Reading a calendar

Read the date on a calendar and use a calendar to find days, weeks, months, holidays and seasons. The museum offers one other calendar, counted by the moon; the calendar on your classroom wall is the one you will read first. ¹

Look at a month on your classroom calendar: count the days, find the weeks, and look for a holiday. Then ask what a calendar counted by the moon would do differently.

A calendar can be counted by the moon. The record on the Hijri calendar says it is a lunar calendar whose years are counted from the Prophet ﷺ's migration from Mecca to Medina ². The Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh, in the record on the hilal, says the hilal is technically the first sighting of the lit part of the moon on the first night ³. It also says the size of the crescent is no guide to the start of the month; what counts is the night of sighting ⁴.

The encyclopaedia says what counts for the start of the month is the night of sighting. Why might a family look up at the sky before they say that a new month has begun?

• The Hijri calendar: the lunar calendar whose years are counted from the Hijra.
• The hilal: what the Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh says about the crescent and the night of sighting.

Read the museum record on the Hijri calendar and say which months of your own calendar might hold Ramadan this year.