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?
In: 5
from my humble knowledge, the Islamic calendar follows the lunar calendar. This calendar relies on phases of the moon to determine what day of the month it is ( to a certain accuracy using visual methods). So let us say if the sky had a full moon it meant that is the middle of the Islamic month.
It is actually unrelated to the Gregorian calendar(in the present time); as the former is related to the rotation of the moon around the earth, and the latter is related to the rotation of the Earth around the Sun.
so the Islamic calendar is a Lunar calendar and the Gregorian calendar is a Solar calendar.
Since we established that both calendars are different, the day your friend was born has both a gregorian and Islamic date and each is independent from each other.
Now for the uses of the Lunar calendar, people who are into stargazing usually pick days when the moon is not visible ( start of each lunar month) so the stars are more visible.
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