The Prophets Of Allah

The People of As-Suffa

Before we move on, there is an interesting important milestone in our history that's not related directly to the Hijrah, but its the establishment of the Islamic calender. The Arabs did not have a calender they relied upon. A sign of civilisation is to have a calender, script, architecture etc. The whole miracle of Islam is that it came and changed this backward Arab society into a legacy that ruled the world - and Allah says this in the Quran. The Arabs had many problems:

1. There was no universal calender; rather each tribe had their own calender. And they judged time by important incidents. Any major incident became a milestone and they would thus say "2 years after so and so died" or "one year before the year of the elephant". Every few years some milestone happened and they would just judge their calender and sense of time around this. But this was just a local calender to each tribe.

2. There was another confusing practice: nasee. Allah mentions in the Quran that four months of the year will be sacred. Allah says "the number of months in the year are 12... of them four are sacred". Allah decreed this from the beginning of time. And note every single calender has 12 months. The romans, persians etc. Also 7 days of the week is in the shariah - Allah decreed this. The concept of keeping four months sacred is from the time of Ibrahim AS and the Arabs knew and followed this. The issue was that the powerful tribes would flaunt these four months. Suppose they wanted to declare war, they would just swap the current month around. Literally they would swap months around at their desire. Of course you can't have any fighting during a sacred month, so they would just swap the month and the other tribes would take heed and follow them.

Now imagine what would happen after decades of swapping months. The months are lost as are the significance of their order. The year the prophet PBUH performed Hajj he announced that "the months of this year have fallen in the order they were when Allah created the heavens and the Earth" - this happened in the 10th year of the Hijrah. And the prophet PBUH then said "from now on, no swapping months - this is the correct order". So from that year those months have been repeating correctly.

The other issue is the year. The prophet PBUH directly did not institute a calender. Most likely the 17th year of the Hijrah, one thing that happened was Umar RA was presented with a case of two people fighting. One of them said "he was supposed to pay me money by Sha'ban and its already Ramadan". The other said "I meant Sha'ban of next year". So Umar RA said "how will we decide this dispute?" Each has a valid point but the contract just says "Sha'ban". This of course causes a problem. He then got a letter saying "Oh Umar you tell us to do something by a particular month, but we don't know if you mean this year or next. So find a way to tell us". So Umar RA called a gathering of the sahabah to sort this out. One or two suggested "we'll follow the calender of the Romans" but this was immeidately rejected as the muslims had their own civilisation. Umar RA asked "which year shall we begin with?" One of them said with the death of the prophet PBUH but this was not appropiate. Another said with the birth of the prophet PBUH; or conquest of Badr... Ali ibn Abi Talib said "the year of the Hijrah shall be the first year because this was the one decisive thing that changed the muslims from opression to victory". Umar RA said this is the "wise opinion" and everyone agreed. Second issue: which month is the first month? People differed again. Some said Ramadan as its the most holy month; other said Rajab etc. Until Uthman ibn Affan said Muharram. Why? Two reasons have been given:

1. It's linked to Ali's announcement of 1 Hijrah being the first year. Note the ACTUAL month the prophet PBUH immigrated was Safar. Why not choose Safar then? The announcement came for people to do Hijrah in Muharram and the bulk of them immigrated then and the prophet PBUH immigrated right at the end of Safar. So Muharram was taken as the first month of the calender year.

2. In some reports Uthman expressed a reason. In those days the sahabah pretty much every year did Hajj. And for them returning back from Hajj represented a new life and a fresh beginning. And when do you come back from Hajj? The end of Dhul Hijjah i.e. the start of Muharram so it makes sense to have Muharram as the first month.