteen years the Muslim month number increases by seven. When it goes above twelve, subtract twelve and add one to the year AH. From 412 AD/CE to 632 AD/CE inclusive the month number is 1 and the calculation gives the month correct to a month or so. 622 AD/CE corresponds to BH 1 and AH 1. For earlier years, year BH = (623 or 622) – year AD/CE).

An example calculation: What is the civil date and year AH of the first day of the first month in the year 20875 AD/CE?

Because a Hijri or Islamic lunar year is between 10 and 12 days shorter than a civil year, it begins 10–12 days earlier in the civil year following the civil year in which the previous Hijri year began. Once every 33 or 34 Hijri years, or once every 32 or 33 civil years, the beginning of a Hijri year (1 Muharram) coincides with one of the first ten days of January. Subsequent Hijri New Years move backward through the civil year back to the beginning of January again, passing through each civil month from December to January.

The calendar used by the Punjabi people varies by religions. Historically, the Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus have used the Indian Bikrami (Vikrami) calendar which started in 57 B.C. with King Vikramaditya. Punjabi Muslims use the Arabic Hijri calendar. Some festivals in Punjab, Pakistan are determined by the Punjabi calendar, such as Muharram which is celebrated twice, once according to the Muslim year and again on the 10th of harh. The Bikrami calendar is the one the rural (agrarian) population follows in Punjab, Pakistan.

Punjabi calendar

In Punjab though the solar calendar is generally followed, the lunar calendar used is purnimanta. The lunar month is calculated from the ending moment of the full moon: the beginning of the dark fortnight. Chaitra is considered to be the first month of the lunar year. The lunar year begins on Chet Sudi: the first day after the new moon in the month of Chet. This means that the first half of the purnimanta month of Chaitra goes to the previous year, while the second half belongs to the new Lunar year.

The regional new year is observed on Vaisakhi which is determined by the solar calendar. The day is considered from sunrise to next sunrise and for the first day of the solar months, the Orissa rule is observed: day 1 of the month occurs on the day of the sankranti (known as sangrand in Punjabi).

The Islamic calendar, Muslim calendar or Hijri calendar (AH) is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim-majority countries and determines the proper days on which to observe the annual fast (see Ramadan), to attend Hajj, and to celebrate other Islamic holidays and festivals.

Muslim world

The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community (Ummah), consisting of all those who adhere to the religion of Islam, or to societies where Islam is practiced. In a modern geopolitical sense, these terms refer to countries where Islam is widespread, although there are no agreed criteria for inclusion. The term Muslim-majority countries is an alternative often used for the latter sense.

The history of the Muslim world spans about 1400 years and includes a variety of socio-political developments, as well as advances in the arts, science, philosophy, and technology, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age. All Muslims look for guidance to the Quran and believe in the prophetic mission of Muhammad, but disagreements on other matters have led to appearance of different religious schools and branches within Islam. In the modern era, most of the Muslim world came under influence or colonial domination of European powers. The nation states that emerged in the post-colonial era have adopted a variety of political and economic models, and they have been affected by secular and as well as religious trends.

, the combined GDP (nominal) of 49 Muslim majority countries was US$5.7 trillion,, they contributed 8% of the world's total. As of 2015, 1.8 billion or about 24.1% of the world population are Muslims. By the percentage of the total population in a region considering themselves Muslim, 91% in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA), 89% in Central Asia, 40% in Southeast Asia, 31% in South Asia, 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25% in Asia–Oceania, around 6% in Europe, and 1% in the Americas.

Muslim history involves the history of the Islamic faith as a religion and as a social institution. The history of Islam began in the Arabian Peninsula when the Islamic prophet Muhammad received the first revelation of the Quran in the 7th century in the cave of Hira in the month of Ramadan. According to tradition, he was supposedly commanded by Allah to convey this message to the people, and to be patient with those hostile to it. These included the leaders of the Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca, who opposed the assertion of tawhid (monotheism) and abolishing what Muhammed branded "idolatry", meaning the worship of gods other than Allah at the Kaaba, such as Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, Al-‘Uzzá and Manāt. After 13 years of spreading this message, despite increased persecution by the Quraysh, Muhammad and his followers migrated to Medina to establish a new state under the prophet's leadership and away from persecution. This migration, called the Hijra, marks the first year of the Islamic calendar. Islam was then spread to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula over the course of Muhammad's life.

After Muhammad died in 632, his successors (the Caliphs) continued to lead the Muslim community based on his teachings and guidelines of the Quran. The majority of Muslims consider the first four successors to be 'rightly guided' or Rashidun. The Rashidun Caliphate's conquests spread Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula, stretching from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Near East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. The Arab Muslims were unable to conquer the entire Christian Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, however. The succeeding Umayyad Caliphate attempted two failed sieges of Constantinople in 674–678 and 717–718. Meanwhile, the Muslim community tore itself apart into the rivalling Sunni and Shia sects since the killing of caliph Uthman in 656, resulting in a succession crisis that has never been resolved. The following First, Second and Third Fitnas and finally the Abbasid Revolution (746–750) also definitively destroyed the political unity of the Muslims, who have been inhabiting multiple states ever since.

Subsequent empires dominated by Muslims, such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Seljukids, Almoravids, Almohads and Marinids in Morocco, Nasrids in the Iberian Peninsula, Ayyubids, Bahris and Burjis in Egypt, Wagadou, Kanem-Bornu, Manden and Songhai in the Sahel, Ajuran, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan e.t.c), Ghaznavids, Khwarazmids, Timurids and Safavids in Persia and Ottomans in Anatolia, were among the influential and distinguished powers in the world. 19th-century colonialism and 20th-century decolonisation have resulted in several independent Muslim-majority states around the world, with vastly differing attitudes towards and political influences granted to, or restricted for, Islam from country to country. These have revolved around the question of Islam's compatibility with other ideological concepts such as secularism, nationalism (especially Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism, as opposed to Pan-Islamism), socialism (see also Arab socialism and socialism in Iran), democracy (see Islamic democracy), republicanism (see also Islamic republic), liberalism and progressivism, feminism, capitalism and more.

The term "Islamic Golden Age" has been attributed to a period in history wherein science, economic development and cultural works in most of the Muslim-dominated world flourished. The age is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786–809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world sought to translate and gather all the known world's knowledge into Arabic, and to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258. The Abbasids were influenced by the Quranic injunctions and hadiths, such as "the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr," that stressed the value of knowledge. The major Islamic capital cities of Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba became the main intellectual centers for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. During this period, the Muslim world was a collection of cultures; they drew together and advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations.

Between the 8th and 18th centuries, the use of ceramic glaze was prevalent in Islamic art, usually assuming the form of elaborate pottery. Tin-opacified glazing was one of the earliest new technologies developed by the Islamic potters. The first Islamic opaque glazes can be found as blue-painted ware in Basra, dating to around the 8th century. Another contribution was the development of fritware, originating from 9th-century Iraq. Other centers for innovative ceramic pottery in the Old world included Fustat (from 975 to 1075), Damascus (from 1100 to around 1600) and Tabriz (from 1470 to 1550).

The best known work of fiction from the Islamic world is "One Thousand and One Nights" (In Persian: "hezār-o-yek šab" > Arabic: "ʔalf-layl-at-wa-l’-layla"= One thousand Night and (one) Night) or *"Arabian Nights", a name invented by early Western translators, which is a compilation of folk tales from Sanskrit, Persian, and later Arabian fables. The original concept is derived from a pre-Islamic Persian prototype Hezār Afsān (Thousand Fables) that relied on particular Indian elements. It reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. All Arabian fantasy tales tend to be called "Arabian Nights" stories when translated into English, regardless of whether they appear in "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights" or not. This work has been very influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland. Imitations were written, especially in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba.

A famous example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance (love) is "Layla and Majnun", dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love. Ferdowsi's "Shahnameh", the national epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history. "Amir Arsalan" was also a popular mythical Persian story, which has influenced some modern works of fantasy fiction, such as "The Heroic Legend of Arslan".

Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" ("Philosophus Autodidactus") as a response to Al-Ghazali's "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel "Theologus Autodidactus" as a response to Ibn Tufail's "Philosophus Autodidactus". Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in "Philosophus Autodidactus" and Kamil in "Theologus Autodidactus") who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in "Philosophus Autodidactus", the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in "Theologus Autodidactus", developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.

"Theologus Autodidactus", written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), is the first example of a science fiction novel. It deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, the end of the world and doomsday, resurrection, and the afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time. Ibn al-Nafis' fiction explained Islamic religious teachings via science and Islamic philosophy.

A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail's work, "Philosophus Autodidactus", first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. These translations might have later inspired Daniel Defoe to write "Robinson Crusoe", regarded as the first novel in English. "Philosophus Autodidactus", continuing the thoughts of philosophers such as Aristotle from earlier ages, inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, "The Aspiring Naturalist".

Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy", derived features of and episodes about "Bolgia" from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the "Hadith" and the "Kitab al-Miraj" (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as "Liber Scale Machometi") concerning the ascension to Heaven of Muhammad, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi. The Moors also had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele's "The Battle of Alcazar" and Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", "Titus Andronicus" and "Othello", which featured a Moorish Othello as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century.

One of the common definitions for "Islamic philosophy" is "the style of philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture." Islamic philosophy, in this definition is neither necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor is exclusively produced by Muslims. The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037) had more than 450 books attributed to him. His writings were concerned with various subjects, most notably philosophy and medicine. His medical textbook "The Canon of Medicine" was used as the standard text in European universities for centuries. He also wrote "The Book of Healing", an influential scientific and philosophical encyclopedia.

One of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West was Averroes (Ibn Rushd), founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, whose works and commentaries affected the rise of secular thought in Europe. He also developed the concept of "existence precedes essence".

Another figure from the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna, also founded his own Avicennism school of philosophy, which was influential in both Islamic and Christian lands. He was also a critic of Aristotelian logic and founder of Avicennian logic, developed the concepts of empiricism and tabula rasa, and distinguished between essence and existence.

Yet another influential philosopher who had an influence on modern philosophy was Ibn Tufail. His philosophical novel, "Hayy ibn Yaqdha", translated into Latin as "Philosophus Autodidactus" in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture, condition of possibility, materialism, and Molyneux's problem. European scholars and writers influenced by this novel include John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Melchisédech Thévenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, and Samuel Hartlib.

Islamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.

Other influential Muslim philosophers include al-Jahiz, a pioneer in evolutionary thought; Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotle's concept of place (topos); Al-Biruni, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy; Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis, pioneers of the philosophical novel; Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, founder of Illuminationist philosophy; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic; and Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer in the philosophy of history.

Muslim scientists contributed to advances in the sciences. They placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. This led to an early scientific method being developed in the Muslim world, where progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics from "circa" 1000, in his "Book of Optics". The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Some have also described Ibn al-Haytham as the "first scientist." al-Khwarzimi's invented the log base systems that are being used today, he also contributed theorems in trigonometry as well as limits. Recent studies show that it is very likely that the Medieval Muslim artists were aware of advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry (discovered half a millennium later in the 1970s and 1980s in the West) and used it in intricate decorative tilework in the architecture.

Muslim physicians contributed to the field of medicine, including the subjects of anatomy and physiology: such as in the 15th-century Persian work by Mansur ibn Muhammad ibn al-Faqih Ilyas entitled "Tashrih al-badan" ("Anatomy of the body") which contained comprehensive diagrams of the body's structural, nervous and circulatory systems; or in the work of the Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis, who proposed the theory of pulmonary circulation. Avicenna's "The Canon of Medicine" remained an authoritative medical textbook in Europe until the 18th century. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (also known as "Abulcasis") contributed to the discipline of medical surgery with his "Kitab al-Tasrif" ("Book of Concessions"), a medical encyclopedia which was later translated to Latin and used in European and Muslim medical schools for centuries. Other medical advancements came in the fields of pharmacology and pharmacy.

In astronomy, Muḥammad ibn Jābir al-Ḥarrānī al-Battānī improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis. The corrections made to the geocentric model by al-Battani, Averroes, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi and Ibn al-Shatir were later incorporated into the Copernican heliocentric model. Heliocentric theories were also discussed by several other Muslim astronomers such as Al-Biruni, Al-Sijzi, Qotb al-Din Shirazi, and Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī. The astrolabe, though originally developed by the Greeks, was perfected by Islamic astronomers and engineers, and was subsequently brought to Europe.

Some most famous scientists from the medieval Islamic world include Jābir ibn Hayyān, al-Farabi, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Biruni, Avicenna, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and Ibn Khaldun.

In technology, the Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries, where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.

Advances were made in irrigation and farming, using new technology such as the windmill. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted by the Europeans. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Hormuz was an important center for this trade. There was also a dense network of trade routes in the Mediterranean, along which Muslim-majority countries traded with each other and with European powers such as Venice, Genoa and Catalonia. The Silk Road crossing Central Asia passed through Muslim states between China and Europe.

Muslim engineers in the Islamic world made a number of innovative industrial uses of hydropower, and early industrial uses of tidal power and wind power, fossil fuels such as petroleum, and early large factory complexes ("tiraz" in Arabic). The industrial uses of watermills in the Islamic world date back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th century. A variety of industrial mills were being employed in the Islamic world, including early fulling mills, gristmills, paper mills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills and windmills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Such advances made it possible for industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labour in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution.

Scholars often use the term Gunpowder Empires to describe the Islamic empires of the Safavid, Ottoman and Mughal. Each of these three empires had considerable military exploits using the newly developed firearms, especially cannon and small arms, to create their empires. They existed primarily between the fourteenth and the late seventeenth centuries.

The Great Divergence was the reason why European colonial powers militarily defeated preexisting Oriental powers like the Mughal Empire, Ottoman Empire and many smaller states in the pre-modern Greater Middle East, and initiated a period known as 'colonialism'.

Beginning with the 15th century, colonialism by European powers (particularly, but not exclusively, Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, and Belgium) profoundly affected Muslim-majority societies in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Colonialism was often advanced by conflict with mercantile initiatives by colonial powers and caused tremendous social upheavals in Muslim-dominated societies.

A number of Muslim-majority societies reacted to Western powers with zealotry and thus initiating the rise of Pan-Islamism; or affirmed more traditionalist and inclusive cultural ideals; and in rare cases adopted modernity that was ushered by the colonial powers.

The only Muslim-majority regions not to be colonized by the Europeans were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Turkey was one of the first colonial powers of the world with the Ottoman empire ruling several states for over 6 centuries.

The end of the European colonial domination has led to creation of a number of nation states with significant Muslim populations. These states drew on Islamic traditions to varying degree and in various ways in organizing their legal, educational and economic systems.

Because the terms "Muslim world" and "Islamic world" are disputed, since all countries have some non-Muslims and there is not universal agreement on what proportion of the population would be required or if other factors (such as state recognition) should qualify a given country. One commonly supported rule of thumb is a Muslim population of more than 50%. Jones (2005) defines a "large minority" as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

According to a 2010 study and released January 2011, Islam has 1.5 billion adherents, making up over 22% of the world population. According to the Pew Research Center in 2015 there were 50 Muslim-majority countries.

Worldatlas.com (April 2017) identified 45 'Islamic countries'. Among the Islamic states are: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, and Yemen. Other states where Islam is the politically defined state religion are: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Somalia and Brunei. Other Muslim-majority countries include: Niger, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Northern Cyprus, Nigeria, Senegal, Syria, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

More than 24.1% of the world's population is Muslim. Current estimates conclude that the number of Muslims in the world is around 1.8 billion. Muslims are the majority in 49 countries, they speak hundreds of languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Major languages spoken by Muslims include Arabic, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Swahili, Hausa, Fula, Berber, Tuareg, Somali, Albanian, Spanish, Bosnian, Russian, Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tatar, Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Tamil, Telugu, Balochi, Sindhi, Malayalam, and Kashmiri, among many others.

The two main denominations of Islam are the Sunni and Shia sects. They differ primarily upon of how the life of the ummah ("faithful") should be governed, and the role of the imam. Sunnis believe that the true political successor of the Prophet according to the Sunnah should be selected based on ٍShura (consultation), as was done at the Saqifah which selected Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law, to be Muhammad's political but not his religious successor. Shia, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his true political as well as religious successor.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world, between 87–90%, are Sunni.

Shias and other groups make up the rest, about 10–13% of overall Muslim population. The countries with the highest concentration of Shia populations are: Iran – 96%, Azerbaijan – 85%, Iraq – 60/70%, Bahrain – 70%, Yemen – 47%, Turkey – 28%, Lebanon – 27%,
Syria – 17%, Afghanistan – 15%, Pakistan – 5%/10%, and India – 5%.

The Kharijite Muslims, who are less known, have their own stronghold in the country of Oman holding about 75% of the population.

The first centuries of Islam gave rise to three major sects: Sunnis, Shi'as and Kharijites. Each sect developed distinct jurisprudence schools ("madhhab") reflecting different methodologies of jurisprudence ("fiqh").

The major Sunni madhhabs are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali.

The major Shi'a branches are Twelver (Imami), Ismaili (Sevener) and Zaidi (Fiver). Isma'ilism later split into Nizari Ismaili and Musta’li Ismaili, and then Mustaali was divided into Hafizi and Taiyabi Ismailis. It also gave rise to the Qarmatian movement and the Druze faith. Twelver Shiism developed Ja'fari jurisprudence whose branches are Akhbarism and Usulism, and other movements such as Alawites, Shaykism and Alevism.

Similarly, Kharijites were initially divided into five major branches: Sufris, Azariqa, Najdat, Adjarites and Ibadis. Among these numerous branches, only Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Imamiyyah-Ja'fari-Usuli, Nizārī Ismā'īlī, Alevi, Zaydi, Ibadi, Zahiri, Alawite, Druze and Taiyabi communities have survived. In addition, new schools of thought and movements like Quranist Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims and African American Muslims later emerged independently.

According to the UNHCR, Muslim-majority countries hosted 18 million refugees by the end of 2010.

Since then Muslim nations have absorbed refugees from recent conflicts, including the uprising in Syria. In July 2013, the UN stated that the number of Syrian refugees had exceeded 1.8 million.
In Asia, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, mostly Muslim, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.

In some Muslim-majority countries, illiteracy is a problem, whereas in others literacy rates are high. In Egypt, the largest Muslim-majority Arab country, the youth female literacy rate exceeds that for males. Lower literacy rates are more prevalent in South Asian countries such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but are rapidly increasing. In the Eastern Middle East, Iran has a high level of youth literacy at 98%, whereas Iraq's youth literacy rate has sharply declined from 85% to 57%, during the American-led war and subsequent occupation. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has a very high youth literacy rate at 99%.

In Afghanistan, seminaries are operated by politically active religious organizations and have taken the place of basic education not provided and funded by the government.

A 2016 Pew Research Center study about religion and education around the world found that Muslims have the lowest average levels of education after Hindus, with an average of 5.6 years of schooling. About 36% of all Muslims have no formal schooling, Muslims have also the lowest average levels of higher education of any major religious group, with only 8% having graduate and post-graduate degrees.
The highest of years of schooling among Muslim-majority countries found in Uzbekistan (11.5), Kuwait (11.0) and Kazakhstan (10.7). In addition, the average of years of schooling in countries where Muslims are the majority is 6.0 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (7.7 years of schooling). In the youngest age (25–34) group surveyed, Young Muslims have the lowest average levels of education of any major religious group, with an average of 6.7 years of schooling, which lag behind the global average (8.6 years of schooling). The study found that Muslims have a significant amount of gender inequality in educational attainment, since Muslim women have an average of 4.9 years of schooling; compare to an average of 6.4 years of schooling among Muslim men.
The literacy rate in the Muslim world varies. Azerbaijan is in second place in the Index of Literacy of World Countries. Some members such as Iran, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have over 97% literacy rates, whereas literacy rates are the lowest in Mali, Afghanistan, Chad and parts of Africa. In 2015, the International Islamic News Agency reported that nearly 37% of the population of the Muslim world is unable to read or write, basing that figure on reports from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Several Muslim-majority countries like Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan exhibit high rate of citable scientific publications.

The Muslim world has been afflicted with economic stagnation for many centuries. In 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that apart from crude oil, the exports of the entire Greater Middle East with its 400 million population roughly equals that of Switzerland. It has also been estimated that the exports of Finland, a European country of only five million, exceeded those of the entire 370 million-strong Arab world, excluding oil and natural gas.

Throughout history, Muslim cultures have been diverse ethnically, linguistically and regionally.
The term "Islamic art and architecture" denotes the works of art and architecture produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by culturally Islamic populations.

Encompasses both secular and religious styles, the design and style made by Muslims and their construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture included the architectural types: the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort. Perhaps the most important expression of Islamic art is architecture, particularly that of the mosque. Through Islamic architecture, effects of varying cultures within Islamic civilization can be illustrated. Generally, the use of Islamic geometric patterns and foliage based arabesques were striking. There was also the use of decorative calligraphy instead of pictures which were haram (forbidden) in mosque architecture. Note that in secular architecture, human and animal representation was indeed present.

The North African and Iberian Islamic architecture, for example, has Roman-Byzantine elements, as seen in the Great Mosque of Kairouan which contains marble columns from Roman and Byzantine buildings, in the Alhambra palace at Granada, or in the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

Persian-style mosques are characterized by their tapered brick pillars, large arcades, and arches supported each by several pillars. In South Asia, elements of Hindu architecture were employed, but were later superseded by Persian designs.

No Islamic visual images or depictions of God are meant to exist because it is believed that such artistic depictions may lead to idolatry. Moreover, Muslims believe that God is incorporeal, making any two- or three- dimensional depictions impossible. Instead, Muslims describe God by the names and attributes that, according to Islam, he revealed to his creation. All but one sura of the Quran begins with the phrase "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful". Images of Mohammed are likewise prohibited. Such aniconism and iconoclasm can also be found in Jewish and some Christian theology.

Islamic art frequently adopts the use of geometrical floral or vegetal designs in a repetition known as arabesque. Such designs are highly nonrepresentational, as Islam forbids representational depictions as found in pre-Islamic pagan religions. Despite this, there is a presence of depictional art in some Muslim societies, notably the miniature style made famous in Persia and under the Ottoman Empire which featured paintings of people and animals, and also depictions of Quranic stories and Islamic traditional narratives. Another reason why Islamic art is usually abstract is to symbolize the transcendence, indivisible and infinite nature of God, an objective achieved by arabesque. Islamic calligraphy is an omnipresent decoration in Islamic art, and is usually expressed in the form of Quranic verses. Two of the main scripts involved are the symbolic "kufic" and "naskh" scripts, which can be found adorning the walls and domes of mosques, the sides of minbars, and so on.

Distinguishing motifs of Islamic architecture have always been ordered repetition, radiating structures, and rhythmic, metric patterns. In this respect, fractal geometry has been a key utility, especially for mosques and palaces. Other features employed as motifs include columns, piers and arches, organized and interwoven with alternating sequences of niches and colonnettes. The role of domes in Islamic architecture has been considerable. Its usage spans centuries, first appearing in 691 with the construction of the Dome of the Rock mosque, and recurring even up until the 17th century with the Taj Mahal. And as late as the 19th century, Islamic domes had been incorporated into European architecture.

Girih is an Islamic decorative art form used in architecture and handicrafts (book covers, tapestry, small metal objects), consisting of geometric lines that form an interlaced strapwork.

Islamic calligraphy, is the artistic practice of handwriting, calligraphy, and by extension, of bookmaking, in the lands sharing a common Islamic cultural heritage.

The Islamic calendar, Muslim calendar or Hijri calendar (AH) is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim-majority countries and determines the proper days on which to observe the annual fast (see Ramadan), to attend Hajj, and to celebrate other Islamic holidays and festivals.

The Solar Hijri calendar, also called the Shamsi Hijri calendar, and abbreviated as SH, is the official calendar of Iran and Afghanistan. It begins on the vernal equinox. Each of the twelve months corresponds with a zodiac sign. The first six months have 31 days, the next five have 30 days, and the last month has 29 days in usual years but 30 days in leap years. The year of Prophet Muhammad's migration to Medina (622 CE) is fixed as the first year of the calendar, and the New Year's Day always falls on the March equinox.

As of 2015 Islam has 1.8 billion adherents, making up over 24.1% of the world population. Due to globalization, Islam today has taken root and influenced cultures in places far from the traditional boundaries of the Muslim world.

The Open Doors USA organization, in its 2012 survey of countries around the world that persecute Christians, listed 37 members of the Muslim world amongst the top 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. 9 of the top 10 countries are Islamic-majority states.

As the Muslim world came into contact with secular ideals, societies responded in different ways. Some Muslim-majority countries are secular. Azerbaijan became the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, before it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Revolution replaced a mostly secular regime with an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.

Some countries have declared Islam as the official state religion. In those countries, the legal code is largely secular. Only personal status matters pertaining to inheritance and marriage are governed by Sharia law.

Islamic states have adopted Islam as the ideological foundation of state and constitution.

The following Muslim-majority nation-states have endorsed Islam as their state religion.

These are neutral states where the constitutional or official announcement regarding status of religion is not clear or unstated.
Secular states in the Muslim world have declared separation between civil/government affairs and religion.

In some nations, Muslim ethnic groups enjoy considerable autonomy.

In some places, Muslims implement Islamic law, called sharia in Arabic. The Islamic law exists in a number of variations, but the main forms are the five (four Sunni and one Shia) and Salafi and Ibadi schools of jurisprudence (fiqh)

In a number of Muslim-majority countries the law requires women to cover either their legs, shoulders and head, or the whole body apart from the face. In strictest forms, the face as well must be covered leaving just a mesh to see through. These hijab rules for dressing cause tensions, concerning particularly Muslims living in Western countries, where restrictions are considered both sexist and oppressive. Some Muslims oppose this charge, and instead declare that the media in these countries presses on women to reveal too much in order to be deemed attractive, and that this is itself sexist and oppressive.

During much of the 20th century, the Islamic identity and the dominance of Islam on political issues have arguably increased during the early 21st century. The fast-growing interests of the Western world in Islamic regions, international conflicts and globalization have changed the influence of Islam on the world in contemporary history.

Some people in Muslim-majority countries also see Islam manifested politically as Islamism. Political Islam is powerful in some Muslim-majority countries. Islamic parties in Turkey, Pakistan and Algeria have taken power at the provincial level. Some in these movements call themselves Islamists, which also sometimes describes more militant Islamic groups. The relationships between these groups (in democratic countries there is usually at least one Islamic party) and their views of democracy are complex.

Some of these groups are accused of practicing Islamic terrorism.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an inter-governmental organization grouping fifty-seven states. 49 are Muslim-majority countries, the others have significant Muslim minorities. The organization claims to be the collective voice of the Muslim world to safeguard the interest and ensure the progress and well-being of their peoples and those of other Muslims in the world over.

The Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in most of the Muslim countries (concurrently with the Gregorian calendar), and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic holy days and festivals. Its epoch is the Hijra (corresponding to AD 622)
With an annual drift of 11 or 12 days, the seasonal relation is repeated approximately each 33 Islamic years.

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record (often paper) of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills.

Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronised with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of pre-modern calendar was the lunisolar calendar, a lunar calendar that occasionally adds one intercalary month to remain synchronised with the solar year over the long term.

The term "calendar" is taken from "calendae", the term for the first day of the month in the Roman calendar, related to the verb "calare" "to call out", referring to the "calling" of the new moon when it was first seen.
Latin "calendarium" meant "account book, register" (as accounts were settled and debts were collected on the calends of each month). The Latin term was adopted in Old French as "calendier" and from there in Middle English as "calender" by the 13th century (the spelling "calendar" is early modern). A calendar can be on paper or electronic device.

The course of the sun and the moon are the most salient natural, regularly recurring events useful for timekeeping, thus in pre-modern societies worldwide lunation and the year were most commonly used as time units. Nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained remnants of a very ancient pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year. The first recorded physical calendars, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East, are the Bronze Age Egyptian and Sumerian calendars.

A large number of Ancient Near East calendar systems based on the Babylonian calendar date from the Iron Age, among them the calendar system of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar and the Hebrew calendar.

A great number of Hellenic calendars developed in Classical Greece, and in the Hellenistic period gave rise to both the ancient Roman calendar and to various Hindu calendars.

Calendars in antiquity were lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been early attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically, as evidenced in the fragmentary 2nd-century Coligny calendar.

The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. The Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the calendar month from the lunation.

The Islamic calendar is based on the prohibition of intercalation ("nasi'") by Muhammad, in Islamic tradition dated to a sermon held on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah AH 10 (Julian date: 6 March 632). This resulted in an observation-based lunar calendar that shifts relative to the seasons of the solar year.

The first calendar reform of the early modern era was the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 based on the observation of a long-term shift between the Julian calendar and the solar year.

There have been a number of modern proposals for reform of the calendar, such as the World Calendar, International Fixed Calendar, Holocene calendar, and, recently, the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar. Such ideas are mooted from time to time but have failed to gain traction because of the loss of continuity, massive upheaval in implementation, and religious objections.

A full calendar system has a different calendar date for every day. Thus the week cycle is by itself not a full calendar system; neither is a system to name the days within a year without a system for identifying the years.

The simplest calendar system just counts time periods from a reference date. This applies for the Julian day or Unix Time. Virtually the only possible variation is using a different reference date, in particular, one less distant in the past to make the numbers smaller. Computations in these systems are just a matter of addition and subtraction.

Other calendars have one (or multiple) larger units of time.

Calendars that contain one level of cycles:

Calendars with two levels of cycles:

Cycles can be synchronized with periodic phenomena:Very commonly a calendar includes more than one type of cycle, or has both cyclic and non-cyclic elements.

Most calendars incorporate more complex cycles. For example, the vast majority of them track years, months, weeks and days. The seven-day week is practically universal, though its use varies. It has run uninterrupted for millennia.

Solar calendars assign a "date" to each solar day. A day may consist of the period between sunrise and sunset, with a following period of night, or it may be a period between successive events such as two sunsets. The length of the interval between two such successive events may be allowed to vary slightly during the year, or it may be averaged into a mean solar day. Other types of calendar may also use a solar day.

Not all calendars use the solar year as a unit. A lunar calendar is one in which days are numbered within each lunar phase cycle. Because the length of the lunar month is not an even fraction of the length of the tropical year, a purely lunar calendar quickly drifts against the seasons, which do not vary much near the equator. It does, however, stay constant with respect to other phenomena, notably tides. An example is the Islamic calendar.
Alexander Marshack, in a controversial reading, believed that marks on a bone baton (c. 25,000 BC) represented a lunar calendar. Other marked bones may also represent lunar calendars. Similarly, Michael Rappenglueck believes that marks on a 15,000-year-old cave painting represent a lunar calendar.

A lunisolar calendar is a lunar calendar that compensates by adding an extra month as needed to realign the months with the seasons. An example is the Hebrew calendar which uses a 19-year cycle.

Nearly all calendar systems group consecutive days into "months" and also into "years". In a "solar calendar" a "year" approximates Earth's tropical year (that is, the time it takes for a complete cycle of seasons), traditionally used to facilitate the planning of agricultural activities. In a "lunar calendar", the "month" approximates the cycle of the moon phase. Consecutive days may be grouped into other periods such as the week.

Because the number of days in the "tropical year" is not a whole number, a solar calendar must have a different number of days in different years. This may be handled, for example, by adding an extra day in leap years. The same applies to months in a lunar calendar and also the number of months in a year in a lunisolar calendar. This is generally known as intercalation. Even if a calendar is solar, but not lunar, the year cannot be divided entirely into months that never vary in length.

Cultures may define other units of time, such as the week, for the purpose of scheduling regular activities that do not easily coincide with months or years. Many cultures use different baselines for their calendars' starting years. For example, the year in Japan is based on the reign of the current emperor: 2006 was Year 18 of the Emperor Akihito.

An "astronomical calendar" is based on ongoing observation; examples are the religious Islamic calendar and the old religious Jewish calendar in the time of the Second Temple. Such a calendar is also referred to as an "observation-based" calendar. The advantage of such a calendar is that it is perfectly and perpetually accurate. The disadvantage is that working out when a particular date would occur is difficult.

An "arithmetic calendar" is one that is based on a strict set of rules; an example is the current Jewish calendar. Such a calendar is also referred to as a "rule-based" calendar. The advantage of such a calendar is the ease of calculating when a particular date occurs. The disadvantage is imperfect accuracy. Furthermore, even if the calendar is very accurate, its accuracy diminishes slowly over time, owing to changes in Earth's rotation. This limits the lifetime of an accurate arithmetic calendar to a few thousand years. After then, the rules would need to be modified from observations made since the invention of the calendar.

Calendars may be either complete or incomplete. Complete calendars provide a way of naming each consecutive day, while incomplete calendars do not. The early Roman calendar, which had no way of designating the days of the winter months other than to lump them together as "winter", is an example of an incomplete calendar, while the Gregorian calendar is an example of a complete calendar.

The primary practical use of a calendar is to identify days: to be informed about or to agree on a future event and to record an event that has happened. Days may be significant for agricultural, civil, religious or social reasons. For example, a calendar provides a way to determine when to start planting or harvesting, which days are religious or civil holidays, which days mark the beginning and end of business accounting periods, and which days have legal significance, such as the day taxes are due or a contract expires. Also a calendar may, by identifying a day, provide other useful information about the day such as its season.

Calendars are also used to help people manage their personal schedules, time and activities, particularly when individuals have numerous work, school, and family commitments. People frequently use multiple systems, and may keep both a business and family calendar to help prevent them from overcommitting their time.

Calendars are also used as part of a complete timekeeping system: date and time of day together specify a moment in time. In the modern world, timekeepers can show time, date and weekday. Some may also show lunar phase.

The Gregorian calendar is the "de facto" international standard, and is used almost everywhere in the world for civil purposes. It is a purely solar calendar, with a cycle of leap days in a 400-year cycle designed to keep the duration of the year aligned with the solar year.

Each Gregorian year has either 365 or 366 days (the leap day being inserted as 29 February), amounting to an average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days (compared to a solar year of 365.2422 days). It was introduced in 1582 as a refinement to the Julian calendar which had been in use throughout the European Middle Ages, amounting to a 0.002% correction in the length of the year.

During the Early Modern period, however, its adoption was mostly limited to Roman Catholic nations, but by the 19th century, it became widely adopted worldwide for the sake of convenience in international trade. The last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923.

The calendar epoch used by the Gregorian calendar is inherited from the medieval convention established by Dionysius Exiguus and associated with the Julian calendar. The year number is variously given as AD (for "Anno Domini") or CE (for "Common Era" or, indeed, "Christian Era").

The most important use of pre-modern calendars is keeping track of the liturgical year and the observation of religious feast days.

While the Gregorian calendar is itself historically motivated in relation to the calculation of the Easter date, it is now in worldwide secular use as the "de facto" standard. Alongside the use of the Gregorian calendar for secular matters, there remain a number of calendars in use for religious purposes.

Eastern Christians, including the Orthodox Church, use the Julian calendar.

The Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in most of the Muslim countries (concurrently with the Gregorian calendar), and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic holy days and festivals. Its epoch is the Hijra (corresponding to AD 622)
With an annual drift of 11 or 12 days, the seasonal relation is repeated approximately each 33 Islamic years.

Various Hindu calendars remain in use in the Indian subcontinent, including the Nepali calendar, Bengali calendar, Malayalam calendar, Tamil calendar, Vikrama Samvat used in Northern India, and Shalivahana calendar in the Deccan states.

The Buddhist calendar and the traditional lunisolar calendars of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand are also based on an older version of the Hindu calendar.

Most of the Hindu calendars are inherited from a system first enunciated in Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha, standardized in the "Sūrya Siddhānta" and subsequently reformed by astronomers such as Āryabhaṭa (AD 499), Varāhamihira (6th century) and Bhāskara II (12th century).

The Hebrew calendar is used by Jews worldwide for religious and cultural affairs, also influences civil matters in Israel (such as national holidays) and can be used there for business dealings (such as for the dating of cheques).

Bahá'ís worldwide use the Bahá'í calendar.

The Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, and Julian calendars are widely used for religious and social purposes.

The Iranian (Persian) calendar is used in Iran and some parts of Afghanistan. The Ethiopian calendar or Ethiopic calendar is the principal calendar used in Ethiopia and Eritrea, with the Oromo calendar also in use in some areas. In neighboring Somalia, the Somali calendar co-exists alongside the Gregorian and Islamic calendars. In Thailand, where the Thai solar calendar is used, the months and days have adopted the western standard, although the years are still based on the traditional Buddhist calendar.

A fiscal calendar generally means the accounting year of a government or a business. It is used for budgeting, keeping accounts and taxation. It is a set of 12 months that may start at any date in a year. The US government's fiscal year starts on 1 October and ends on 30 September. The government of India's fiscal year starts on 1 April and ends on 31 March. Small traditional businesses in India start the fiscal year on Diwali festival and end the day before the next year's Diwali festival.

In accounting (and particularly accounting software), a fiscal calendar (such as a 4/4/5 calendar) fixes each month at a specific number of weeks to facilitate comparisons from month to month and year to year. January always has exactly 4 weeks (Sunday through Saturday), February has 4 weeks, March has 5 weeks, etc. Note that this calendar will normally need to add a 53rd week to every 5th or 6th year, which might be added to December or might not be, depending on how the organization uses those dates. There exists an international standard way to do this (the ISO week). The ISO week starts on a Monday, and ends on a Sunday. Week 1 is always the week that contains 4 January in the Gregorian calendar.

The term "calendar" applies not only to a given scheme of timekeeping but also to a specific record or device displaying such a scheme, for example an appointment book in the form of a pocket calendar (or personal organizer), desktop calendar, a wall calendar, etc.

In a paper calendar one or two sheets can show a single day, a week, a month, or a year. If a sheet is for a single day, it easily shows the date and the weekday. If a sheet is for multiple days it shows a conversion table to convert from weekday to date and back. With a special pointing device, or by crossing out past days, it may indicate the current date and weekday. This is the most common usage of the word.

In the US Sunday is considered the first day of the week and so appears on the far left and Saturday the last day of the week appearing on the far right. In Britain the weekend may appear at the end of the week so the first day is Monday and the last day is Sunday. The US calendar display is also used in Britain.

It is common to display the Gregorian calendar in separate monthly grids of seven columns (from Monday to Sunday, or Sunday to Saturday depending on which day is considered to start the week – this varies according to country) and five to six rows (or rarely, four rows when the month of February contains 28 days beginning on the first day of the week), with the day of the month numbered in each cell, beginning with 1. The sixth row is sometimes eliminated by marking 23/30 and 24/31 together as necessary.

When working with weeks rather than months, a continuous format is sometimes more convenient, where no blank cells are inserted to ensure that the first day of a new month begins on a fresh row.

Calendaring software provides users with an electronic version of a calendar, and may additionally provide an appointment book, address book or contact list.
Calendaring is a standard feature of many PDAs, EDAs, and smartphones. The software may be a local package designed for individual use (e.g., Lightning extension for Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook without Exchange Server, or Windows Calendar) or may be a networked package that allows for the sharing of information between users (e.g., Mozilla Sunbird, Windows Live Calendar, Google Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Server).

There is evidence of a limited cultural borrowing from the Mozarabs by the Muslim community in Al-Andalus. For instance, the Muslims' adoption of the Christian solar calendar and holidays was an exclusively Andalusi phenomenon. In Al-Andalus, the Islamic lunar calendar was supplemented by the local solar calendar, which were more useful for agricultural and navigational purposes. Like the local Mozarabs, the Muslims of Al-Andalus were notoriously heavy drinkers. Muslims also celebrated traditional Christian holidays sometimes with the sponsorship of their leaders, despite the fact that such fraternisation was generally opposed by the Ulema. The Muslims also hedged their metaphysical bets through the use of Roman Catholic sacraments.

Mozarabs

The Mozarabs ( ; ; ; trans. "musta'rab", "Arabized") is a modern historical term that refers to the Iberian Christians who lived under Moorish rule in Al-Andalus. Although their descendants remained unconverted to Islam, they were mostly fluent in Arabic and adopted elements of Arabic culture. The local Romance vernaculars, heavily permeated by Arabic, spoken by Christians and Muslim alike has also come to be known as Mozarabic language. Mozarabs were mostly Roman Catholics of the Visigothic or Mozarabic Rite.

Most of the Mozarabs were descendants of Hispanic Christians and were primarily speakers of Mozarabic (late Latin of Iberia) under Islamic rule. They also included those members of the former Visigothic ruling elite who did not convert to Islam or emigrate northwards after the Muslim conquest.

A few were Arab and Berber Christians coupled with Muslim converts to Christianity who, as Arabic speakers, naturally were at home among the original Mozarabs. A prominent example of Muslims who became Mozarabs by embracing Christianity is the Andalusian rebel and Anti-Umayyad military leader, Umar ibn Hafsun. The Mozarabs of Muslim origin were descendants of those Muslims who converted to Christianity, following the conquest of Toledo and perhaps also, following the expeditions of king Alfonso I of Aragon. These Mozarabs of Muslim origin, who converted en masse at the end of the 11th century, many of them Muladi (ethnic Iberians previously converted to Islam), are totally distinct from the Mudéjars and Moriscos who converted gradually to Christianity between the 12th and 17th centuries. Some Mozarabs were even Conversos Sephardi Jews who likewise became part of the Mozarabic milieu.

Separate Mozarab enclaves were located in the large Muslim cities, especially Toledo, Córdoba, Zaragoza, and Seville.

Christians and Jews were designated "dhimmi" under Sharia (Islamic law). Dhimmi were allowed to live within Muslim society, but were legally required to pay the jizyah, a personal tax, and abide with a number of religious, social, and economic restrictions that came with their status. Despite their restrictions, the dhimmi were fully protected by the Muslim rulers and did not have to fight in case of war, because they paid the jizyah.

As the universal nature of Roman law was eroded and replaced by Islamic law in part of the Iberian Peninsula, Shariah law allowed most ethnic groups in the medieval Islamic world to be judged by their own judges, under their own law: Mozarabs had their own tribunals and authorities. Some of them even held high offices in the Islamic administration under some rulers. A prominent example being that of Rabi ibn Zayd, a palace official, who, sometime between 961 and 976, wrote the famous "Calendar of Córdoba" for Abd ar-Rahman III, undertook various diplomatic missions in Germania and Byzantium, and was rewarded with the bishopric of "Elvira" (present-day Granada). Furthermore, in 1064 Emir Al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza sent Paternus, the Mozarabic bishop of Tortosa, as an envoy to king Ferdinand I of León in Santiago de Compostela, while the Christian Abu Umar ibn Gundisalvus, a Saqaliba (a Slav), served the same taifa ruler as the "Wazir" (Vizier, or the equivalent to prime minister).

Conversion to Islam was encouraged by the Ummayad Caliphs and Emirs of Córdoba. Many Mozarabs converted to Islam to avoid the heavy Jizya tax which they were subjected to as Dhimmis. Conversion to Islam also opened up new horizons to the Mozarabs, alleviated their social position, ensured better living conditions, and broadened scope for more technically skilled and advanced work. Apostasy, however, for one who had been raised as a Muslim or had embraced Islam, was a crime punishable by death.

Until the mid-9th century, relations between Muslims and the majority Christian population of Al-Andalus, were relatively cordial. Christian resistance to the first wave of Muslim conquerors was unsuccessful. In Murcia, a single surviving capitulation document must stand for many such agreements to render tribute in exchange for the protection of traditional liberties; in it, Theodomirus ("Todmir" in Arabic), Visigothic count of Orihuela, agrees to recognize Abd al-Aziz as overlord and to pay tribute consisting of a yearly cash payment supplemented with specific agricultural products. In exchange, Theodomir received Abd al-Aziz' promise to respect both his property and his jurisdiction in the province of Murcia. There was no change in the composition of the people on the land, and in cases like this one, even their Visigothic lords remained.

In the Moorish controlled region of Al-Garb Al-Andalus, an area to the west of Al-Andalus, which included the modern region of Algarve and most of Portugal, Mozarabs constituted the majority of the population.

The Muslim geographer Ibn Hawqal, who visited the country in the middle of the 10th century, spoke of frequent revolts by Mozarab peasants employed on large estates, probably those of the ruling aristocracy. There is also substantial evidence that Mozarabs fought in the defence of the thaghr (front line fortress towns), participating in raids against Christian neighbours and struggles between Muslim factions. For instance, in 936, a significant number of Christians holed up in Calatayud with the rebel Mutarraf, only to be massacred in a desperate stand against the Caliphate forces.

There is very little evidence of any Christian resistance at Al-Andalus in the 9th century. Evidence points to a rapid attrition in the North. For instance, during the 1st centuries of Muslim rule, the Mozarab community of Lleida was apparently ruled by a "qumis" (count) and had its own judiciary, but there is no evidence of any such administration in the later period.

Although Mozarab merchants traded in Andalusi markets, they were neither influential nor numerous before the middle of the 12th century. This was owed to commercial disinterest and disorganization in the early Middle Ages rather than any specific or religious impediments set up by the Muslim rulers. Unlike Andalusi Muslims and Jews, Mozarabs had little interest in commerce because of their general perception of trade as lowly and despicable. This was in stark contrast to the greater respect accorded to merchants in Jewish and Muslim societies, where trade was frequently combined with other callings, such as politics, scholarship, or medicine.

It is often mistakenly assumed that Mozarab merchants forged a vital commercial and cultural link between the north and south across the Iberian frontiers. Mozarab refugees may have had influence in northern Iberian trade at places like Toledo, but there is no reason to believe that they engaged in commerce with their abandoned homeland. Most traffic between Al-Andalus and Christian regions remained in the hands of Jewish and Muslim traders until the dramatic shifts initiated by European commercial expansion throughout the 11th and 12th centuries. With the development of Italian maritime power and southward expansion of the Christian Reconquista, Andalusi international trade came increasingly into the control of Christian traders from northern Iberia, southern France, or Italy and by the middle of the 13th century was an exclusively Christian concern.

There were frequent contacts between the Mozarabs in Al-Andalus and their co-religionists both in the Kingdom of Asturias and in the Marca Hispanica, the territory under Frankish influence to the northeast. The level of literary culture among the northern Christians was inferior to that of their Mozarab brethren in the historic cities to the south, due to the prosperity of Al-Andalus. For that reason, Christian refugees from Al-Andalus were always welcomed in the north, where their descendants came to form an influential element. Though impossible to quantify, the immigration of Mozarabs from the south was probably a significant factor in the growth in the Christian principalities and kingdoms of northern Iberia.

For most of the 9th and 10th centuries, Iberian Christian culture in the north was stimulated, probably dominated, by the learning of Mozarab immigrants, who helped to accentuate its Christian identity and apparently played a major role in development of Iberian Christian ideology. The Mozarab scholars and clergy eagerly sought manuscripts, relics and traditions from the towns and monasteries of central and southern Iberia that had been the heartland of Visigothic Catholicism. Many Mozarabs also took part in the many regional revolts that formed the great "fitna" or unrest in the late 9th century.

The ability of the Mozarabs to assimilate into Moorish culture while maintaining their Christian faith has often caused them to be depicted by Western scholars as having a strong allegiance to Roman Catholicism and its cause. However, the historian Jaume Vicens Vives offers another view of the Mozarabs. He states that one of the Emperor Charlemagne's major offensives was to annihilate the Moorish frontier by taking Zaragoza, which was an important Mozarab stronghold. However, the offensive failed because the Mozarabs of the city refused to cooperate with the Catholic emperor. Vives concludes that the Mozarabs were primarily a self-absorbed group. They understood that they could gain a great deal by remaining in close contact with the Moors.

There was a steady rate of decline among the Mozarab population of Al-Andalus towards the end of the Reconquista. This was mainly caused by conversions, emigration towards the northern part of the peninsula during the upheavals of the 9th and early 10th centuries and also by the ethno-religious conflicts of the same period.

The American historian, Richard Bulliet, in a work based on the quantitative use of the onomastic data as furnished by scholarly biographical dictionaries, concluded that it was only in the 10th century when the Andalusi emirate was firmly established and developed into the greatest power of the western Mediterranean under Caliph Abd ar-Rahman III, that the numerical ratio of Muslims and Christians in Al-Andalus was reversed in favour of the former. Prior to the middle of this century, he asserts, the population of Al-Andalus was still half Christian.

Although this assertion is denied by other sources, the expansion of the Caliphate had come primarily through conversion and absorption, and only very secondarily through immigration. The remaining Mozarab community shrank into an increasingly fossilized remnant.

Relatively large numbers of Mozarab communities did, however, continue to exist up to the end of the taifa kingdoms; there were several parishes in Toledo when the Christians occupied the city in 1085, and abundant documentation in Arabic on the Mozarabs of this city is preserved. An apparently still significant Mozarab group, which is the subject of a number of passages in the Arabic chronicles dealing with El Cid's dominion over Valencia, was also to be found there during this same period. Similarly, the memoirs of the Emir of Granada clearly indicate the existence of a relatively large rural Christian population in some parts of the Málaga region towards the end of the 11th century. Until the reconquest of Seville by the Christians in 1248, a Mozarab community existed there, though in the course of the 12th century Almoravid persecution had forced many Mozarabs in Al-Andalus to flee northward.

Christians did not enjoy equal rights under Islamic rule, and their original guarantees, at first fairly broad, steadily diminished. They were still allowed to practice their own religion in private, but found their cultural autonomy increasingly reduced. Mozarabs inevitably lost more and more status, but they long maintained their dignity and the integrity of their culture, and they never lost personal and cultural contact with the Christian world.

In the generations that followed the conquest, Muslim rulers promulgated new statutes clearly disadvantageous to dhimmi. The construction of new churches and the sounding of church bells were eventually forbidden. But when Eulogius of Córdoba recorded the martyrology of the Martyrs of Córdoba during the decade after 850, it was apparent that at least four Christian basilicas remained in the city, including the church of Saint Acisclus that had sheltered the only holdouts in 711, and nine monasteries and convents in the city and its environs; nevertheless, their existence soon became precarious.

It is supposed that the Mozarabs were tolerated as Dhimmis and valued taxpayers, and no Mozarab was condemned to death until the formation of the party led by the Christian leaders Eulogius (beheaded in 859) and Alvaro of Córdoba, whose mystic exaltation led them to seek martyrdom by insulting Muhammad, and blaspheming Islam. The Arabization of the Christians was opposed by Eulogius himself, who called for a more purely Christian culture stripped of Moorish influences. To this end, he led a revolt of the Mozarabs at Córdoba in which Christians martyred themselves to protest against Muslim rule.

However, Kenneth Baxter Wolf concludes that Eulogius was not the instigator of these persecutions but merely a hagiographer. This is consistent with other historical records of two Christians executed in 860, and shortly after a third one. The subsequent executions were in 888–912 and 913–920. Still more executions were recorded in Córdoba in 923 (Eugenia), a boy Pelagius in 925 (for refusal to convert to Islam and submit to Caliph's sexual advances), and Argentea in 931. According to Wolf, there is no reason to believe that they stopped even then.

Eulogius's writings documenting stories of the Córdoba martyrs of 851–59, encouraged by him to defy Muslim authorities with blasphemies and embrace martyrdom, contrast these Christians with the earlier official Christianity of the Visigoths, by Reccared, the previous bishop of Córdoba, who counseled tolerance and mutual forbearance with the Muslim authorities. However, since then Christians became increasingly alienated not only because they could not build new churches or ring church bells, but primarily because they were excluded from most positions of political, military, or social authority and suffered many other indignities as unequals under the Islamic law. By the mid-9th century, as the episode of the Córdoba martyrs reveals, there was a clear Christian opposition against the systematic pressure by a variety of legal and financial instruments of Islam, resisting their conversion and absorption into Muslim culture.

The initial official reaction to the Córdoba martyrs was to round up and imprison the leaders of the Christian community. Towards the end of the decade of the martyrs, Eulogius's martyrology begins to record the closing of Christian monasteries and convents, which to Muslim eyes had proved to be a hotbed of disruptive fanaticism rather than a legitimate response against a slow but systematic elimination of Christianity.

As previously with the Muslims, so as the Reconquista advanced, the Mozarabs integrated into the Christian kingdoms, where the kings privileged those who settled the frontier lands. They also migrated north to the Frankish kingdom in times of persecution.

Significantly large numbers of Mozarabs settled in the Ebro valley. King Alfonso VI of Castile induced Mozarab settlers by promising them lands and rewards. His importation of Mozarab settlers from Al-Andalus was very unusual because of its startling nature. According to the Anglo-Norman historian, Orderic Vitalis, some 10,000 Mozarabs were sent by Alfonso for settlement on the Ebro. Mozarabs were scarce in Tudela or Zaragossa, but were more common in a place such as Calahorra, conquered by the Kingdom of Navarre in 1045.

During the early stages of Romance language development in Iberia, a set of closely related Romance dialects was spoken in Muslim areas of the Peninsula by the general population. These are known as the Mozarabic language, though there never was a common standard.

This archaic Romance language is first documented in writing in the Peninsula in the form of choruses ("kharjas") in Arabic and Hebrew lyrics called "muwashshahs". As they were written in Arabic and Hebrew alphabets the vowels have had to be reconstructed.

Mozarab had a significant impact in the formation of Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan, transmitting to these many words of Andalusi Arabic origin. The northward migration of Mozarabs explains the presence of Arabic toponyms in places where the Muslim presence did not last long.

The cultural language of Mozarabs continued to be Latin, but as time passed, young Mozarabs studied and even excelled at Arabic. The implantation of Arabic as the vernacular by the Moorish conquerors led the Christian polemicist Petrus Alvarus of Córdoba to famously lament the decline of spoken Latin among the local Christians.

The use of Arabic cognomens by the Mozarab communities of Al-Andalus is emblematic of the adoption by the Christians of the outward manifestations of Arab-language Islamic culture. The Mozarabs employed Arabic-style names such as "Zaheid ibn Zafar", "Pesencano ibn Azafar", "Ibn Gafif", "Ibn Gharsiya" (Garcia), "Ibn Mardanish" (Martinez), "Ibn Faranda" (Fernandez), in purely Christian contexts. This demonstrates that they had acculturated thoroughly and that their Arabic names were not mere aliases adopted to facilitate their movement within Muslim society. Conversely, some Christian names such as "Lope" and "Fortun" entered the local Arabic lexicon ("Lubb" and "Fortun"), and others were adopted in translated form (such as "Sa'ad" for "Felix"). In the witness lists, Mozarabs identified themselves with undeniably Arabic names such as "al-Aziz", and "Ibn Uthman". Several Mozarabs also used the name "Al-Quti" (The Goth), and some may have been actual descendants from the family of the Pre-Islamic Visigothic Christian king, Wittiza.

There are but few remains of Christian scholarly discourse in Muslim Iberia. What remains in Arabic are translations of the Gospels and the Psalms, anti-Islamic tracts and a translation of a church history. To this should be added literary remains in Latin which remained the language of the liturgy.

There is evidence of a limited cultural borrowing from the Mozarabs by the Muslim community in Al-Andalus. For instance, the Muslims' adoption of the Christian solar calendar and holidays was an exclusively Andalusi phenomenon. In Al-Andalus, the Islamic lunar calendar was supplemented by the local solar calendar, which were more useful for agricultural and navigational purposes. Like the local Mozarabs, the Muslims of Al-Andalus were notoriously heavy drinkers. Muslims also celebrated traditional Christian holidays sometimes with the sponsorship of their leaders, despite the fact that such fraternisation was generally opposed by the Ulema. The Muslims also hedged their metaphysical bets through the use of Roman Catholic sacraments.

In the earliest period of Muslim domination of Iberia, there is evidence of extensive interaction between the two communities attested to by shared cemeteries and churches, bilingual coinage, and the continuity of late Roman pottery types. Furthermore, in the peninsula the conquerors did not settle in the "amsar", the self-contained and deliberately isolated city camps set up alongside existing settlements elsewhere in the Muslim world with the intention of protecting Muslim settlers from corrupting indigenous influences.

The Arab and mostly Berber immigrants who settled in the existing towns were drawn into broad contact with natives. Their immigration, though limited in numbers, introduced new agricultural and hydraulic technologies, new craft industries, and Levantine techniques of shipbuilding. They were accompanied by an Arabic-language culture that brought with it the higher learning and science of the classical and post-classical Levantine world. The Emir of Córdoba, Abd ar-Rahman I's policy of allowing the ethnic Arab politico-military elite to practise agriculture further encouraged economic and cultural contact and cohesion. Moreover, the interaction of foreign and native elements, fostered by intermarriage and contact in day-to-day commercial and social life rapidly stimulated acculturation between the two groups.

The heterodox features of Mozarabic culture inevitably became more prominent. However, Christian women often married Muslim men and their children were raised as Muslims. Even within Mozarab families, legal divorce eventually came to be practised along Islamic lines. Ordination of the clergy ultimately drifted far from canonical norms, breaking apostolic succession, and various Muslim sources claim that concubinage and fornication among the clergy was extremely widespread.

Some Christian authorities (Álvaro and Eulogius of Córdoba) were scandalized at the treatment of Christians, and began encouraging the public declarations of the faith as a way to reinforce the faith of the Christian community and protest the Islamic laws that Christians saw as unjust. Eulogius composed tractates and matyrologies for Christians during this time.

The forty-eight Christians (mostly monks) known as the Martyrs of Córdoba were martyred between the years 850 and 859, being decapitated for publicly proclaiming their Christian beliefs. Dhimmis (non Muslims living under Muslim rule) were not allowed to speak of their faith to Muslims under penalty of death.

Wolf points out that it is important to distinguish between the motivations of the individual martyrs, and those of Eulogius and Alvarus in writing the "Memoriale". Jessica A. Coope says that while it would be wrong to ascribe a single motive to all forty-eight, she suggests that it reflects a protest against the process of assimilation. They demonstrated a determination to assert Christian identity.

The Mozarab population was badly affected by the hardening of relations between the Christians and the Muslims during the Almoravid period. In 1099, the people of Granada, by order of the Almoravid Emir, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, acting on the advice of his Ulema, destroyed the main Mozarab church of the Christian community.

The Mozarabs remained apart from the influence of French Catholic religious orders, such as the Cistercians – highly influential in northern Christian Iberia, and conserved in their masses the Visigothic rite, also known as the Mozarabic rite. The Christian kingdoms of the north, though, changed to the Latin Rite and appointed northerners as bishops for the reconquered sees. Nowadays, the Mozarabic rite is allowed by a papal privilege at the Mozarab Chapel of the Cathedral of Toledo, where it is held daily. Poor Clare Nuns church in Madrid, La Inmaculada y San Pascual, also holds weekly Mozarabic masses. A Mozarab brotherhood is still active in Toledo. Since Toledo was the most deeply rooted centre where they remained firm, the Gothic rite was identified and came to be known as the ""Toledan rite"".

In 1080, Pope Gregory VII called the council of Burgos, where it was agreed to unify the Latin rite in all Christian lands. In 1085, Toledo was reconquered and there was a subsequent attempt to reintroduce the ecumenical standards of Rome. The reaction of the Toledan people was such that the king refused to implement it, and in 1101 enacted the ""Fuero (Code of laws) of the Mozarabs"", which awarded them privileges. He specified that it applied only to the Castilians, Mozarabs, and Franks of the city.

During both his first marriage to Agnes of Aquitaine and his second marriage to Constance of Burgundy, both of whom were devout Roman Catholics, king Alfonso VI of Castile was under constant pressure to eradicate the Mozarab rite. A popular legend states that Alfonso VI submitted the Mozarab liturgy and its Roman counterpart to ordeal by fire, putting the fix in for the Catholic rite. Hence, the Mozarab liturgy was abolished in 1086.

In 1126, a great number of Mozarabs were expelled to North Africa by the Almoravids. Other Mozarabs fled to Northern Iberia. This constituted the end of the Mozarabic culture in Al-Andalus. For a while, both in North Africa and in Northern Iberia, the Mozarabs managed to maintain their own separate cultural identity. However, in North Africa, they were eventually Islamized.

Over the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, there unrolled a steady process of the impoverishment of Mozarab cultivators, as more and more land came under control of magnates and ecclesiastical corporations. The latter, under the influence of the Benedictine bishop of Cluny Bernard, and the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, who was himself the principal buyer of Mozarab property in the early 13th century fomented a segregationalist policy under the cloak of religious nationalism. Jiménez de Rada's bias is symbolized in his coining of the semi-erudite etymology of the word Mozarab from "Mixti Arabi", connoting the contamination of this group by overexposure to infidel customs, if not by migration.

At Toledo, king Alfonso VI of Castile did not recognize the Mozarabs as a separate legal community, and thus accentuated a steady decline which led to the complete absorption of the Mozarabs by the general community by the end of the 15th century. As a result, the Mozarabic culture had been practically lost. Cardinal Cisneros, aware of the Mozarabic liturugy historical value and liturugical richness, undertook the task of guaranteeing its continuation, and to this end gathered all the codices and texts to be found in the city. After they had been carefully studied by specialists, they were classified and in 1502 the Missal and Breviary were printed. They revitalised the faith and a Chapel was instituted at the Cathedral, with its own priests which still exists today.

The Mozarab Missal of Silos is the oldest Western manuscript on paper, written in the 11th century. The Mozarab community in Toledo continues to thrive to this day. It is made of 1,300 families whose genealogies can be traced back to the ancient Mozarabs.

There is a long running debate about what proportion of the population of Al-Andalus that the Mozarabs formed. Some maintain that the Mozarabs were part of a historical continuum of Latinised Christians that represented the majority of the population of Al-Andalus, while others argue that the Christian population was relatively small in the areas under Muslim rule. The former camp bases their position on the work of Francisco Javier Simonet, whose works "Glosario de voces ibéricas y latinas usadas entre los mozárabe"s (1888) and "Historia de los mozárabes de España" supported the idea that the indigenous Christian community of Al-Andalus formed the majority of the population. Other historians argue that the work of Simonet and those who preceded him in studying this question took a non-critical view toward the sources used and the conclusions draw, citing a lack of firm historical evidence that can be used to make a definitive pronouncement on the composition of Al-Andalus society.

The conversion of the native Christians to Islam did not mean the total erasure of previous beliefs and social practises. There is some evidence of a limited cultural borrowing from the Christians by the Muwalladun and other Muslims in Al-Andalus. For instance, the Muslims' adoption of the Christian solar calendar and holidays was an exclusively Andalusi phenomenon. In Al-Andalus, the Islamic lunar calendar was supplemented by the local solar calendar, which was more useful for agricultural and navigational purposes. Like the local Mozarabs (Iberian Christians under Muslim rule in the Al-Andalus who remained unconverted to Islam), the Muslims of Al-Andalus were notoriously heavy drinkers. The Muslims also celebrated traditional Christian holidays, sometimes with the sponsorship of their leaders, despite the fact that such fraternisation was generally opposed by the Ulema. The Muslims also hedged their religious devotions through the use of Roman Catholic sacraments.

Muladi

The Muladi (, pl. ;, pl. ; or, pl. or ; trans. "muwallad", pl. "muwalladūn" or "muwalladīn") were Muslims of local descent or of mixed Arab, Berber, and Iberian origin who lived in Al-Andalus during the Middle Ages. They were also called ""Musalimah"" (Islamized). In broader usage, the word "muwallad" is used to describe Arabs of mixed parentage, especially those not living in their ancestral homelands.

The Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan words "muladí", "muladi" or "muladita" are derived from the Arabic "muwallad". The basic meaning of "muwallad" is a person of mixed ancestry, especially a descendant of an Arab father and a non-Arab mother, who grew up under the influence of an Arabic society and were educated within the Islamic culture. "Muladi" is the Spanish form of the term "muwalladun", referring to Arabic-speaking Muslims of Hispanic origin who showed the same behaviour patterns as those rebels of Arab and Berber origin who rebelled against Arab rule.

"Muwallad" is derived from "WaLaD" (), which means "descendant, offspring, scion; son; boy; young animal (male), young one (male)." "Muwallad" referred to the offspring of Muslim men and foreign, non-Muslim women. The term "muwalladin" is sometimes used in Arabic to this day to describe the children of Muslim fathers and foreign mothers.

According to Dozy, "Muwallad" means "anyone who, without being of Muslim origin, is born among the Muslims and has been raised as an Arab". The word, according to him, does not necessarily imply Arab ancestry, either paternal or maternal.

According to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, "muladí" means "Christian who, during the domination of the Arabs in Spain, converted to Islam and lived among the Muslims," while Bernards and Nawas say the plural form of the word seems to be restricted to al-Andalus, almost exclusively to the areas of Mérida, Granada, Seville and Jaén. "Muladi" has been offered as one of the possible etymological origins of the still-current Spanish and Portuguese term "mulato", denoting a person of white and black ancestry; however, several authorities trace "mulato" (and from it, English "mulatto") to Spanish "mulo" "mule", from Latin "mūlus".

In Islamic history "muwalladun" designates in a broader sense non-Arab Muslims or the descendants of converts. In the Muslim-ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula, parts of the indigenous until-then Christian population (basically a mixture of the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, ancient Romans, Visigoths and Suebi) converted to Islam in the 8th and 9th centuries. In the 10th century a massive conversion of Christians took place, so that "muladies" comprised the majority of the population of Al-Andalus by the century's end. However, the majority of Muwallads had converted to Islam early, but retained many pre-Islamic customs and characteristics.

Conversion to Islam was encouraged by the Umayyad caliphs and Emirs of Córdoba but it was not directly forced. Many Christians converted to Islam to avoid the Jizya tax which they were subjected to as Dhimmis. Conversion to Islam also opened up new horizons to the native Christians, alleviated their social position, ensured better living conditions, and broadened their scope for more technically skilled and advanced work.

The Christians who converted to Islam became "Mawali", or clients attached to an Arab tribe, and as such, were thoroughly Islamized, adopting the Arabic dress code, customs, and language.

The Muwallads were also called "Muslima" (Islamized), and "elches" ("ilj", plural: "ulus"), in reference to the society from which they sprang. They later were denominated Aljamiados because of their non Arabic-tongue, that is, the Mozarabic languages.

Through the cultural Arabization of "muladies" and their increasing inter-marriage with some Berbers and Arabs present in Iberia, the distinctions between the different Muslim groups became increasingly blurred in the 11th and 12th centuries. The populations mixed with such rapidity that it was soon impossible to distinguish ethnically the elements of foreign origin from the natives. Thus they merged into a more homogeneous group of "Andalusi Arabs" generally also called Moors.
The Muwallads primarily spoke Andalusian Arabic, along with a wide variety of Iberian Romance languages. Andalusian Arabic was a mixture of Iberian languages and Classical Arabic, though derived especially from Latin. This local dialect of Arabic was also spoken by the Berbers and Arabs from the 9th century onwards.

In the process of acculturation, Muwallads may well have adopted an agnatic model of descent, but without abandoning the bilaterality of late Roman kinship. According to Abu Jafar ibn Harun of Trujillo a vast but silent majority of Muladi Muslims thrived especially in the Extremadura region of Spain.

Among the Muwalladun were the free-born, the enfranchised, and slaves. A significant part of the Muwalladun was formed by freed slaves. These were the "Saqaliba", or "Slavs" who became an important social group in Al-Andalus during the 10th and 11th centuries. Upon adopting the ethnic name of their patrons, the emancipated slaves gradually forgot their own ethnic origin. The Muslim slaves were the Saqaliba, led by Ali ibn Yusuf, who profited from the progressive crumbling of the Umayyad Caliphate's superstructure to gain control over the province of Denia. The Saqaliba managed to free themselves and gain dominion over the Taifa, which extended its reach as far as the Balearic Islands, and their capital, Madina Mayurqa (now Palma, Majorca).

The intermarriage of foreign Muslims with native Christians made many Muwallads heedless of their Iberian origin. As a result, their descendants and many descendants of Christian converts forgot the descent of their ancestors and assumed forged Arab genealogies. However, there were a few who were proud of their Roman and Visigothic origins. These included the "Banu Angelino" and "Banu Sabarico" of Seville, "Banu Qasi" of Aragon, "Banu l' Longo" and "Banu Qabturno". Several Muwallad nobles also used the name "Al-Quti", (the Goth), and some may have been actual descendants from the family of the Visigothic King of Hispania, Wittiza.

Many Muwallads held key posts in the departments of civil administration, justice and the armed forces. Amrus ibn Yusuf, a Muwallad who was originally from Huesca, was appointed governor of Toledo by Hakam I in 797. Towards the end of the 11th century, the Muwalladun held distinctive posts in the judicial departments. The Caliph of Córdoba, Abd ar-Rahman III, once bestowed the post of chief qadi of Córdoba on a Christian convert, whose parents were still Christian, and the Fuqaha found much difficulty in dissuading him. The secretary of the Córdoban Emir, Abd'Allah, was a Muwallad. The commander of the Córdoban force in the battle of Alhandega against the Zamorans in 938 was a neo-Muslim Slavic general named Najdah. The 10th century Muwallad historian Ibn al-Qūṭiyya was descended directly on the maternal side from the Visigothic King Wittiza.
In about 889 a ship carrying twenty Berber Muwallad adventurers from Pechina near Almería established a fortress in Fraxinet, on the Gulf of Saint-Tropez in Provence. They spoke both Latin (Mozarabic?) and Arabic.

Several Muwalladun became rich and powerful magnates by means of trade, agriculture, and political activity. The Muwallads of the town the Christians called "Elvira" (nowadays Granada), after the former Iberian name "Ilbira", had become so powerful during the reign of Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Umawi that they rose under a chieftain called Nabil and successfully drove the Moors out of the city. The Banu Qasi dynasty which ruled the upper Ebro valley in the 9th and 10th centuries, became strong enough to break free from the control of the Umayyad dynasty of Córdoba and turn from a semi-autonomous governorship to an independent taifa.

The Muwalladun were the mainstay of the economic framework of the country. Together with the Mozarabs they constituted the productive classes which were craftsmen and small tradesmen in the towns, and farmers and labourers in the rural countryside. However, they were inferior to the Arabs and Berbers in social status. Prominent positions in government and society were usually not available to individuals of Muladi descent. In spite of the Islamic doctrine of equality and brotherhood of Muslims, the Muwalladun were often looked down upon with the utmost contempt by the Arab and Berber aristocrats and were usually pejoratively referred to as ""the sons of slaves"".

The Muwallads, in turn, in spite of their profession of faith, despised the Arabs whom they viewed as colonialists and foreign intruders. This mutual feeling of hatred and suspicion provoked frequent revolts and led the Muwallads to support the Abbasid political agents, the preachers of "Shu'ubiyya" (a non-Arab movement), and subversive activities against the Umayyad rule in Iberia. The Shu'ubiyyah of Al-Andalus were active like the Arabs in promoting Arab-Islamic culture and language and claimed their integration with the Arab ethnic groups. The Shu'ubiyyah movement demanded equality of power, wealth and status for non-Arab Berbers and the Muwalladun from the Arabs. Some judges of Huesca upheld the cause of the Muwalladun in the beginning of the 10th century, and a literary epistle of the middle of the 11th century repeated arguments of Eastern Shu'ubite writers.

In Al-Andalus, the large numbers of Christians adopting Islam prompted concern among the authorities about the weakening of the tax base and further inflamed resentment towards the Muwallads.

The Muwallads were in almost constant revolt against the Arab and Berber immigrants who had carved out large estates for themselves, farmed by Christian serfs or slaves. The most famous of these revolts were led by a Muwallad rebel named Umar ibn Hafsun in the region of Málaga and Ronda. Ibn Hafsun ruled over several mountain valleys for nearly forty years, having the castle Bobastro as his residence. He rallied disaffected muwallads and mozárabs to his cause. Ibn Hafsun eventually renounced Islam with his sons and became a Christian, taking the name Samuel and proclaimed himself not only the leader of the Christian nationalist movement, but also the champion at the same time of a regular crusade against Islam. However, his conversion soon cost him the support of most of his Muwallad supporters who had no intention of ever becoming Christians, and led to the gradual erosion of his power.

There were also other Muwallad revolts throughout Al-Andalus. In the Elvira region, for instance, discord sprang up between the Muwallads and Moors, the latter being led by Sawar ibn Hamdub, and the poet, Sa'ad ibn Judi, both of whom fluctuated between insurrection against Abd'Allah and submission to him. In Seville, the second largest city after Córdoba, there was a vicious feud between the two Arab aristocratic families, Banu Hajjaj and Banu Khaldun, and two Muwallad noble families, Banu Angelino and Banu Sabarico, which finally left Ibrahim ibn Hajjaj as the ruler of an independent city-state.

In 805, the Muwallads of Córdoba, incited by certain theologians, revolted against the Umayyads under Hakim I, but the uprising was suppressed. In 814, there was a second revolt of Muwallads in Corboba, and this time the revolt was put down with the utmost severity, and resulted in the expulsion of 9,500 Muwallads from Córdoba, with over 1,500 going to Alexandria and 8,000 to Fez. In 858, there was a Muwallad revolt in Mérida, led by Ibn Marwan. The Muwallads complained of the taxation of their lands as if they were still Christian. The revolt's outcome was the defeat of Ibn Marwan. Mérida was subdued, but the centre of revolt soon moved to Badajoz.

The Muwallads were sometimes assisted by the local Mozarab population, and occasionally by the Christian powers in their revolts. For instance, when the Muwalladun of Toledo revolted, aided by the large Mozarabic population of the city, Ordoño I of Asturias, promptly responded to their appeal for help, but the Emir's forces were routed by the Toledans and Asturians on the Guadacelete in 854.

Many minor rebels from among the Muladi leadership took possession of various sites, their descendants eventually becoming semi-independent Emirs. These included:

On the western frontier of Al-Andalus, the Muwalladun and Berber families divided control of the region containing Mérida, Badajoz, and their environs.

There are two branches of Islam; the Sunni and the Shi'i. The Sunnis make up about 85-90% of Muslims, but the Ta'zieh tradition is performed by Shi'i Muslims during the first month of the Muslim calendar, Muharram, one of the four sacred months of the Islam calendar. Muharram means forbidden. The Ta'Zieh is performed each year on the 10th day of Muharram, a historically significant day for the Shi'i Muslims because that was the day of Hussein's slaughter. Each year the same story is told, so the spectators know the story very well and know what to expect. However, this does not negatively affect audience levels. In fact, the Ta'zieh welcomes large crowds and the audience members are known to cry each time the story is told in mourning and respect for Hussein.

Ta'zieh

Ta'zieh or Ta'zïye or Ta'zīya or Tazīa or Ta'ziyeh, (,, ) means comfort, condolence or expression of grief. It comes from roots "aza" (عزو and عزى) which means mourning.

Depending on the region, time, occasion, religion, etc. the word can signify different cultural meanings and practices:
Ta'zieh, primarily known from the Persian tradition, is a shi'ite Muslim ritual that reenacts the death of Hussein (the prophet Muhammad's grandson) and his male children and companions in a brutal massacre on the plains of Karbala, Iraq in the year 680 A.D. His death was the result of a power struggle in the decision of control of the Muslim community (called the caliph) after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Today, we know of 250 Ta'zieh pieces. They were collected by an Italian ambassador to Iran, Cherulli, and added to a collection which can be found in the Vatican Library. Various other scripts can be found scattered throughout Iran.

Ta'zieh as a kind of passion play is a kind of comprehensive indigenous form considered as being the national form of Iranian theatre which have pervasive influence in the Iranian works of drama and play. It originates from some famous mythologies and rites such as Mithraism, Sug-e-Siavush (Mourning for Siavush) and Yadegar-e-Zariran or Memorial of Zarir. The Ta'zieh tradition originated in Iran in the late 17th century.

A strong belief in the Muslim community was that nothing created by regular people could be better than the way Allah created it, so all other creation was deemed disrespectful. Because of this, there are not many accounts-visually or otherwise- of this religious tradition. During the tradition it was very important that all spectators knew the actors were not disrespecting Allah, so most often, the actors had their scripts on stage with them so it was clear that they were not trying to depict another person that Allah did not create. The ritual was eventually banned by the authorities in Iran because the ritual was being exploited for political advances. Ta'zieh is not performed regularly in Iran and has not been seen at all in certain provinces of the region since 1920. France was the first non-Muslim country that Ta'zieh was performed in 1991. Since then, the tradition has been seen in non-Persian cities like Avignon and Paris in France, Parma and Rome in Italy, and New York City.

In Persian culture it refers to condolence theater and Naqqali which are traditional Persian theatrical genres in which the drama is conveyed wholly or predominantly through music and singing. It dates from before the Islamic era and the tragedy of Saiawush in Shahnameh is one of the best examples.

In Persian tradition, Ta'zieh and Parde-khani, inspired by historical and religious events, symbolize epic spirit and resistance. The common themes are heroic tales of love and sacrifice and of resistance against the evil.

While in the West the two major genres of drama have been comedy and tragedy, in Persia, Ta'zieh seems to be the dominant genre. Considered as Persian opera, Ta'zieh resembles European opera in many respects.

Persian cinema and Persian symphonic music have been influenced by the long tradition of Ta'zieh in Iran. Abbas Kiarostami, famous Iranian film maker, made a documentary movie titled "A Look to Ta'zieh" in which he explores the relationship of the audience to this theatrical form. Nasser Taghvaee also made a documentary on Ta'zieh titled "Tamrin e Akhar".

The appearance of the characteristic dramatic form of Persia known as the "ta'zïye" Mu'izz ad-Dawla, the king of Buyid dynasty, in 963. As soon as the Safavid Dynasty was established in Persia in 1501 and the Shiism of the Twelvers adopted as the official sect, the state took interest in theater as a tool of propagating Shiism.

Women were not considered active members of the Ta'zieh performance ritual. Almost all women in these rituals were played by young males, however on some occasions little girls under the age of nine were able to fulfill small roles. Women were traditionally played by males who would wear all black and veil their faces. During the festival period, the tekyehs were lavishly decorated by the women of the community that the performance took place, with the prized personal possessions of the local community. Refreshments were prepared by women and served to the spectators by the children of well-off families. Society women were invited to watch the performance from the boxes above the general viewing area. Generally the audience consisted of the more well-off families as they regarded Ta'zieh as entertainment, while the lower-class community members thought of it as an important religious ritual. The Ta'Zieh gained popularity during the 19th century and women painted scenes from Ta'Zieh performances on the stage on canvases and recorded history. This was a huge step in the history of islamic art.

In Persian Ta'Zieh, the space is very important. Originally, Ta'zieh dramas, like other Western Passion Plays, were performed in a public arena, allowing large audiences to convene. They later moved to smaller spaces like courtyards and spaces within the homes of private citizens, but eventually ended up being performed in temporarily constructed performance spaces called tekyehs or husseiniyehs. The most famous tekyeh is called the Tekyeh Dowlat. It was built by the King of Persia, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar and was situated in the capital of Iran, Tehran. Tekyehs (with the exception of the Tekyeh Dowlat) were almost always constructed for temporary use and then demolished at the end of Muharram. The Tekyeh Dowlat was a permanent space built in 1868, but was torn down 79 years later in 1947 due to lack of use and replaced by a bank. Its capacity was 4,000. They varied in size fitting anywhere between a dozen to thousands of spectators. Tekyehs were somewhat open-air, but almost always had awnings of sorts atop the building to shield the spectators and actors from sun and rain. All performers in a Ta'Zieh ceremony never leave the stage. The stage is elevated between one and two feet from the ground and split into four areas: one for the protagonists, antagonists, smaller subplots, and props.

Unlike most other theater traditions, especially Western theater traditions, the Ta'Zieh stage and its use of props were minimalist and stark. All tekyehs are designed so that the Ta'Zieh performance happens in-the-round to create a more intense experience between the actors and the audience. This enabled spectators to feel like they were part of the action on stage and sometimes encouraged them to become physically active members of the performance.

Costumes for a Ta'Zieh ritual are what is considered representational in terms of theater. They are not meant to present reality. The main goal of the costume design was not to be historically accurate, but to help the audience recognize which type of character they were looking at. Villains were the Sunni opponents of Imam Hussein. They are always dressed in red. The protagonists, family members of Hussein, were dressed in green if they were male characters. Anyone about to die was in white. Women were always portrayed by men in all black. One way to distinguish character besides the color of their costume is how they deliver their lines. The protagonists or family of Imam Hussein sing or chant their lines and the villains will declaim their lines. If a person is traveling in a circle on or around the stage, that meant they were going a long distance (usually represented the distance between Mecca and Karbala). Traveling in a straight line represented a shorter distance traveled.

Often animals were used in the performance of a Ta'zieh. Often performers of Ta'zieh were on horseback. Most men from the time they were young would train to be able to ride a horse because it was an honor in Persian culture to be part of the Ta'zieh, especially to play a character who rode horseback. There were often other animals used in the tradition as well. These other animals were: camels, sheep or sometimes even a lion. Usually the lion is not real, and is just represented by a man wearing a mask of some sort.

Shia Muslims take out a Ta'zīya (locally spelled Tazia, Tabut or Taboot) procession on day of Ashura in South Asia.

The artwork is a colorfully painted bamboo and paper mausoleum. This ritual procession is also observed by south Asian Muslims in,
In the Caribbean it is known as Tadjah and was brought by Shia Muslim who arrived there as indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent.

Tabuik made from bamboo, rattan and paper is a local manifestation of the Remembrance of Muharram among the Minangkabau people in the coastal regions of West Sumatra, Indonesia, particularly in the city of Pariaman culminates with practice of throwing a "tabuik" into the sea has taken place every year in Pariaman on the 10th of Muharram since 1831 when it was introduced to the region by Shia Muslim "sepoy" troops from India who were stationed and later settled there during the British Raj.
During the colonial era in British India, the "ta'zīya" tradition was not only practiced by Shia Muslims and other Muslims but joined by Hindus. Along with occasions for Shia Muslims and Hindus to participate in the procession together, the Tazia procession have also been historic occasions for communal conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims and between Hindu and Muslim communities since the 19th century. These Tazia processions have traditionally walked through streets of a town, with mourning, flagellation and wailing, ultimately to a local lake, river or ocean where all the Tazia would be immersed into water.

Like Western passion plays, ta'zia dramas were originally performed outdoors at crossroads and other public places where large audiences could gather. Much like in Iranian performances, these performances in other countries also began taking place in the courtyards of inns and private homes, but eventually unique structures called takias (referred to as tekyehs in Persian Ta'zieh) were constructed for the specific purpose of staging the plays. Community cooperation was encouraged in the building and decoration of the takias, whether the funds for the enterprise were provided by an individual philanthropist or by contributions from the residents of its particular locality. The takias varied in size, from intimate structures which could only accommodate a few dozen spectators to large buildings capable of holding an audience of more than a thousand people. All takias, regardless of their size and geographic location, are constructed as theaters-in-the-round to intensify the dynamic between actors and audience. the spectators are literally surrounded by the action and often become physical participants in the play. In unwalled takias, it is not unusual for combat scenes to occur behind the audience.