Lately I've been reflecting upon how the crescent is used to visually symbolize Islam... And how a lot of people think of Muslims as lunar-oriented...
Maybe the moon is used to indicate months in the Islamic Calendar... and thus indicating the timing of rituals and holy days like Ramadan and the Pilgrimage to Mecca. But at the same time... Muslims depend much more on the sun for indicating the timing of the 5 daily prayers... and the length of the fasting in one day... So I was thinking how come sun is not associated with the visual symbols of Islam?
Who was the first to introduce the Crescent as a symbol for Islam?! Does it have underlying meanings or associations?
And I was thinking more of the months in the lunar year and then it hit me that these months with their names are pre-Islamic and were used by Arabs before... since the date of the Birth of the Prophet was mentioned in a calendar which is not the Islamic Calendar... But had the same months names...
The Islamic calendar started almost 53 years after the Prophet's birth... starting on the day he fled Mecca to Madina or what is known as "al-Hijra al-Sharifa"...
So I dug up to find out this information that never was brought to my attention before... the lunar calendar that Arabs used before Islam was called lunisolar calendar which is a combination of both the moon phases and the sun movements... but since the moon to change phases for 12 times it needs 354 days leaving it shorter by 11 days from the solar year... every 3 years... a lunisolar year would contain 13 months!! Interesting...
Nowadays in most Islamic countries they follow the solar Gregorian calendar still they keep track of the lunar Islamic one...
Yesterday was the first day in a new Islamic year [1429 H]... so for those who celebrate it... Happy New Hijri Year...
:: on my mooniac mood, more, more, and even more...
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