As we conclude the 2019 Calendar, many questions arise, people want to know more about time, how to organize, manage and benefit from time. In other words, how to use time for life realization and improvement. This is because, weather you use your time wisely or not you must account for it.
لا تزول قدما ابن أدم يوم القيامة من عند ربه حتى يسأل عن خمس: عن عمره فيما أفناه ؟ وعن شبابه فيما أبلاه ؟ وماله من أين اكتسبه؟ وفيما أنفقه؟ وماذا عمل فيما عمل
Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Man's feet will not move on the Day of Resurrection before he is asked about his life, how did he consume it, his knowledge, what did he do with it, his wealth, how did he earn it and how did he dispose of it, and about his body, how did he wear it out."
[At-Tirmidhi].
To understand this, we need to start by discussing calendar, time and planet movement from the Islamic perspective.
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 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.
In many places, the Quran shows the importance of these recurring events
إِنَّ فِي خَلۡقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَٱخۡتِلَٰفِ ٱلَّيۡلِ وَٱلنَّهَارِ لَأٓيَٰتٖ لِّأُوْلِي ٱلۡأَلۡبَٰبِ.
Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day,- there are indeed Signs for men of understanding, Q.3:190
The importance of depending on either the movement of the moon or the sun results to having different calendars.
The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 46 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 Hijri calendar, in the other hand, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days.
إِنَّ عِدَّةَ ٱلشُّهُورِ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱثۡنَا عَشَرَ شَهۡرٗا فِي كِتَٰبِ ٱللَّهِ يَوۡمَ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ
The number of months in the sight of Allah is twelve (in a year)- so ordained by Him the day He created the heavens and the earth; ... Sura At-Tawbah, Ayah 36
The Islamic Calendar 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.
۞يَسۡـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلۡأَهِلَّةِۖ قُلۡ هِيَ مَوَٰقِيتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَٱلۡحَجِّۗ وَلَيۡسَ ٱلۡبِرُّ بِأَن تَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِن ظُهُورِهَا وَلَٰكِنَّ ٱلۡبِرَّ مَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰۗ وَأۡتُواْ ٱلۡبُيُوتَ مِنۡ أَبۡوَٰبِهَاۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ
They ask you concerning the New Moons. Say: They are but signs to mark fixed periods of time in (the affairs of) men, and for Pilgrimage. Q. 2:189
The verse stressed the importance of Time and fixed period.
Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, to the future.
In other words, Time is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience. Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.
