The Institution of the Hijri Calendar: ʿAli’s ﵁ Counsel and the Starting Point of a New Reckoning of Time

In the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the sixteenth year after the Hijra, which in the Gregorian reckoning corresponds to April of 637, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ in Medina took a decision that determined the reckoning of time of the Islamic world for the following fourteen centuries. He instituted, on the counsel of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁, that the years of the ummah would no longer be counted from arbitrary events or from an imperial reign, but from the Hijra of the Messenger ﷺ from Mecca to Medina. From that moment on the past of the community was for the first time anchored in its own time: no longer “the year of the elephant” or “the year of the envoy of Heraclius”, but the first year, the second year, the sixteenth year after the Hijra.

Suyuti ﵀ sums up this whole decision in a single line. “In Rabīʿ al-Awwal the dating was begun from the Hijra on the counsel of ʿAli ﵁.” One line, one month, one name in the council, and the birth of the reckoning of time of a whole civilization. Further on in his chronicle Suyuti ﵀ gives a supplementary report from the tradition of al-Hakim, in which the image of the execution of the decision is made concrete: ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ wrote the first date under a document, and with that the Hijri reckoning was taken up into the practice of governance.

This chapter follows Suyuti’s ﵀ pen. We hold to what he writes. Where his concision calls for explanation, we place the decision in its administrative context, and we make no more of it than it is in his pen.

The Problem of a Community Without a Reckoning of Time

Before the sixteenth year after the Hijra the Islamic ummah had no reckoning of time of its own. The Messenger ﷺ had during his life dated his letters in the manner of the Arab custom, with reference to the month and the year of a notable event. His Companions ﵃ named the years after the facts that had taken place in them: the year of the permission, the year of the joy, the year of the Hijra, the year of Badr, the year of Uhud, the year of Hudaybiyah, the year of the Farewell. A year was, in this reckoning, not a number; it was a name.

For a community that was in Medina, for whom the names of those years were known among one another, this reckoning worked. The Sahaba ﵃ knew when an event had taken place by anchoring it to another event. “This happened in the year that Hudaybiyah fell.” Everyone who was in Medina and had been at Hudaybiyah knew when that was, and everyone who came later heard from his elders when that was. The reckoning was oral and relational.

But in the sixteenth year this reckoning no longer worked. The ummah had taken Damascus, Hims, Jerusalem, Madāʾin, and Ahwaz. It sent governors to cities where no Sahabi ﵁ from Medina had ever been, it corresponded with provincial officials in foreign regions, and it received taxes from territories whose inhabitants had no idea what year it was called in Medina. The governors who sent letters to each other or to the khalifah ﵁ had no common dating to place their correspondence in time. What in Kufa was called “the year of Yarmuk” could in Damascus be called “the year of Hims” and in Madāʾin “the year of al-Qadisiyya”. A community that stretches over three continents can no longer live with an oral and relational reckoning of time.

The Occasion of the Counsel

Suyuti ﵀ does not set out the occasion in his single line. But in the broader tradition, and in the supplementary narrative of al-Hakim that Suyuti ﵀ takes up elsewhere in his chronicle, the occasion is preserved. A governor, in some sources Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁, wrote to ʿUmar ﵁ a letter in which he complained of the confusion caused by the deficient dating. An order came in without it being possible to establish whether it was old or new; a tax settlement was disputed because neither party could establish to which year it referred; a treaty was called into doubt because its date had become illegible.

ʿUmar ﵁ called his council together in Medina. Suyuti ﵀ does not name them in his Hijri-calendar line; we give here only that his pen names one name explicitly, and that is ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁. Others were present, and without doubt their positions were heard, but the pen held in the tradition places ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel at the center.

In the broader tradition various proposals were discussed. One party proposed to take the birth year of the Messenger ﷺ as starting point; another proposed to choose the year of his first revelation as starting point; a third proposed to take the year of his passing, in the manner in which the Persians dated their emperors during their reign. ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ rejected all these proposals. He proposed that the year of the Hijra must be the starting point, because the Hijra was the moment when the ummah took on its first political form: a community with its own city, its own house, and its own form of self-governance.

ʿUmar ﵁ accepted the counsel. Suyuti ﵀ writes simply: “on the counsel of ʿAli ﵁.” The pen places ʿAli’s ﵁ name at its center as a lasting acknowledgment of who gave the decisive voice. In the spiritual history of Islam this is one of the most telling illustrations of the value that ʿUmar ﵁ placed on ʿAli’s ﵁ insight. Though the two men differed in style, in temperament, and sometimes in judgment, ʿUmar ﵁ asked ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel in crucial matters, and he carried out that counsel when he found it convincing. The Hijri calendar bears, in its origin, the collaboration between the second khalifah ﵁ and the cousin-and-son-in-law of the Messenger ﷺ.

Why the Hijra

The choice of the Hijra as starting point is not self-evident, for other civilizations chose other anchor points. The Romans counted from the founding of Rome; the Christians, in the centuries after the Council of Nicaea, came at last to count from the birth of ʿIsa ﵇; the Jews counted from the creation of the world as it was calculated by their rabbis; the Persians counted from the accession of their emperors, and they began a new reckoning with each new emperor.

The Hijra is no birth, no creation, no accession. It is a relocation. ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel to choose precisely this event as starting point carries a theological weighing of its own. Islam counts its time not from the individual origin of its Messenger ﷺ; it counts its time from the moment when a community arose as a community. The Hijra is the birth of the ummah, not the birth of a person.

Whoever writes the history of Islam thereby writes the history of a community, not of an individual, and the starting point of the chronology reflects this. What the West counts from the birth of a human being, the ummah counts from the birth of itself. ʿUmar ﵁ accepted this principle, because it fits the nature of Islam as he knew it: a religion that teaches not only a personal relation with Allah ﷻ but also a collective form of life, a political body, a lawful community.

Suyuti ﵀ does not name this theological depth explicitly in his single line. We give it here only because it explains why the decision that he sums up in a few words is preserved in the community as an act of special weight.

Rabīʿ al-Awwal as the Month of Introduction

Suyuti ﵀ names explicitly that the Hijri calendar was introduced in the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the sixteenth year, and the choice of Rabīʿ al-Awwal is, in itself, meaningful. Rabīʿ al-Awwal is the month in which the Messenger ﷺ arrived in Medina after his Hijra. He arrived in Quba on a Monday, on the twelfth or sixteenth day of that month according to the various traditions, and he founded in the same month the first mosque in Medina.

But Suyuti ﵀ adds something remarkable: the Hijri reckoning counts not from Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the first year but from Muharram. Muharram is the first month of the Arab year, and the council under ʿUmar ﵁ decided that the year number would be counted from the Muharram that preceded the Hijra, not from the Rabīʿ al-Awwal in which the Messenger ﷺ entered Medina. The Hijra is thereby dated to the first year of the Hijri reckoning, but the first year begins at Muharram instead of at Rabīʿ al-Awwal.

The difference is a few weeks, but the principle is weighty: the ummah keeps the Arab month-order of the year and adapts it to the Hijra without shifting the beginning of the year itself. The old Arab year, with its rotation from Muharram to Dhul-Hijjah, stands; only the counting of the years changes. What were the twelve months in the jahiliyya remain the twelve months in Islam, and what in the jahiliyya was called the year of an event becomes in Islam the such-and-such year after the Hijra.

Suyuti ﵀ passes over this chronological distinction in his single line. We give it here because it explains why the introduction in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the sixteenth year becomes the starting point for the application, but the starting point of the counting is already placed in Muharram of the year one. It is the logic of a dating that accepts its own history: it counts from the Hijra, but it is introduced at a moment that fits within the Arab year that preceded it.

The Execution by ʿUthman ﵁

Further on in his chronicle, on page one hundred fifty, Suyuti ﵀ gives a supplementary report from the tradition of al-Hakim. “al-Hakim has related that ʿUthman ﵁ wrote the dating onto a document.” With this detail the administrative execution of the decision is made concrete. The Hijri calendar was not only instituted by ʿUmar ﵁ on the counsel of ʿAli ﵁; it was taken up into the practice of governance by ʿUthman ﵁, the third of the Rashidūn ﵃, who at that moment was not yet khalifah but served as one of the closest counselors in Medina.

What is named in this supplementary report in the tradition is a telling image. ʿUthman ﵁, the scribe of the revelation during the life of the Messenger ﷺ and in the early years of the caliphate, places his pen under a document and records there for the first time a Hijri date. From that moment on every administrative letter, every tax order, every treaty that departs from Medina or arrives in Medina carries its date in a reckoning that holds for the whole ummah.

The council has decided, the khalifah ﵁ has accepted the resolution, and the executing official has brought it into his practice. It is a telling portrait of governance in the spirit of the Rashidūn ﵃: a counsel that comes from ʿAli ﵁, a resolution that comes from ʿUmar ﵁, an execution that comes from ʿUthman ﵁. Three of the four later khalifahs ﵃ touch upon this one decision before ʿAli ﵁ himself takes on the highest responsibility. The Hijri calendar bears, in its history of origin, the signature of the whole Shura that functioned in Medina around ʿUmar ﵁.

This dialogue is a reconstruction in the spirit of the broader tradition, not a literal record from Suyuti’s ﵀ ʿUmar section. The pen of Suyuti ﵀ passes over the exact exchange of words; we give it here only as an illustration of the tenor that the tradition has assigned to this deliberation.

What Makes the Difference

A dating is, at first sight, an administrative side matter. Who would suppose that the choice of a year number has a broader meaning, beyond the ordering of letters and taxes. But on closer consideration a dating works its way into the self-regard of a community.

Whoever counts his years from an event regards that event as a foundation. The Romans who counted from the founding of Rome thought of Romulus in every exchange of letters; the Christians who counted from the birth of ʿIsa ﵇ carried in every date the memory of Bethlehem; the Jews who counted from the creation placed in every date the acknowledgment that Allah ﷻ had created the world.

The Muslims, who from the Hijri reckoning counted their years from the Hijra, carried in every date the memory of the moment when their community was born. Every letter of a governor, every receipt of a tax, every birth certificate of a child, every death certificate of one deceased, carried the Hijra in its date. The community remembered, every time it dated something, that it had once drawn from Mecca to Medina, that it had once been founded by a Messenger ﷺ in a new city, and that it had once become, from a persecuted minority in its city of birth, an established community in its new city.

Suyuti ﵀ passes over this depth of consideration in his single line. We give it here because it explains why the choice of the starting point is remembered in the spiritual history of Islam as a choice with weight. A reckoning is not only an administrative act; it is also a form of memory.

The Hijri Calendar and the Rhythm of the Ummah

The Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar. It counts twelve months of twenty-nine or thirty days, measured by the observation of the new moon. A Hijri year thereby counts about three hundred fifty-four days, about eleven days fewer than a solar year, so that the months shift through the year as seen from the solar season. What falls in one Hijri year in summer falls in the next Hijri year somewhat earlier in summer, and so on until over some decades it has run through the whole cycle of the seasons.

This shift has practical consequences. Ramadan, the month of fasting, shifts through the year; sometimes it falls in winter, sometimes in summer, and Hajj, in the twelfth month Dhul-Hijjah, shifts along. For the ummah as a whole this means that no generation of Muslims ever experiences Ramadan always in the same seasonal circumstances. Whoever in one phase of his life fasts Ramadan in the short winter days experiences in a later phase Ramadan in the long summer days.

This rhythm of shifting is in itself a spiritual formation, for the ummah is not bound to a season. Its reckoning of time serves its faith, not its agriculture or its trade seasons. What the Romans and the Persians had with their solar calendars was a reckoning of time that conformed to the seasons; what the ummah had with its lunar calendar was a reckoning of time that let the seasons go and fixed the believer in the rhythm of Allah’s ﷻ revelation.

Suyuti ﵀ passes over this rhythmic reflection in his single line, but it is enclosed in the structure of his choice. ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel, which ʿUmar ﵁ accepted, was not to introduce a solar calendar but to continue the existing Arab lunar calendar with a new counting. With that the ummah was bound in its reckoning of time to its faith, not to its geography.

What the Introduction Leaves Behind

Since Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the sixteenth year the Hijri calendar has been the official reckoning of time of the Islamic world. For four hundred, eight hundred, a thousand, twelve hundred, fourteen hundred years every letter of a khalifah, every firman of a sultan, every fatwa of a mufti, every birth and death certificate of a Muslim has carried its date in the counting that was instituted in this one month.

Under the Umayyads the Hijri calendar remained in use, and under the Abbasids likewise. Under the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and all the dynasties that succeeded one another on the soil of the Islamic world, the same reckoning was continued. No dynasty ventured, in its official governance, to replace the Hijri calendar with a chronology of its own. What ʿUmar ﵁ instituted on the counsel of ʿAli ﵁ in the sixteenth year has survived fourteen centuries.

In the modern era, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the twentieth century, some Islamic countries have adopted the Gregorian calendar for certain administrative purposes, especially in commercial and international matters. But the Hijri calendar remained and remains the calendar of religion: of Ramadan, of Hajj, of the pious feasts, of the building of mosques, and of the highest acts of Islamic governance in countries where fiqh still gives the norm. Even in countries where the Gregorian calendar determines the daily course of affairs, no Muslim knows the date of Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha except in the Hijri counting.

ʿUmar’s ﵁ Administrative Method

In the three articles that stand one after another in this part, we have followed three administrative acts of ʿUmar ﵁ in the same year: the founding of Kufa, the institution of the pay register, and the institution of the Hijri calendar. They belong to the same project: a community that forms its institutions at the moment when it becomes, from a community around a Messenger ﷺ, a state across three continents.

What ʿUmar ﵁ traces in these acts is an administrative method that has its own place in Islamic historiography, and that method has three elements.

In the first place, consultation. None of these acts was taken without the council in Medina. The khalifah ﵁ listened, weighed the various proposals, and chose. He did not always choose the proposal that he had initially had in his own mind; he chose the proposal that was most convincing in the deliberation. ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel for the Hijra as starting point is a telling example, and ʿAli’s ﵁ counsel for the yearly distribution of the incoming money is another, remembered in the broader tradition.

In the second place, anchoring in the Islamic principle. The chosen solution had to fit what the Messenger ﷺ had taught. The Hijra as starting point fits because it marks the founding of the community; the founding of Kufa as a garrison city fits because it keeps the fighters away from the palaces; the pay register according to priority fits because it honors the dignity of early conversion.

In the third place, execution by trustworthy hands. Saʿd ﵁ in Kufa, ʿUtbah ﵁ in Basra, ʿUthman ﵁ in the administrative dating. ʿUmar ﵁ delegated the execution to the Sahaba ﵃ whose craftsmanship and whose integrity he knew from his own experience. He did not carry out everything himself; he delegated, he trusted, he checked.

Suyuti ﵀ does not name this method explicitly in his ʿUmar section. We give it here because it explains the coherence between the three articles that stand one after another in this part and because in the broader tradition it counts as characteristic of the second khalifah ﵁.

Toward What Follows

The four articles treated one after another in this part (the fall of Madāʾin Kisra, the fall of Jerusalem with the Umariyya, the founding of Kufa and Basra, and the institution of the Hijri calendar) together trace the sixteenth year as the focal point of the khilafah of ʿUmar ﵁. Three cities fell or were founded, one holy city was taken in under treaty, and one reckoning of time was instituted that gave the whole ummah its own memory.

In the next article the pen follows ʿUmar ﵁ into the years that follow, to events that brought the khilafah its heaviest trials. The Year of Ash and the Plague of Amwas would test the community with a suffering that no victory could relieve. What in this part is told as building is told in the next part as enduring.

Sources

• Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti ﵀, Tarikh al-Khulafa (trans. Abdassamad Clarke, Ta-Ha Publishers, 3rd ed. 1995), pp. 135, 150.