On the evening of April 9, the news came that the lunar crescent (hilal) was sighted in places as distinct as Kerala and Ladakh, thus marking the premature termination of Ramzan (Arabic Ramadan), the ninth month of the Hijri calendar, and the immediate beginning of the tenth viz. Shawwal.
In Islam, a new date begins in the evening, which might remind one of the title of Barbara Freyer Stowasser’s eminently readable book viz. The Day Begins at Sunset (2014). However, the crescent had not been sighted in Delhi, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Kolkata etc, which would imply that the month of Ramzan would be permitted to run its full course of 30 days. Upon completion of 30 days, moon sighting becomes redundant, as no Hijri month could be any lengthier.
Moon hunting on the 29th instant of Ramzan is an adventure for the Muslims. As per Islamic precepts, the observation has to be done by the naked eye (ruya in Arabic), though the definition of ruya nowadays extends to telescopic viewing. Many bearded clerics of Ruet-e-Hilal committees could be seen looking for the Moon through the eyepiece of the telescope. The task is challenging on the first day of the waxing Moon, primarily on account of two reasons – a) the slender time window available between the sunset and moonset and b) the slimness of the western limb of the Moon lit up by the Sun. This is because the Moon has just started to separate from the Sun-Earth axis after the conjunction (Amavasya).
Though the actual timings of sunset and moonset vary across the longitudinal span of India, it was in the range of 40 to 50 minutes on April 9 (vide IMD’s Rashtriya Panchang Saka Era 1945/2024-25, P.105). A lunar month in Islam runs from the new Moon to the new Moon. The month-beginnings are, however, purely observation-based rather than calculation-based (unlike amongst Hindus and Jews). Thus, no Hijri month could be said to have begun, unless it has actually begun.
The problem of determining the day when the new lunar crescent can be first seen at any site of observation, says Muhammad Shahid Qureshi, has remained an open problem since antiquity. Solving the first visibility of the lunar crescent involves lengthy calculations and the use of all elementary astronomical techniques. Qureshi obtained his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Karachi for his thesis titled ‘On the Comparative Study of Mathematical Models from Earliest Visibility of the Crescent Moon and their Modification’ (2007).
The mean value of the Moon’s synodic revolution around the Earth is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.87 seconds. However, on account of eccentricities and perturbations in the orbits of the Moon around the Earth, and Earth around the Sun, informs Sir Harold Spencer Jones, the deviation could be as much as 13 hours from the mean value (General Astronomy, P.119).
Sighting of the new Moon is actually a local phenomenon. Even if we discount the weather conditions, it is dependent not only on longitude but also latitude. Thus, the beginning of a new month of the Hijri calendar is actually a local phenomenon. It would be rare, astronomically speaking, to have the same month beginning for the entire Indian subcontinent from Dhaka to Karachi, let alone the world. In the olden times, it might not have mattered.
Even though Islamic empires may have spread across large swaths of territory, the modes of communication were slow. Nobody would be able to confirm whether the Ottoman emperor and Caliph Mehmed IV led the Eid prayers in Constantinople (Istanbul) exactly on the same day as Shahjahan offered the prayers in Jama Masjid in Delhi. However, today, in days of instant electronic communication, it has become easily known. While it still might not matter to most Muslims, there are some to whom this difference is as serious a breach as, say, disapproval of Tauhid (Allah’s singularity and indivisibility) in Islamic theology. They want a single day for Islamic months, especially Shawwal, to begin around the world.
The idea of ‘global Moon sighting’ is a kind of pan-Islamism in astronomy. The 5th National Moon Sighting Conference organised by the Sharia Board of America at Madina Centre, Stockton, California on February 2-3, 2019 argued against this. The Sharia Board maintains that two decades previously, the Muslims of North America mostly followed the proper Moon sighting system in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah without any dissension and disagreement in regard to important issues of Moon sighting every year during Ramadan and two Eids. Gradually, a group broke away, to follow the Saudi Moon sighting announcements. Whereas some named this a ‘global Moon sighting’, others claimed to be following Mecca by this idea. In 2006, another group broke away from the pure and authentic system of monthly Moon sightings according to the Quran to replace them with astronomical calculations.
This dichotomy was first flagged by Dr Mohammed Ilyas more than four decades ago. His essay, Visibility of the New Moon: Astronomical Predictability, published in the Journal of the Malaysian branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1978) is believed to be the first major scientific intervention by a Muslim in the modern period into the subject. Dr Ilyas, born in Meerut in 1950, and who studied at Jamaia Milia Islamic and Aligarh Muslim University, earned his PhD in Space Physics from Adelaide University, Australia in 1976.
As Dr Ilyas problematised – a) whether it is possible to celebrate festive occasions like Eid (he spells it as Idds) on a single date globally and b) is it possible to celebrate Idds on a single solar date nationally, particularly in vast countries like Australia, Canada, USSR etc? Dr Ilyas suggested drawing a latitudinal boundary for visibility to be called the Lunar Date Line. This is because the helical rising of the Moon is affected not only by longitude but also latitude. He placed a formula linking the sightings near the equator and at higher latitudes to be achieved by tweaking the International Date Line (IDL). The sighting formula would be affected by seasons viz. summer and winter which would be reversed in the case of the Southern hemisphere.
Dr Ilyas admits he was influenced by Molana Mufti Mohammad Shafi who felt that for the celebration of Idds within a big country, on the basis of a single sighting, there should be a system of Qadis, at various levels (districts, state and national) to be established so that verified sighting information originating in one or more districts may be transmitted nationwide through the national body. As regards the possibility of celebrating the festival globally on a single lunar date (not necessarily a single date of the Gregorian calendar), Mufti Shafi was of the opinion that on the basis of the first lunar sighting anywhere on the globe, the celebration may be had globally at such places wherever 29 or 30 days of fasting had been completed.
Our neighbour Pakistan uses theodolite, a precision telescope, for Moon sighting. The reports of Moon sightings from observatories are sent to the Meteorological camp office in Karachi before they are presented to the Ruet-E-Hilal Committee (est. 1974). Last year, Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the Ruet-e-Hilal Bill to regulate the mechanism of Moon sightings. The same is apparently pending before the Senate. The Bill penalises false news or false testimony on Moon sightings, which is very common in these days of electronic and digital media.
II
Every month in the Hijri calendar technically begins with the heliacal rising of the Moon. However, it is only on three occasions that Moon sightings are kept in the news, being consequential – the beginning of Ramzan, the beginning of Shawwal, and the beginning of Dhu al-Hijja (the 12th and last month of the Hijri calendar). These all have religious significance viz. Ramzan fasting, Eid ul-Fitr and Eid al-Adha respectively. The Hijri calendar has, however, little civil importance. This is simply because it comprises 354/355 days corresponding to 12 lunations. It thus falls short of the Gregorian calendar, which is based on tropical solar reckoning, and therefore in sync with the seasons. The Hijri calendar is by default out of sync with seasons. The dates of the calendar freely rotate through the seasons.
Lunar calendars have been known to humanity since antiquity. Ancient Babylonians, ancient Greeks, and ancient Romans used the lunar calendar. Jews and Hindus still use the lunar calendar. These calendars were/are kept abreast of the seasonal cycle through the use of intercalation of an extra month every three years. Intercalation balances off the shortfall vis-à-vis the solar year. The Vikram Samvat calendar is an example of par excellence of the intercalated calendar. In ancient civilisations like Babylonian or Hellenic, when to intercalate the fresh month was a political decision. Ancient Romans had an office of Pontifex Maximus (Supreme Pontiff), one of whose duties was to decide upon the time of intercalation. The responsibility, however, was honoured more in the breach than in observance. Julius Caesar held the post long before he became the dictator of Rome, which prepared him to reform the ruined calendar of Rome by adopting of Egyptian system of tropical solar reckoning in 46 BC.
Intercalation in the Hindu and Hebrew calendars is based on an algorithm, and hence automatic. The pre-Islamic Arabs also used to intercalate their calendar in order to keep it abreast of the seasons. However, an injunction in Sura al-Taubah, the ninth chapter of the Quran (verses 36 and 37 to be specific), prohibited intercalation amongst the Muslims. This, by implication, has maimed the Hijri calendar. The dates in the Hijri calendar, unlike the calendar of any other nation, do not correspond to seasons.
The actual role of the calendar is to keep the dates/months in sync with the seasons. The Muslims are critically aware of the drawbacks of their calendar. Hence, they had to depend upon other people’s calendars, whom they might have loathed as Kafirs. Stephen P. Blake in his book Time in Early Modern Islam (2013) demonstrates how the Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor, the Safavids in Iran and the Mughals in India employed the solar reckoning that their realms had inherited from the Byzantine Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus respectively. Agriculture depends upon seasons, hence solar reckoning. The use of the Hijri calendar would have been thoroughly impractical for agriculture, which was a major source of revenue in the pre-modern world. Jalaluddin Malik Shah I, the 11th-century Seljuk ruler of Persia, commissioned a solar calendar for use throughout his regime. The task was commissioned to a committee of astronomers, which included Omar Khayyam, who is more famous as a poet. Mughal emperor Akbar commissioned a Fasli calendar in 1630 AD.
It might appear paradoxical that Muslims, who are so particular about the beginning of Ramzan and its termination, keep absolute silence about the illogicality of the Hijri calendar.
The writer is author of the book “The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India” (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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