Happy Ramadan to all who observe it
Could someone Eli5 how a calendar that is less time than the time it takes the earth to travel around the sun used outside of a religious context?
I understand it’s connected to the stages of the moon and that the date for Ramadan moves in relation to the Gregorian calendar every year, was the ever a time when the Islamic calendar was used without the Gregorian calendar?
If so, how did that work logistically? I have a friend who was born during the month of Ramadan, and that year Ramandan was in the summer. Was it never an issue that the months don’t always corelate to seasons? Were seasons not really thing in the part of the world where the calendar was developed?
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Being desert nomads, the earliest Muslims had no need to match the solar year with their calendar, so a simple 12-month year didn’t cause trouble. This may also have been motivated by a desire to distinguish themselves from the Jews, whose calendar adds a 13th month to some years to maintain the link to the solar year.
This caused some serious trouble in the Ottoman Empire, which had income based on the solar year but expenditures based on the Islamic year. This was finally solved in 1839 by adopting a variant of the Julian calendar.
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