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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hakikat sabar

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PENJELASAN : Hakikat Sabar dan maknanya.

Ketahuilah kiranya bahwa sabar itu merupakan suatu maqam (Tingkat) dari beberapa tingkatan agama. Dan suatu kedudukan dari beberapa kedudukan orang yang berjalan menuju kepada Allah Ta’ala (saalikiin).
Semua maqam-maqam agama itu hanya dapat tersusun dari tiga hal : ma’irfah, haal, dan amal perbuatan. 

Ma’rifah adalah pokok. Dialah yang mewariskan haal ihwal. Dan haal itu yang membuahkan amal perbuatan.
Ma’rifah itu seperti pohon kayu. Hal ihwal itu seperti ranting dan amal perbuatan itu seperti buah. Dan ini terdapat pada semua maqam orang-orang yang berjalan menuju Allah Ta’ala. Dan nama iman, sesekali dikhususkan dengan ma’rifah sesekali disebutkan secara mutlak kepada semuanya sebagaimana telah kami sebutkan pada perbedaan nama iman dan islam pada kitab “Kaidah-kaidah ‘aqaid”. Seperti ini pula sabar, tiada akan sempurna sabar itu selain dengan ma’rifah yang mendahuluinya dan dengan hal-ihwal yang tegak berdiri.
 
Maka sabar pada hakikatnya adalah ibarat dari ma’rifah itu sendiri. Dan amal perbuatan adalah seperti buah yang keluar dari ma’rifah. Dan ini tidak dapat diketahui selain dengan mengetahui cara tertibnya antara malaikat, insan dan hewan. Maka sabar itu adalah ciri khas pada insan. Dan tidak tergambar adanya sabar itu pada hewan dan malaikat karena totalitasmya.
 
Penjelasannya adalah bahwa hewan-hewan itu dikuasai nafsu syahwat. Dan ia diciptakan untuk nafsu syahwat tersebut. Maka tidak ada pembangkit bagi hewan tersebut kepada gerak dan diam selain nafsu dan syahwat. Dan tiada pula pada hewan itu suatu kekuatan yang berbenturan dengan nafsu syahwat dan yang menolaknya dari yang dikehendaki nafsu syahwat. Sehingga dinamakan ketetapan kekuatan pada menghadapi nafsu syahwat dengan istilah sabar.
 
Adapun para malaikat AS, maka mereka itu di juruskan pada merindui hadlirat ketuhanan. Dan merasa cemerlang dengan tingkat kedekatan kepada hadlirat ketuhanan itu. Dan mereka tiada dikuasai nafsu syahwat yang membelokkan dan yang mencegah dari hadlirat ketuhanan sehingga memerlukan pada pembenturan yang memalingkannya dari hadlirat Yang Maha Agung dengan tentara lain yang akan mengalahkan dan membelokkan.
 
Adapun insan maka sesungguhnya ia diciptakan pada permulaan masa kecilnya dalam keadaan kekurangan seperti halnya hewan. Tidak dijadikan padanya selain keinginan makan yang diperlukannya. Kemudian lahirlah keinginan bermain dan berhias padanya. Kemudian nafsu keinginan kawin, diatas tartib yang demikian. Dan tidak ada sama sekali pada insan itu kekuatan sabar karena sabar itu adalah ibarat dari ketetapan tentara untuk menghadapi tentara lain sehingga terjadilah peperangan diantara keduanya, untuk melawani kehendak dan tuntutan keduanya. Dan pada anak kecil itu tidak ada sesuatupun kecuali tentara hawa nafsu seperti yang ada pada hewan. 

Akan tetapi Allah Ta’ala dengan karunia-Nya dan keluasan kemurahan-Nya memuliakan anak Adam dan meninggikan derajat mereka dari derajat hewan-hewan. Maka Allah Ta’ala mewakilkan kepada manusia itu ketika sempurna dirinya mendekati kedewasaan dengan dua malaikat. Yaitu satu memberinya petunjuk dan yang satu lagi menguatkanya. Maka berbedalah manusia itu dengan pertolongan dua malaikat tadi daripada hewan-hewan.
 
Dan insan itu khusus ditentukan dengan dua sifat “
 
Pertama – mengenal Allah Ta’ala dan mengenal Rasul-Nya. 

Kedua -  mengenal kepentingan-kepentingan yang menyangkut dengan akibat (bagi masa yang akan datang). 

Semua dari yang demikian itu berhasil dari malaikat yang diserahkan kepadanya petunjuk dan pengenalan. Maka hewan tidaklah memiliki ma’rifah, dan tiada petunjuk kepada kepentingan akibat-akibat, akan tetapi hanya kepada yang dikehendaki nafsu keinginannya yang sesaat saja. Oleh karena itu hewan tidak mencari selain yang dirasa enak. Adapun terhadap obat yang bermanfaat, serta adanya obat itu mendatangkan melarat seketika, maka hal itu tidak dicarinya dan tidak dikenalnya.
 
Maka jadilah insan itu dengan sinar hidayah dapat mengetahui bahwa mengikuti nafsu syahwat itu memiliki hal-hal yang ghaib (yang belum kelihatan sekarang), yang tidak disukai akan akibatnya. Akan tetapi petunjuk ini belumlah memadai, selama tidak ada baginya kemampuan untuk meninggalkan sesuatu yang mendatangkan melarat. Berapa banyak yang mendatangkan melarat bagi manusia – seperti penyakit yang bersarang pada dirinya umpamanya, akan tetapi tiada kemampuan baginya untuk menolak. Lalu ia memerlukan pada kemampuan dan kekuatan yang dapat menolaknya yaitu kepada menyembelih nafsu syahwat itu. Lalu ia melawan nafsu syahwat itu dengan kekuatan tersebut sehingga diputuskannya permusuhan nafsu syahwat tadi darinya. 

Maka Allah Ta’ala mewakilkan seorang malaikat lain padanya yang membetulkannya, meneguhkan dan menguatkannya dengan tentara yang tiada engkau dapat melihatnya. Ia memerintahkan tentara ini untuk memerangi tentara nafsu syahwat. Maka sesekali tentara ini yang lemah dan sesekali ia yang kuat. Yang demikian itu menurut pertolongan Allah Ta’ala terhadap hamba-Nya dengan penguatan. Sebagaimana nur/petunjuk juga berbeda pada makhluk dengan perbedaan yang tiada terhingga.
 
Maka kami menamakan sifat tersebut – yang membedakan manusia dan hewan, pada pencegahan nafsu syahwat dan pemaksaannya dengan nama penggerak keagamaan. Dan hendaklah kami namakan penuntutan nafsu syahwat dan semua yang dikehendaki nafsu syahwat itu dengan nama penggerak hawa nafsu.
Hendaklah dipahami bahwa peperangan itu terjadi antara penggerak agama dan penggerak hawa nafsu. Dan peperangan diantara keduanya itu berlangsung terus menerus. Adapun medan peperangan ini adalah hati hamba. Sumber bantuan kepada penggerak agama datangnya dari para malaikat yang menolong barisan tentara Allah Ta’ala. Dan sumber bantuan kepada penggerak hawa nafsu itu datangnya dari setan-setan yang membantu musuh-musuh Allah Ta’ala.
 
Maka sabar itu adalah ibarat dari tetapnya penggerak agama untuk menghadapi penggerak nafsu syahwat . kalau penggerak agama itu dapat tetap sehingga dapat memaksa penggerak nafsu syahwat dan terus menerus menantangnya, maka penggerak agama itu telah menolong tentara Allah Ta’ala dan berhubungan dengan orang-orang yang sabar. Dan kalau ia tinggalkan dan lemah sehingga ia dapat dikalahkan oleh nafsu syahwat dan ia tidak sabar pada menolaknya, niscaya ia berhubungan dengan mengikuti setan-setan.
 
Jadi meninggalkan perbuatan-perbuatan yang penuh nafsu syahwat itu adalah amal perbuatan yang dihasilkan oleh suatu hal yang dinamakan s a b a r, yaitu tetapnya penggerak agama yang berhadapan dengan penggerak nafsu syahwat. Tetapnya penggerak agama itu adalah suatu hal yang dihasilkan oleh ma’rifah dengan memusuhi nafsu syahwat dan melawankannya, karena itulah sebab-sebab kebahagiaan di dunia dan di akhirat.
Apabila telah kuat keyakinannya yakni ma’rifah, yang dinamakan iman yaitu keyakinan bahwa adanya nafsu syahwat itu musuh yang memutus jalan kepada Allah Ta’ala maka akan kuatlah tetapnya penggerak agama. Dan apabila telah kuat tetapnya penggerak agama itu, maka sempurnalah perbuatan-perbuatan yang bertentangan dengan yang dikehendaki oleh nafsu syahwat. Kuatnya ma’rifah dan iman akan mengkejikan apa yang ghaib dari nafsu syahwat dan buruk akibatnya.
 
Dua malaikat tersebut adalah yang menanggung dua tentara tadi dengan izin Allah Ta’ala. Dan dijadikannya kedua malaikat tersebut untuk yang demikian. Malaikat tersebut adalah dari malaikat-malaikat yang menulis amal perbuatan manusia. Keduanya adalah malaikat yang ditugaskan kepada tiap-tiap orang dari anak Adam.
Apabila anda telah mengetahui bahwa pangkat malaikat penunjuk itu lebih tinggi dari malaikat yang menguatkan niscaya tidak tersembunyi lagi bagi anda bahwa yang disamping kanan adalah yang termulia bagi dua sisi dari dua pihak, yang seyogyanya diserahkan kepadanya. Jadi dialah yang empunya kanan (shahibul yamin) sedangkan yang lain adalah yang empunya kiri (shahibus syimal).
 
Hamba itu memiliki dua hal : kelalaian dan berpikir, melepaskan dan bermujahadah. Dengan kelalaian maka hamba itu akan berpaling dari shahibul yamin dan berbuat jahat kepadanya. Lalu berpalingnya itu dituliskan sebagai kejahatan. Dengan berpikir, hamba itu akan menghadap kepada shahibul yamiin untuk mengambil faedah dan petunjuk padanya. Maka dengan demikian hamba itu berbuat baik terhadap shahibul yamiin. Oleh karena itu penghadapannya kepada shahibul yamiin tersebut akan dituliskan baginya sebagai kebaikan.
Demikian pula dengan melepaskan maka dia itu berpaling dari shahibul yasar, meninggalkan meminta bantuan kepadanya, maka dengan demikian ia berbuat jahat kepadanya, lalu ditetapkan hal tersebut sebagai kejahatan atasnya. Dan dengan mujahadah ia meminta bantuan dari tentaranya. Lalu ditetapkan hal tersebut sebagai kebaikan baginya.
 
Sesungguhnya ditetapkannya kebajikan dan kejahatan dengan penetapan dua malaikat tersebut, Oleh karena itulah keduanya dinamakan para malaikat mulia yang yang menuliskan amal manusia (Kiraamal Katibiin).
Adapun al-Kiraam (yang mulia atau yang pemurah), maka dikarenakan dimanfaatkan oleh hamba dengan kemurahan keduanya, dan karena para malaikat itu semua adalah yang mulia yang berbuat kebajikan. Adapun al-Katibiin (penulis) maka karena keduanya itu yang menetapkan (menulis) kebajikan-kebajikan dan kejahatan-kejahatan. Dan keduanya sesungguhnya menuliskan pada lembaran-lembaran yang terlipat dalam rahasia hati dan terlipat dari rahasia hati, sehingga tiada terlihat kepadanya di dunia ini. Maka kedua malaikat tersebut – suratannya, tulisannya, lembarannya, dan apa saja yang menyangkut kedua malaikat itu adalah dari jumlah alam ghaib dan alam malakut tidak dari alam syahadah (alam yang dapat disaksikan dengan panca indera).
 
Setiap sesuatu dari alam malakut itu tidak dapat dilihat oleh mata di alam ini. Kemudian lembaran-lembaran amal yang terlipat itu akan disiarkan sebanyak dua kali. Sekali pada kiyamat kecil (kematian), sekali pada kiyamat besar.Yang dimaksud kiyamat kecil adalah waktu mati karena Nabi SAW bersabda, “Man maata faqad qaamat qiyaamatuhu”. Yang artinya, “Barang siapa yang mati maka sesungguhnya telah berdiri kiyamatnya”.
 
Pada kiyamat kecil ini, adalah hamba itu sendirian dan pada kiyamat ini dikatakan, “Walaqad ji’tumuuna furaada kamaa khalaqnaakum awwala marrat”. Yang artinya dan sesungguhnya kamu datang kepada Kami sendirian sebagaimana Kami menjadikanmu pada kali pertama”. (Al-An’am 94).
Pada kiyamat kecil dikatakan pula, “Kafaa binafsikal yauma ‘alaika hasiibaa”. Yang artinya “Cukuplah pada hari ini engkau membuat perhitungan atas dirimu sendiri (Al-Isra’ 14). Adapun pada kiyamat besar yang mengumpulkan semua makhluk, maka hamba itu tidaklah sendirian, akan tetapi kadang-kadang akan dilakukan perhitungan amal (hisab) dihadapan banyak makhluk. Pada kiyamat besar, orang-orang yang bertaqwa akan dibawa ke sorga. Dan orang-orang berdosa dibawa ke neraka secara beramai-ramai, tidak sendirian.
 
Huru hara pertama adalah huru hara kiyamat kecil. Dan bagi semua huru hara kiyamat besar ada perbandingannya dengan kiyamat kecil, seperti goncangnya bumi-misalnya. Sesungguhnya bumi engkau yang khusus bagi engkau itu bergoncang pada kematian. Maka sesungguhnya engkau mengetahui bahwa kegoncangan itu apabila bergoncang pada suatu negeri niscaya benarlah untuk dikatakan “sesungguhnya bumi mereka telah bergoncang walaupun negeri-negeri yang mengelilingi negeri tersebut tidak bergoncang. Bahkan jika tempat tinggal seorang manusia sendirian bergoncang, maka telah berhasilah kegoncangan itu terjadi padanya karena dia sesungguhnya memperoleh melarat ketika bergoncangnya semua bumi dengan kegoncangan tempatnya tidak dengan kegoncangan tempat tinggal orang lain. Maka bagian dari kegoncangan itu telah sempurna tanpa ada kekurangan.
 
Ketahuilah kiranya bahwa anda adalah makhluk dari tanah yang paling diridha-i, dan keberuntungan engkau yang khusus dari tanah adalah badan engkau saja. Adapun badan orang lain maka bukanlah keberuntungan (urusan) engkau. Dan bumi tempat engkau duduk itu jika dikaitkan kepada badan engkau adalah laksana karung dan tempat. Dan sesungguhnya engkau takut akan kegoncangan tempat itu bahwa badan engkau akan bergoncang disebabkan kegoncangan tempat tersebut. Kalau tidak demikian, maka udara itu selalu juga bergoncang akan tetapi engkau tidak takut kepadanya karena badan engkau tidak ikut bergoncang dari sebab yang demikian. Maka keberuntungan (efek) engkau dari kegoncangan bumi secara keseluruhan adalah kegoncangan badan engkau saja. Maka itulah bumi engkau dan tanah engkau yang khusus dengan engkau. Tulang-belulang engkau adalah bukit-bukit daripada bumi engkau. Hati engkau adalah matahari dari bumi engkau. Pendengaran engkau, penglihatan engkau dan lain-lain yang khusus bagi engkau, adalah laksana bintang-bintang langit engkau. Bercucurnya keringat dari badan engkau adalah laut dari bumi engkau. Rambut engkau adalah tumbuh-tumbuhan bumi engkau. Angota badan engkau adalah pohon-pohonan bumi engkau. Dan begitulah pada semua bagian tubuh.
 
Apabila sendi-sendi badan engkau telah roboh karena kematian, maka sesungguhnya telah bergoncanglah bumi sebagai kegoncangannya. Maka apabila tulang-belulang telah bercerai dari daging, maka sesungguhnya bukit-bukit itu telah diangkat lalu dihancurkan sekali hancur. Apa bila tulang belulang telah hancur, maka gunung-gunung itu telah dihancurkan. Apabila hati engkau gelap gulita sesudah mati, maka sesungguhnya matahari itu telah digulung. Apabila pendengaran engkau, penglihatan engkau dan panca indera engkau yang lain tiada berguna lagi, maka sesungguhnya bintang-bintang itu telah berhamburan. Apabila otak engkau pecah maka sesungguhnya langit itu telah pecah. Apabila dari huru haranya mati lalu terpancarlah keringat kening engkau, maka sesungguhnya lautan itu telah terpancar airnya. Apabila salah satu betis engkau telah berpaling dari yang lain dan keduanya itu adalah lipatan badan engkau, maka sesungguhnya unta-unta betina itu telah telah ditinggalkan. Apabila nyawa itu telah berpisah dari tubuh, maka bumi itu dibawa lalu dipanjangkan sehingga ia mencampakkan isinya dan melepaskannya.
 
Aku tiada akan memperpanjangkan semua perbandingan hal-ihwal dan huru hara itu, akan tetapi aku mengatakan bahwa hanya dengan semata-mata kematian, maka telah tegak berdirilah kiyamat kecil ini. Dan tiada luput bagi engkau dari kiyamat besar itu sesuatu dari apa yang khusus bagi engkau bahkan apa yang khusus bagi orang lain dari engkau. Sesungguhnya masih adanya bintang-bintang itu bagi orang lain, maka apa manfaatnya bagi engkau daripadanya ?. dan telah berguguranlah panca indera engkau yang dengannya engkau dapat mengambil manfaat dengan memandang bintang-bintang itu. Dan orang buta sama baginya antara malam dan siang, gerhana matahari dan terangnya, karena matahari sesungguhnya baginya telah gerhana terhadap dirinya dan itu adalah bahagian nya dari matahari.
 
Maka terangnya matahari sesudah itu adalah menjadi bahagian orang lain. Dan siapa yang pecah kepalanya, maka sesungguhnya telah pecah langitnya. Karena langit itu adalah ibarat dari apa yang mengiringi pihak kepala. Maka siapa yang tiada memiliki kepala niscaya tiada langit baginya. Maka darimanakah bermanfaat baginya tetapnya langit bagi orang lain ? (tentu tidak ada manfaatnya).
Maka inilah kiyamat kecil itu. Takut itu sesudah yang di bawah, dan huru hara itu sesudah yang penghabisan. Yang demikian itu adalah apabila telah datang bencana yang besar, maka terangkatlah yang khusus, binasalah langit dan bumi, hancurlah gunung-gunung dan bertambahlah huru hara itu. Ketahuilah kiranya bahwa kiyamat kecil ini walaupun kami panjangkan mensifatkannya, maka sesungguhnya kami tidak menyebutkannya seper seratus dari sifat-sifatnya. Dan kiyamat kecil itu jika dibandingkan kiyamat besar adalah seperti kelahiran kecil dibandingkan kelahiran besar.
 
Sesungguhnya manusia itu memiliki dua kelahiran. Pertama keluar dari tulang sulbi laki-laki dan tulang dada perempuan kepada tempat simpanan rahim wanita. Manusia itu berada di dalam rahim adalah pada keadaan yang tetap, tenang, sampai kepada kadar/masa yang ditentukan. Dan manusia dalam perjalanannya kepada kesempurnaan, memiliki tempat-tempat dan tahap-tahap, dari setitik air mani (nuthfah), segumpal darah, segumpal daging, dan lainnya sehingga manusia itu keluar dari kesempitan rahim ibu kepada alam dunia yang lapang. Maka perbandingan secara umum kiamat besar dengan khususnya kiyamat kecil adalah seperti perbandingan luasnya alam yang lapang dengan luasnya lapang rahim ibu. Dan bandingan luasnya alam yang didatangi hamba itu dengan mati jika dibandingkan dengan luasnya dunia adalah seperti bandingan lapangnya dunia juga kepada rahim ibu, bahkan lebih luas dan lebih besar.
 
Maka kiaskanlah akhirat itu dengan dunia, maka tidaklah kejadian kamu dan kebangkitan kamu, selain seperti satu diri saja. Dan tidaklah kejadian yang kedua melainkan sebagai kiasan yang pertama, bahkan bilangan kejadian itu tidak terhingga pada dua saja. Dan kepada yang demikian itu diisyaratken oleh firman Allah Ta’ala, “Wanunsyi-a kum fii maa laa ta’lamuun”. Yang artinya, “Dan Kami menjadikan kamu dalam rupa yang tiada kamu ketahui”. (Al-Waqi’ah 61).
 
Orang yang mengakui adanya dua kiyamat itu adalah orang- yang beriman terhadap alam ghaib dan alam syahadah dan yakin dengan alamul mulki wal malakuut. Orang yang mengaku adanya kiyamat kecil dan tidak mengakui adanya kiyamat besar, adalah orang yang memandang dengan mata yang juling kepada salah satu dari dua alam. Yang demikian itu adalah bodoh, sesat dan mengikuti dajjal yang bermata satu / juling.
Alangkah bersangatannya kelalaianmu hai orang-orang yang patut dikasihani. Dan kita semua adalah orang yang patut dikasihani, sedang dihadapan engkau itu ada huru hara tersebut.
 
Jikalau engkau tidak beriman dengan kiyamat besar disebebkan bodoh dan sesat, maka apakah tidak mencukupi bagimu dalil kiyamat kecil ? Atau tidakkah engkau mendengar sabda Penghulu nabi-nabi SAW,”Kafaa bil mauti mau’idhan” mencukupilah kematian sebagai pemberi pelajaran. Atau tidakkah engkau mendengar susahnya Nabi SAW ketika akan wafat sehingga beliau berdo’a “Allahumma hawwin ‘ala Muhammad sakaraatil maut” yang artinya, “Yaa Allah mudahkanlah kepada Muhammad sakarat maut”.
Atau tidakkah engkau malu dengan keterlambatanmu akan serangan maut karena mengikuti orang-orang lalai dan hina yang tiada yang mereka tunggu selain pekikan yang akan menyiksa mereka dan mereka berbantahan dengan sesamanya ? Mereka tiada berkesempatan menyampaikan pesan dan tiada pula dapat kembali kepada keluarganya. Maka datanglah sakit kepada mereka yang memperingatkan kepada mati, tetapi mereka tidak memperoleh peringatan daripadanya. Dan datanglah kepada mereka itu ketuaan sebagai utusan dari kematian. Maka tidakkah mereka mengambil ibarat daripadanya ?
 
Alangkah ruginya hamba yang datang rasul kepadanya lalu mereka memperolok-olok rasul itu. Apakah mereka menyangka bahwa mereka akan kekal di aunia ?, atau tidakkah mereka melihat berapa banyak yang telah Kami binasakan sebelum mereka, dari berabad-abad lamanya bahwa mereka itu tidak kembali kepadanya. Ataukah mereka menyangka bahwa orang-orang mati itu telah berjalan jauh dari mereka, lalu mereka itu dianggap tidak ada lagi ?
 
Tidaklah sekali-lagi demikian ! masing-masing dengan tanpa kecuali akan dihadapkan kepada Kami. Akan tetapi apa yang datang kepada mereka salah satu dari ayat-ayat Tuhannya lalu mereka itu berpaling daripadanya. Dan yang demikian itu karena Kami adakan tutup di hadapan dan dibelakang mereka, lalu mereka Kami tutup. Oleh karena itu mereka tiada juga mau percaya. Sekarang marilah kita kembali kepada yang dimaksud. Sesungguhnya semua yang tersebut itu adalah isyarat yang mengisyaratkan kepada hal-hal yang lebih tinggi dari ilmu muammalah. Maka kami terangkan bahwa telah jelas bahwa sabar itu adalah tetapnya penggerak agama untuk melawan penggerak hawa nafsu. Dan perlawanan ini termasuk ciri khas anak Adam, karena diwakilkan kepada mereka malaikat-malaikat yang mulia yang menuliskan amal perbuatan mereka.
 
Dua malaikat yang menuliskan amal anak Adam itu tidak menuliskan sesuatu dari anak-anak kecil dan orang gila karena telah kami sebutkan dahulu bahwa kebaikan itu adalah pada menghadapkan diri untuk mengambil faedah daripada keduanya (malaikat). Dan kejahatan itu ada pada berpaling dari keduanya (malaikat). Bagi anak-anak kecil dan orang-orang gila , maka tiada jalan bagi mereka untuk mengambil faedah tersebut. Maka tiadalah tergambar dari anak kecil dan orang gila itu untuk menghadap dan berpaling. Dan kedua malaikat penulis amal itu tiada menulis selain menghadap atau berpaling dari orang-orang yang mampu kepada menghadap dan berpaling itu.
 
Demi umurku, sesungguhnya telah nampak tanda-tanda permulaan kecemerlangan sinar petunjuk ketika tiba pada usia tamzis (usia yang telah dapat untuk membedakan antara bahaya dan manfaat). Tanda kecemerlangan itu tumbuh dan berangsur-angsur sampai kepada tahun datangnya dewasa (baligh). Sebagaimana menampak sinar pagi sampai kepada terbitnya bundaran matahari. Akan tetapi itu adalah petunjuk yang singkat, yang tiada menunjukkan kepada hal-hal yang mendatangkan melarat di akhirat, akan tetapi pada hal-hal yang mendatangkan melarat di dunia.
 
Oleh karena itulah seorang anak akan dipukul karena meninggalkan shalat seketika itu juga dan ia tidak disiksa karena meninggalkan shalat itu kelak di akhirat, dan pula tidak dituliskan pada lembaran-lembaran amal yang akan ditebarkan di akhirat. Akan tetapi menjadi tanggung jawab yang mengurus anak itu yang adil dan walinya yang baik yang penuh belas kasihan kalau ia termasuk orang-orang yang baik.
Dan ini adalah sikap dari para malaikat yang mulia, yang selalu menulis amal, yang berbuat baik lagi pilihan, bahwa dituliskan bagi anak kecil itu akan kejahatan dan kebaikannya di atas lembaran hatinya. Lalu dituliskan kepadanya dengan pemeliharaan. Kemudian disiarkan kepadanya dengan memperkenalkan, kemudian ia dihukum dengan pemukulan.
 
Maka setiap wali anak kecil yang demikian sikapnya terhadap anak kecil itu, maka sesungguhnya ia telah mewarisi sikap para malaikat, dan ia mengaplikasikanya terhadap anak kecil itu. Maka dengan demikian, ia akan memperoleh derajat kedekatan dengan Tuhan semesta alam sebagaimana yang diperoleh para malaikat. Maka Wali tersebut bersama nabi-nabi, orang-orang yang dekat dengan Allah (Al-Muqarrabiin) dan orang-orang yang membenarkan agama (Shidiqiin).
 
Kepada itulah diisyaratkan dengan sabda Nabi Muhammad SAW “Anaa wakaafilul yatiim kahaataini fil jannah” Artinya, “Aku dan orang yang menanggung anak yatim adalah seperti dua ini di surga”. Nabi SAW mengisyaratkan kepada dua anak jarinya SAW yang mulia.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Pro and con mandi malam & minum air batu…..

Posted by laizekdi

Pandangan pertama


Mandi malam & minum air batu…..

Mandi malam & minum air batu, kesannya ke atas paru-paru.
Assalamualaikum wbt sekelian muslimin.
Lebih dahulu saya menjelaskan pengertian sains itu sendiri. Sains menurut kamus oxford ialah satu cabang ilmu pengetahuan yang melibatkan pemerhatian dan eksperimen untuk membuat rumusan idea, penerangan dan pemahaman terhadap fenomena alam semula jadi.
Dan ini pula adalah penjelasan yang lebih menyeluruh mengenai sains di wikipedia. http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sains .Mari kita kupas satu demi satu dan mulakan dengan kesan minum air batu ke atas paru-paru.
Mari kita buat eksperimen pertama. Ambil sebiji gelas, masukkan beberapa ketul ais dan tambahkan sedikit air. Biarkan di atas meja untuk tempuh beberapa minit. Perhatikan apa yang terjadi di permukaan luar gelas ini.
Dari eksperimen ini, kita akan perhatikan titisan air di permukaan luar gelas ini. Kesimpulan dari eksperimen mudah in ialah, suhu sejuk dari bahagian dalam gelas boleh menyebabkan proses kondensasi wap air di udara berlaku di mana wap air ini akan bertukar bentuk dari wap kepada air.
Dalam anatomi manusia, saluran esofagus adalah saluran yang membawa makanan dan minuman dari mulut ke perut. Di sekeliling saluran esofagus ini terdapat binaan paru-paru. Unit terkecil bagi paru-paru ialah alveolus. Alveolus adalah binaan mirip sebiji belon. Udara di dalam alveolus ini sangat lembab (high humidity).
Apabila seseorang minum air batu seperti jus apel atau jus oren, saluran esofagus menjadi sejuk dan alveolus yang terletak berhampiran esofagus ini juga menjadi sejuk. Keadaan ini akan menyebabkan proses kondensasi wap air berlaku di dalam banyak alveolus menjadi cecair air. Air ini akan terkumpul di dalam alveolus. Apabila proses minum air batu ini berterusan untuk sekian tahun, proses ini juga akan berterusan dan akibatnya ialah semakin banyak air terkumpul di alveolus dan air ini akan mula melimpah ke kawasan alveolus lain.
Air yang terkumpul di alveolus (paru-paru) ini akan mengakibatkan alveolus tidak dapat menjalankan fungsinya iaitu menjalankan pertukaran gas oksigen dan karbon dioksida. Lebih banyak air terkumpul akan mengurangkan bahagian paru-paru untuk menjalankan fungsi asas paru-paru iaitu pertukaran gas oksigen dan karbon dioksida.
Itulah sebabnya orang yang gemar dan kerap minum air batu akan cepat mengah bila berbuat aktiviti lasak kerana pertukaran udara di paru-paru tidak mencukupi. Daripada situasi ini, badan bertindak balas menghasilkan satu tindak balas iaitu tapak tangan lembap dan basah.
Kajian saintifik ini telah dimantapkan dengan mencari data ujian kes sebenar ke atas sampel-sampel orang yang memang suka minum air batu. Beratus sampel dikaji dan salah seorang pelajar saya akhirnya memilih tajuk yang berkaitan bagi Projek Tahun Akhir beliau. Saya banyak membantu beliau dan pelajar ini juga sebenarnya banyak membantu saya.
Salah satu sampel yang menarik dalam kajian saya ini ialah satu hamba Allah saya namakan Mr Y. Mr Y berusia 48 tahun. Seorang ketua jabatan yang tabiaatnya ialah gemar air batu. Biliknya sentiasa berhawa dingin namun yang peliknya ialah tingkap bilik Mr Y sentiasa terbuka agar biliknya tidak sejuk (panas). Mr Y juga gemar berbaju dua lapis atau memakai blazer walaupun cuca agak panas bagi saya. Namun yang paling menggelikan hati saya ialah beliau tidak boleh tidur bersama isteri, alasannya ialah bila tidur dengan isteri, siisteri hendak buka kipas syiling tetapi Mr Y tidak membenarkan kerana sejuk. Bagi mengelakkan pergaduhan, isteri tidur dengan anak-anak dengan membuka kipas sementara Mr Y tidur bersendirian tanpa buka kipas.
Bagi makluman pembaca sekelian, Mr Y sudah kena simptom “kalah sejuk” iaitu antara pelbagai kesan dari masalah paru-parunya.
Berikut pula adalah penjelasan bagi kes mandi malam.
Pada tahun 1983, saya mula gemar bermain badminton dan budaya ini berterusan sehingga tahun 1998. Selalunya saya main pada waktu malam dan sekembalinya saya akan mandi sebelum tidur. Selalunya saya bermain badminton 2 kali seminggu atau lebih. Saya perhatikan bahawa tapak tangan saya semakin basah semenjak saya bermain badminton. Pada penghujung 1980an arwah guru saya mula mengajarkan ilmu bahawa elakkan mandi malam bagi mengelakkan penyakit paru-paru berair.
Saya macam percaya dengan tidak kata-kata guru saya ini kerana maklumlah saya lulusan universiti sedangkan guru saya tidak masuk universiti. Saya tidak menolak atau menerima saranan beliau namun saya menjalankan proses sains iaitu membuat proses pemerhatian untuk mendapatkan keputusan. Bila ada kesempatan ke hospital sewaktu menziarahi rakan atau saudara, saya meluangkan masa berjumpa dengan pesakit yang kena penyakit paru-paru berair. Saya perhatikan pesakit ini ditebuk lubang pada dadanya untuk memasukkan saluran getah kira-kira diameter 5mm. Salur getah ini disambungkan dihujungnya kepada satu beg plastik transparens. Di dalam beg plastik transparens ini terkandung cecair pekat mirip air jus tembikai. Saya mula bertanya kepada pesakit ini tentang penyakitnya serta sejarah hidupnya. Pesakit ini memberitahu saya bahawa beliau kena penyakit paru-paru berair. Setelah berbagai soalan saya ajukan, akhirnya saya dapat satu soalan cepu mas iaitu ada main badminton ke?? Pesakit ini memberitahu saya bahawa ia bermain badminton semenjak belasan tahun hingga usia sekarang iaitu lebih 50 tahun. Ia bermain waktu malam dan selepas bermain beliau akan mandi.
Dari proses sains secara membuat pemerhatian ini saya sudah boleh membuat kesimpulan iaitu mandi malam boleh menyebabkan paru-paru berair.
Dari satu pemerhatian ini, kajian saya masih belum mantap kerana terdapat pelbagai variable lain yang saya lupa masukkan dalam kajian ini. Dengan itu, saya meneruskan kajian ini kepada ramai orang lain dan hasilnya menakjubkan. Sememangnya korelasi mandi malam dengan masalah paru-paru adalah tersangat kuat. Dengan ini kesimpulan asal saya adalah tepat dan benar iaitu mandi malam menyebabkan masalah paru-paru seperti paru-paru berair.
Pada kira-kira 3 bulan lepas, seorang rakan sekerja saya yang bakal pencen pada Februari ini telah dimasukkan ke Hospital Sultanah Aminah (HSA) kerana masalah paru-paru. Saya bersama beberapa rakan dan Ketua Jabatan datang melawat pesakit ini di HSA. Apabila sampai dan bertemu pesakit ini, kami terus mengajukan apakah sebenarnya penyakit yang dialami rakan sekerja saya ini. Setelah beliau memberitahu beliau menghadapi masalah paru-paru berair, saya terus mengajukan soalan “Sipolan, engkau selalu mandi malam ke? ”.
Belum sempat pesakit ini menjawab, isterinya segera mencelah “Dia memang selalu mandi malam. Orang dah pesan jangan mandi malam tetapi dia degil terus mandi malam. Kadang-kadang kalau musim panas, dia ni mandi malam dua kali untuk menyejukkan badannya ”.
Sahabat saya diam tersipu-sipu lalu berkata “badan dah panas, nak buat apa!”. Begitulah kata-kata orang yang degil.
Dari penjelasan ringkas saya di sini boleh dirumuskan bahawa:
MANDI MALAM DAN MINUM AIR BATU merosakkan paru-paru.
Sekian Wassalam Wallahualam.



Pandangan Kedua



petikan dari forum al-fikrah.net

PANDANGAN DOKTOR TERHADAP PARU-PARU BERAIR

Paru2 berair = sinonim dgn pneumonia (bg org melayu)->
tapi kalau melihatkan patologinya (keadaan kerosakkannya), takdepun air dlm paru2 tu.Jadi kalau nak ikut istilah patologi, paru2 berair ni lebih tepat merujuk kepada pulmonoary oedema dan juga pleural effusion.
Kedua2 keadaan ni, kalau dilihat pada keadaan paru2 pesakit tu, memang terdapat takungan air.TAPI, utk konteks perbincangan dan berdasarkan soalan yg ditanya, paru2 berair yg dimaksudkan adalah pneumonia / radang paru2.
Faktor penyebabnya banyak (sekurang2nya ada 30 causes). Tapi dua kump utama adalah:
1. Infective Pneumonia (faktor jangkitan)
2. Aspiration Pneumonia (faktor bukan jangkitan)Yang paling biasa/common, adalah infective cause yg mana penyebabnya kebiasaannya adalah dari kuman atau virus.
Antaranya:-Kumana) Streptococcus Pneumoniaeb) Staphylococcus Aureusc) Haemophilus Influenza-Virusa) Influenza virusb) Respiratory Syncytial virusc) AdenovirusAntara penyebab Aspiration pneumonia :
Inhaling vomit, irritating fumes, or other substances can result in aspiration pneumonia. Agents such as petroleum solvents, dry cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, kerosene, gasoline, and liquid polishes and waxeswww.ehealthmd.com/libr…#infectivePrevention / PencegahanUtk mana2 penyakit yg disebabkan oleh jangkitan kuman/virus, yang paling penting, kena jaga kebersihan (hygene).
Itu yg plg senang dan plg org selalu terlepas pandang.- kalau batuk, tutup mulut dgn tisu/sapu tangan- basuh tangan (dgn sabun lagi bagus) sebelum makan- basuh tangan (dgn sabun, kalau boleh wajib) selepas ke tandas- kalau ada orang lain batuk, elakkan duduk berdekatan dgn org itu- makan/minum makanan/minuman yg benar2 masakIni semua utk elakkan jangkitan* Antara komplikasi pneumonia ni, adalah pulmonary edema (komplikasi dari aspiration pneumonia) dan pleural effusion (komplikasi dari infective pneumonia).
Mungkin sbb tu dtgnya istilah paru2 berair utk pneumonia ni, iaitu bagi mereka yg ada komplikasi dari penyakit pneumonia tu sendiri.
* Mandi malam dan minum air sejuk tak boleh menyebabkan paru2 berair / pneumonia. Setakat ni tak penah jumpa lagi dalil ni (mandi malam/minum air ais sebabkan pneumonia) kat mana2 buku teks perubatan standard. Allahua’lam.rujukan:
Oxford handbook of clinical meds, 4th ednpg 332 – 336www.emedicinehealth.co…a%20Causeswww.ehealthmd.com/libr…#infective

 

   Selepas baca kedua-dua pandangan anda nilailah sendiri. Terdapat percanggahan pendapat antara pendapat yang di dakwa dari ahli sains dan pendapat doktor, walaupun bidang kedoktoran juga adalah sains.   


Saturday, January 8, 2011

Fastest Cars In The World: Top 10 List 2010-2011

Fastest Cars In The World: 

Top 10 List 2010-2011



World's Fastest Cars


While most of us can only dream of owning the fastest car in the world, some will do whatever it takes to possess such speed and power. So, how fast are the fastest cars in the world? Here are the 10 fastest cars available on the market measures by top speed.

1. Bugatti Veyron: 267 mph, 0-60 in 2.5 secs. Aluminum, Narrow Angle 8 Liter W16 Engine with 1200 hp, base price is $1,700,000. Tested again on July 10, 2010 with the new 2010 Super Sport Version, the Bugatti Veyron once again claimed its title as the fastest car in the world at 267 mph.



2. SSC Ultimate Aero: 257 mph, 0-60 in 2.7 secs. Twin-Turbo V8 Engine with 1183 hp, base price is $654,400. Tested in March 2007 by Guinness World Records, The SSC Ultimate Aero was the fastest car in the world from March 2007 to July 2010 until recently it fell behind the Bugatti Veyron to take the #2 spot
.
SSC Ultimate Aero Red doors open

3. Saleen S7 Twin-Turbo: 248 mph, 0-60 in 3.2 secs. Twin Turbo All Aluminum V8 Engine with 750 hp, base price is $555,000. Smooth and bad-ass, will make you want to show it off non-stop
.
Saleen S7 Twin Turbo dark orange front view

4. Koenigsegg CCX: 245 mph, 0-60 in 3.2 secs. 90 Degree V8 Engine 806 hp, base price is $545,568. Made in Sweden, it is aiming hard to be the fastest car in the world, but it has a long way to go to surpass the Bugatti and the Ultimate Aero.

Orange Koenigsegg CCX
 
5. McLaren F1: 240 mph, 0-60 in 3.2 secs. BMW S70/2 60 Degree V12 Engine with 627 hp, base price is $970,000. Check out the doors, they looks like bat wings, maybe Batman need to order one and paints it black

1997 McLaren F1 on the road black

6. Ferrari Enzo: 217 mph, 0-60 in 3.4 secs. F140 Aluminum V12 Engine with 660 hp, base price is $670,000. Only 399 ever produced, the price goes up every time someone crashes.

Ferrari Enzo doors open front view

7. Jaguar XJ220: 217 mph, 0-60 in 3.8 secs. Twin Turbo V6 Engine with 542 hp, base price was $650,000. Made in 1992, this car still got what it takes to make the list.

Jaguar XJ220

8. Pagani Zonda F: 215 mph, 0-60 in 3.5 secs. Mercedes Benz M180 V12 Engine with 650 hp, base price is $667,321. With a V12 motor, this baby can do much better.

pagani zonda f

9. Lamborghini Murcielago LP640: 211 mph, 0-60 in 3.3 secs. V12 Engine with 640 hp, base price is $430,000. Nice piece of art, the design is very round and smooth.

White Lamborghini Murcielago front view

10. Porsche Carrera GT: 205 mph, 0-60 in 3.9 secs. Aluminum, 68 Degree, Water Cooled V10 Engine with 612 hp, base price is $440,000. The most powerful and most expensive Porsche  nearly made the list as #10.

Red Porsche Carrera GT side view


Sumber : http://www.thesupercars.org/fastest-cars/fastest-cars-in-the-world-top-10-list/

Most Expensive Cars In The World: Top 10 List 2009-2010

Most Expensive Cars In The World: 

Top 10 List 2009-2010

Copy from - http://www.thesupercars.org/top-cars/most-expensive-cars-in-the-world-top-10-list-2007-2008/

World's Most Expensive Cars

      What is the most expensive car in the world? The 1931 Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe was sold for $8,700,000 in 1987. However, that car and many alike will not be included in this list because it is not available on the market today. It is hard to imagine someone would actually spend 8 million dollars on a car instead of using it for something more productive. However, if you have the money and the opportunity, you will definitely spend a small fraction of it to place a few of these supercars in your garage. Here are the 10 most expensive production cars on the market.
1. Bugatti Veyron $1,700,000. This is by far the most expensive street legal car available on the market today. It is the fastest accelerating car reaching 0-60 in 2.6 seconds. It claims to be the fastest car with a top speed of 253 mph+. However, the title for the fastest car goes to the SSC Ultimate Aero which exceed 253 mph pushing this car to 2nd place for the fastest car.
Bugatti Veyron: Most Expensive Car in The World

2. Lamborghini Reventon $1,600,000. The most powerful and the most expensive Lamborghini ever built is the second on the list. It takes 3.3 seconds to reach 60 mph and it has a top speed of 211 mph. Its rarity (limited to 20) and slick design are the reasons why it is so expensive and costly to own.
Lamborghini Reventon side view

3. McLaren F1 $970,000. In 1994, the McLaren F1 was the fastest and most expensive car. Even though it was built 15 years ago, it has an unbelievable  top speed of 240 mph and reaching 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. Even as of today, the McLaren F1 is still top on the list and it outperformed many other supercars.
McLaren F1 Orange with doors open

4. Ferrari Enzo $670,000. The most known supercar ever built. The Enzo has a top speed of 217 mph and reaching 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. Only 400 units were produced and it is currently being sold for over $1,000,000 at auctions.
Ferrari Enzo track run front view

5. Pagani Zonda C12 F $667,321. Produced by a small independent company in Italy, the Pagani Zonda C12 F is the 5th fastest car in the world. It promises to delivery a top speed of 215 mph+ and it can reach 0-60 in 3.5 seconds.
Pagani Zonda C12 F: 2nd Most Expensive Car in the World

6. SSC Ultimate Aero $654,400. Don't let the price tag fool you, the 6th most expensive car is actually the fastest street legal car in the world with a top speed of 257 mph+ and reaching 0-60 in 2.7 seconds. This baby cost nearly half as much as the Bugatti Veyron, yet has enough power to top the most expensive car in a speed race. It is estimated that only 25 of this exact model will ever be produced.
SSC Ultimate Aero 3rd most expensive car in the world

7. Saleen S7 Twin Turbo $555,000. The first true American production certified supercar, this cowboy is also rank 3rd for the fastest car in the world. It has a top speed of 248 mph+ and it can reach 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. If you are a true American patriot, you can be proud to show off this car.
Saleen S7 Twin Turbo white

8. Koenigsegg CCX $545,568. Swedish made, the Koenigsegg is fighting hard to become the fastest car in the world. Currently, it is the 4th fastest car in the world with a top speed of 245 mph+, the car manufacture Koenigsegg is not giving up and will continue to try and produce the fastest car. Good luck with that!
Koenigsegg CCX side view

9. Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren Roadster $495,000. A GT supercar, the SLR McLaren is the fastest automatic transmission car in the world with a top speed of 206 mph+ and reaching 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. It is a luxurious convertible with a really powerful engine, which results in outstanding performances and style.
Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster side front view

10. Porsche Carrera GT $440,000. A supercar with dynamic stability control and a top speed of 205 mph+ and it can reach 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. The Porsche Carrera GT applies the absolute calibers of a true racing car to offer an unprecedented driving feeling on the road.
Porsche Carrera GT

Friday, January 7, 2011

SEJARAH PERKEMBANGAN KALENDAR

SEJARAH PERKEMBANGAN GREGORIAN KALENDAR

Romulus kalendar hanya ada 10 bulan sahaja (lebih kurang 753 BC)

Months

Martius
31
Aprilis
30
Maius
31
Iunius
30
Quintilis
31
Sextilis
30
September
30
Oktober
31
November
30
December
30
Jumlah hari
304
61 hari daripada musim sejuk tidak di letakkan atau dinamakan pada mana-mana bulan.

Kalendar Numa (lebih kurang 713 BC)
- Numa Pompilius hanya mahu jumlah hari dalam setahu sebanyak 354 hari sahaja


Civil calendar
Religious calendar
Berdasarkan kepada Macrobius dan Plutarch
Berdasarkan kepada Ovid (modern order due to Decemviri 450 BC)
Berdasarkan kepada Fowler
Ianuarius(29) Ianuarius Martius
Februarius(28) Martius Aprilis
Martius (31) Aprilis Maius
Aprilis (29) Maius Iunius
Maius (31) Iunius Quintilis
Iunius (29) Quintilis Sextilis
Quintilis (31) Sextilis September
Sextilis (29) September October
September (29) October November
October (31) November December
November (29) December Ianuarius
December (29) Februarius Februarius


Kalendar Julian

Months
Lengths before 45 BC
Lengths as of 45 BC
Ianuarius
29
31
Februarius
28 (leap years: 23 or 24)
28 (leap years: 29)
Martius
31
31
Aprilis
29
30
Maius
31
31
Iunius
29
30
Quintilis (Julius)
31
31
Sextilis (Augustus)
29
31
September
29
30
Oktober
31
31
November
29
30
December
29
31
Intercalaris
0 (leap years: 27) (inserted between the shortened February and March)
(abolished)

Kalendar Gregorian

Bulan
Jumlah Hari
January 31
February 28 or 29
March 31
April 30
May 31
June 30
July 31
August 31
September 30
October 31
November 30
December 31

asal usul kalendar

Para pembaca diminta terjemah sendiri ya..


A Brief History of the Calendar
Dr David Harper – obliquity.com/calendar

Introduction

It’s the year 2000. We stand at the dawn of a new century, a new millennium. We can’t even begin to imagine what the next thousand years will bring, but if the last thousand years are any guide, the third millennium will hold wonders. But wait a moment, and ask yourself: why 2000? Why is this year so special? And why are we celebrating its birth on January 1st? Our lives are bound up with the calendar. We use it to plan our future: the annual round of work, meetings, appointments, holidays, birthdays and all of the other events in life. We write
them in our diaries so that we won’t forget.

Our diaries also tell us of the other events of the coming year: public holidays, religious festivals, weekends, the waxing and waning of the Moon. The calendar helps us to look back, too. The date of our birth is our personal milestone in the calendar. The historian looks further - to 1945 or 1812 or 1066. They seem to be just numbers, but we know instinctively that they are more than that. Each event, public or personal, great or small, has a day and a month and a year which fixes its place in time.We take the calendar for granted because it’s always been there, day following day, month following month, year following year. We know that it has rules - every fourth year is a leapyear and so we add an extra day to February. But the lengths of the months are irregular, some 31 days, other 30 and poor February only 28 days in three years out of four. Easter seems to move at random. The days of the week provide some kind of regularity, but why do we have seven, and why are they named after a mixture of planets and Norse gods? And why do the British pay their taxes on April 5th? Our calendar can trace its roots back over 6000 years to ancient Egypt. Its story features Julius Caesar, the Council of Nicaea (which gave us the Nicene Creed), a small Russian monk called Denis, the Venerable Bede and Pope Gregory XIII.

Squaring the Circle

The lives of our ancestors were governed by the cycle of night and day, the waxing and waning of the Moon and the passage of the seasons. Thus the story of the calendar begins with astronomy, with the Earth, the Sun and the Moon. To be precise, it begins with the length of the day, the year and the lunar month, and the fact that neither the year nor the lunar month is an exact number of days, nor the year an exact number of lunar months. The cycle of the seasons - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring once more – is known to astronomers as the tropical year and it can be measured very precisely. It is 365.2421896698 days long, although it is gradually getting shorter by about half a second per century.

The lunar month is measured by the phases of the Moon - New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter, and New Moon again. It is 29.5305888531 days long, but getting longer by a little less than a fiftieth of a second per century. There are 12.36826639275 lunar months in a tropical year. The history of the calendar is largely about the attempts of astronomers, priests and mathematicians to force the tropical year and the lunar month to fit into a scheme comprised only of whole numbers. Like the geometers who dreamed of “squaring the circle” and the alchemists who sought to turn lead into gold, they faced an almost impossible task, but that didn’t deter them. Most ancient calendars, including those of Greece, were based upon lunar months, but in order to keep the calendar in step with the seasons, it was necessary to insert extra months
now and then, because 12 lunar months are 10.8751234326 days short of a tropical year.

Each of the Greek city-states kept its own calendar, however, and the insertion of the extra, or intercalary, months was left to the public authorities. In around 432 B.C., Meton of Athens noticed that 235 lunar months were almost exactly equal to 19 tropical years (the discrepancy is about 2 hours) and proposed a 19-year cycle of intercalation. Calippus, a century later, made 940 lunar months equal to 76 years each of 365.25 days. Hipparchus, the father of modern astronomy, suggested a further cycle which made 304 years equal to 3760 lunar months and 111035 days. The Metonic cycle again became important in the early Christian church, which tied the date of Easter to the phases of the Moon, but it is significant that although the Greeks made many profound contributions to Western culture, their calendar is not one of them.


Ancient Egypt

The civilisation of ancient Egypt left to posterity some of the greatest wonders of the world. The pyramids, the Sphinx and the Valley of the Kings still haunt us, and the golden face of Tutankhamun has been seen around the world. The Pharaohs sought immortality, and after 4000 years they found it. The ancient Egyptians also bequeathed to us the idea which is at the heart of our calendar. Unlike the Babylonians, the Greeks and early Romans, they based their calendar upon the Sun alone. As the earliest great farming civilisation, Egypt was dependent upon the annual flood of the Nile which brought water and rich silt to the river’s flood plain. Life in Egypt was controlled by the seasons, and hence by the Sun. The Moon played no part in the calendar. The Egyptian year had twelve months, each of thirty days, plus an extra five days at the end of the year. These five days were associated with the birthdays of the greatest gods of the Egyptian pantheon and were given over to celebrations.

Thus the year was 365 days long. The Egyptians made no attempt to force their calendar to keep step with the actual seasons, as we do by adding leap-days. Instead, they accepted that the seasons would gradually become later and later with respect to the calendar, in a cycle that would take 1460 years to complete.
The Egyptians checked the relation of their calendar to the natural year not by observing the equinoxes and solstices but by the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star. This was the first sighting each year of Sirius in the morning sky just before sunrise. Until the time of Julius Caesar, the Egyptian calendar was the only civil calendar in the ancient world in which the length of each month and year was fixed by rule instead of being determined by the discretion of priests or by the observations of astronomers. As such, it is the direct forerunner of our modern calendar.

Rome and the Julian Calendar

The calendar of ancient Rome, like that of the Greek city-states, was essentially a lunar calendar with an extra, or intercalary, month inserted occasionally to keep the months more or less in step with the seasons. There were twelve months, and they were named, in order:

Martius,
Aprilis,
Maia,
Junius,
Quintilis,
Sextilis,
September,
October,
November,
December,
Januarius and
Februarius

Januarius and Februarius. Apart from Quintilis and Sextilis, these names have come down to us almost unchanged in over 2500 years. The names of Quintilis to December are based on the Latin words for “five” to “ten”, and we can therefore deduce that the Roman year began with March. The Romans were very superstitious. They regarded odd numbers as lucky and even numbers as unlucky, and so all of the months except February had an odd number of days: March, May, Quintilis and October had 31, February had 28 and the remainder had 29. This gave 355 days, roughly equal to 12 lunar months. The intercalary month was added, when needed, at the end of February, and on such occasions, February itself was shortened to 23 days. Each month had three special days: the Kalends, the Nones and the Ides.

The Kalends was the first day of the month, and this is the origin of the word “calendar” itself. The Nones was the 5th day of most months, but the 7th day of the long months (March, May, Quintilis, October). The Ides was the 13th, except for the long months, in which it was the 15th. Anyone who knows a little Shakespeare will remember that Julius Caesar was warned to beware the Ides of March - the 15th of March. The Romans did not count the days of the month in the way that we do. Instead, they always counted towards the next of the three named days.

Thus the day after the Kalends of March was not called March 2nd, but ante diem sextum Nonas Martias or “day six before the Nones of March”, abbreviated to a.d. VI Non. Mar. March thus progressed like this:

1st Kalendis Martiis
2nd ante diem VI Nonas Martias
3rd ante diem V Nonas Martias
4th ante diem IV Nonas Martias
5th ante diem III Nonas Martias
6th pridie Nonas Martias
7th Nonis Martiis

The 6th, the day before the Nones, was pridie Nonas Martias, literally “the day before the Nones of March.” The Nones itself was included in this countdown, which is why the 5th is called the third day before the Nones and not the second. After the Ides, the dates were counted down towards the Kalends of the following month, so that March 16th was named ante diem XVII Kalendas Aprilis or “the 17th day before the Kalends of April,” even though it was recognised as part of the month of March. The Romans believed that certain days were more auspicious than others for carrying out important events such as business contracts, religious rites and even battles. Only the priests, led by the Pontifex Maximus, could tell a Roman citizen whether a given day was auspicious or not, and naturally they made a charge for each inquiry. The priests also decided when intercalary months were needed, so they had complete control over virtually every aspect of public and private life through the calendar.

However, they had no formal rules to tell them when intercalation was required, and in any case they were rather careless, so that by the time that Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus, the calendar had slipped by almost three months with respect to the seasons. In order to bring the calendar back into line with the seasons, Caesar ordered that three intercalary months should be added at the end of the year which we know as 46 B.C. He also re-arranged the lengths of the months, giving each month its present duration. But Caesar’s most significant reform was to reject the lunar month completely and to adopt a solar year whose average length was 365.25 days. He introduced the four-year cycle of leap years which we still use today. The extra day was added at the end of the Roman year, after the last day of February. Once again, carelessness prevailed. The priests applied the intercalation every three years, not four. Perhaps it arose from the superstition: 4 is an even number, and hence unlucky. Whatever the cause, the result was that the year 8 B.C. began three days late. Augustus Caesar corrected the error by omitting leap-years until 8 A.D., and the Julian calendar was observed without further change until the great reform of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

The Week

In Christendom, as in Judaism and Islam, the seven-day cycle of days of the week marks the basic period of work, rest and communal worship. In the Bible, the Creation of the world takes six days, and God rests on the seventh. It is difficult to trace the ultimate origin of the seven-day week, but in the Babylonian calendar, the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 28th days of each month were set aside for rest. After the Exile, the Jewish calendar adopted the names of the Babylonian months, and it is possible that the week was also introduced into Judaism at this time. In early Rome, there was an eight-day cycle between market days. It was only in the second century B.C. that a seven-day cycle became predominant, and this may have owed more to astrology than to Hebrew or Babylonian influences.

Astrologers recognised seven planets (including the Sun and Moon) and assigned one planet to rule each of the 24 hours of the day, in a continuous sequence. The planet which ruled the first hour of the day was taken to rule the whole day, and this gave rise to a seven-day cycle. The Romans began to name each day after its ruling planet: Saturn’s day, the Sun’s day, the Moon’s day, Mars’s day, Mercury’s day, Jupiter’s day, Venus’s day. In the Romance languages, the connection is still evident. In French, for example, Monday to Friday become lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi. In the Germanic languages, the names of the Norse gods Tiu, Woden, Thor and Freya replaced Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Jewish tradition originally had no names for the days of the week, giving them numbers instead. Only the Sabbath had its own name. The Roman names were adopted only slowly and reluctantly by the Jews and early Christians. It is impossible to say whether the cycle of days of the week has continued without interruption since Roman times. The Gregorian calendar reform, though it removed ten days from the calendar at a stroke, nevertheless maintained the sequence of days of the week.

In the Year of Our Lord
A calendar is like a chain that emerges out of the waters of oblivion and holds the ship of history to its moorings. Beneath the surface of the waters, there must have been sunk some kind of an anchor. P.W. Wilson, “The Romance of the Calendar” The calendar of Rome counted years from the legendary founding of the city by Romulus and Remus in the year we now call 753 B.C. Dates in Roman writings and inscriptions are not A.D. or B.C. They are A.U.C. - Anno Urbis Conditae, “in the year of the city’s foundation.” A Roman date would also give the names of the two men who served as consuls in that year. British Acts of Parliament are dated by the year of the reign of the king or queen. In the United States, Presidential decrees are dated by the year since the foundation of the republic in 1776. It seems natural to measure the passage of years from some notable event.

In about the year 530 A.D., there lived a monk named Dionysius Exiguus - “Denis the Little” - from Scythia in south-west Russia. Like many scholars at the time, Dionysius was concerned with the correct calculation of the date of Easter, and he constructed a table of Easter dates for a nineteen-year period which he designated Anni Domini Jesu Christi 532- 550. At the time, years were measured from the beginning of the reign of the emperor Diocletian, two-and-a-half centuries earlier. Dionysius had decided, through careful calculation, that Anno Diocletiani 248 was 532 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. And since Easter commemorates the most important event in the Christian faith, Dionysius believed that it was inappropriate to date the years by the reign of one of the most notorious persecutors that the Church had ever known.

By the simple act of counting the years Anni Domini Jesu Christi, Dionysius gave the Western world the system for numbering the years that is still used today. It found its first champion in the eighth-century historian, the Venerable Bede, who used it in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Several variations upon Anno Domini were also used: Anno incarnationis Dominicae, “in the year of Our Lord’s incarnation”; Anno a Nativitate, “in the year after the Nativity”; Anno a Passione, “in the year after the Passion”; Anno Gratiae, “in the year of Grace”; Anno salutae humanae, “in the year of human salvation.”

Historians and theologians now agree that Dionysius made a mistake in calculating the year of Christ’s birth. The historical evidence makes it impossible for the Nativity to have occurred later than about 4 B.C., because that was the year in which Herod the Great is known to have died. There is also astronomical evidence which links the Star of Bethlehem with a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 B.C., an event which would have been of the greatest significance to astrologers because it meant that the two planets approached one another in the sky three times in a period of only six months. Despite this error, the system invented by Dionysius remains the anchor which chains our calendar to its Christian origins. It is thanks to Dionysius that the year 2000 is the year 2000!


On the Third Day

Our calendar is a Christian calendar. Its years are counted from the birth of Christ, celebrated annually on December 25th. The other great event in the Christian faith, greater even than the Nativity, is the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ. This is the event which gives hope and meaning to every Christian.

The Crucifixion and Resurrection are celebrated each year at Easter. In the early Church, these were the events which led Christianity irrevocably away from Judaism, and for almost 700 years, the date of Easter was the subject of debate, disagreement and potential schism. In the Gospels, the events of Holy Week took place during Passover, the Jewish festival which commemorated the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt when the angel of death “passed over” the homes of the Hebrews and spared the first-born. In the Jewish calendar, Passover took place on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan.

The Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar in which the beginning of the month was marked by the new crescent Moon, so the fourteenth day corresponded to the Full Moon. Moreover, Nisan was the first month of the Jewish year, which was arranged so that the new year began at approximately the Spring Equinox.
The early Christians, remembering their Jewish roots, continued to celebrate Easter at the time of Passover. They, like the Jewish community itself, could not say in advance when Passover would fall. This decision was the prerogative of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and its successors, who kept the method of determining Passover a closely-guarded secret for centuries.

By the third century A.D., the Christian churches had rejected the authority of the Jewish councils to decide the date of Passover and had begun to calculate tables of the date of Easter for themselves. This, however, led to internal disagreement. There were two diametrically opposite views. One group were still strongly influenced by the Jewish tradition that the Passover must fall on the fourteenth day of the lunar month. Their insistence on the significance of the number 14 led to them being named Quartodecimians.

The other group believed that the celebration of Easter should follow the events of Holy Week, in which the Crucifixion occurred on Friday and the Resurrection on the following Sunday. They held that Easter Day must be a Sunday, regardless of the day of the month. The Eastern Church observed Easter on the fourteenth day of the month. The Western Church observed Easter on Sunday. This quarrel threatened to lead to schism, and it was one of the reasons which led Constantine the Great to summon the leaders of both Eastern and Western churches to the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. This Council is best-remembered for the Nicene Creed, the great statement of Christian belief, but it also agreed the formula for determining the date of Easter.

The Council decreed that Easter should be the first Sunday after the Full Moon following the Spring Equinox, March 21st, but if that Full Moon fell on a Sunday, then Easter should be the Sunday after. The final phrases hint at the depth of the disagreement, for without them, it was possible that Easter might be celebrated at the time of the Full Moon, the fourteenth day of the lunar month, which was the Quartodecimian view. Even after the Council of Nicaea, the matter was not yet settled. There remained the problem of how to predict the date of the Full Moon. The astronomers knew of at least four different cycles which linked the lunar month with the year. There was the Greek cycle which equated 8 years to 99 lunar months. There was the Metonic cycle which made 19 years equal to 235 lunar months. The Roman cycle matched 84 years to 1039 lunar months. Finally, the cycle devised by Victorius in A.D. 457 took the 19-year Metonic cycle and the 28-year cycle of days of the week within the Julian calendar and made a cycle of 532 years.

Rome used the 532-year Victorian cycle, but the church in Britain and Ireland, which had always looked first to its Celtic roots, preferred the older Roman cycle of 84 years. For two centuries, Britain and Ireland celebrated Easter on a different Sunday to Rome in certain years. The conflict came to a head in A.D. 664 in the small fishing town of Whitby on the coast of east Yorkshire. There, at the Synod of Whitby, Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, tried to persuade Oswy, King of Mercia, to reject the 28-year cycle. In the end, Oswy announced that he would rather accept the authority of Saint Peter over that of Columba, saying: “Then will I rather obey the porter of Heaven, lest when I reach its gates, he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open.” Oswy wisely did not want to jeopardise his place in Heaven. Rome had won.


Gregorian Reform

The calendar of Julius Caesar was a durable attempt to make the average length of the calendar year match the length of the tropical year. Its simplicity - add an extra day to February every four years - was its greatest virtue. By a stroke of luck, the monk Dionysius Exiguus calculated the year of the Nativity in such a way that leap-years Anno Domini are those which are divisible exactly by four, which is an easy rule to remember. But this simplicity has a price. Four years in the Julian calendar are equal to 1461 days, so that the average length of the year is 365.25 days. This is 11 minutes 15 seconds longer than the true length of the tropical year. It may not seem very long - less than the time it takes to boil the kettle and make a cup of tea - but each year is too long by 11 minutes 15 seconds and the discrepancy builds up. After only 128 years, it becomes an entire day. Every 128 years, the seasons begin a day earlier in the calendar.

The ancient Egyptians lived quite happily with a calendar that allowed the seasons to slip by a day every four years. The Greeks and Romans were content to live with the haphazard intercalation required by a lunar calendar. The Christian church, however, had fought bitter internal battles over the calendar, and especially over the date of Easter, which the Council of Nicaea had linked inextricably with the date of the Spring Equinox. But the equinox was moving backward through the calendar! As early as the 8th century, the Venerable Bede had noticed that it no longer fell on March 21st, the day allotted to it by the Council of Nicaea. By the early Middle Ages, astronomers agreed that something must be done, but to change the calendar was not a step that could be taken lightly. Successive Popes studied the problem and declined to act. It fell to Pope Gregory XIII to correct the accumulated error and to ensure that future generations would not face the same dilemma.

Pope Gregory XIII was born Ugo Buoncompagni in 1502 in Bologna. He studied law and became a lecturer and judge in his native town. In 1539 he went to Rome, and in 1549 he was sent to the Council of Trent, an ecumenical council which met fitfully over the course of some twenty years from 1545 to discuss matters of importance to the Roman Church. In 1565, Ugo was elected a cardinal and in 1572, became Pope, taking the name of Gregory XIII. In 1577, Gregory sent a letter to all Catholic princes, describing his proposal for reforming the calendar. The letter was entitled “Compendium novae rationis restituendi Kalendarium”, or “Compendium of a New Way of Restoring the Calendar.” By 1582, aged 80, he was ready to act. He issued the apostolic letter Inter gravissimus which ensured his place alongside Julius Caesar as a man who could impose his will on the very course of time itself. The name of the apostolic letter simply means “among the most serious” and is taken from the first sentence of the letter. In full, this reads:
Among the most serious tasks, last perhaps but not least of those which in our pastoral duty we must attend to, is to complete with the help of God what the Council of Trent has reserved to the Apostolic See.

The final session of the Council of Trent, in December 1563, had left it to the Pope to complete the reform of the Mass and the breviary. The latter also incorporated a provisional calendar reform, intended to correct the calendar’s predictions of the dates of New Moon, which were by now four days out of step with the real Moon. New discrepancies were to be prevented by the inclusion of an additional leap day every 300 years, from 1800 onwards. Pope Gregory called together a commission to advise him on the reform of the calendar. One of its most assiduous members was Christopher Clavius. It was the commission’s recommendations that the Pope adopted in Inter gravissimus. The Gregorian reform of the calendar had three parts.

First, in order to restore the Spring Equinox to March 21st, the date set by the Council of Nicaea, ten days were to be omitted from the calendar in October 1582. Thursday October 4th was followed by Friday October 15th. The cycle of days of the week was not interrupted, but October 5th to 14th did not exist in the year 1582.

Second, in order to bring the average length of the calendar year into closer agreement with the length of the tropical year, three leap years were to be omitted in every four centuries.Every centurial year which was not divisible by 400 would not be a leap year. This was a clever ploy. The next centurial year was 1600, only eighteen years away at the time of Inter Gravissimus, and it would be leap year in the new calendar as well as the old. Nobody living through Gregory’s calendar reform would ever need to worry about the revised rule for leap years. Nonetheless, it had the effect of making 400 years equivalent to 146097 days, giving an average calendar year of 365.2425 days, just 26.8 seconds longer than the tropical year. This discrepancy would amount to one day in 3200 years. No further reform of the calendar would be needed until the 49th Century A.D.

Third, as the new leap year rule meant that the days of the week would no longer repeat every 28 years, the 532-year cycle of Victorius could no longer be used to construct tables of the dates of Easter. A new method for computing Easter had to be devised, and it required a set of arcane corrections to allow for the fact that ratio of the length of the calendar year to that of the lunar month had also changed. The dates of Easter in the new calendar would now repeat in a cycle which was 5,700,000 years long.

Old Style, New Style

The new calendar was accepted without delay in Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal, all of whom adopted it on the date stipulated in Inter gravissimus. France and Belgium moved to the new calendar in December 1582. The Catholic regions of Germany, Austria and Switzerland moved during 1583 and 1584; other regions of those countries waited in some cases until 1701.

In England, memories were still fresh in 1582 of Henry VIII’s split from the Church of Rome. Elizabeth I had been excommunicated by an earlier Pope in just such an apostolic letter as Inter gravissimus. Nonetheless, the calendar reform met a sympathetic attitude on the part of the secular authorities. The Queen referred the matter to John Dee, a noted mathematician, who responded favourably. Dee’s verdict was passed in turn to the astronomer Thomas Digges, Henry Savile, a patron of the sciences, and a Mr Chambers.

All three endorsed Dee. The matter was then referred in March 1583 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was invited to confer with his bishops and return a reply as quickly as possible, as the Queen intended to make a proclamation in May of the following year to announce the adoption of the new calendar. The Queen and her ministers did not receive the favourable reply that they had hoped for. The response from the English churchmen was full of invective against the Pope, who was denounced as the Antichrist. It was argued that what was done by the Council of Nicaea could only be undone by another council at which all the churches took part.

The Council of Trent was not such a council, and since the Protestant churches regarded the Pope as Antichrist, they could never enter into dialogue with the Catholic church. There could be no second Council of Nicaea. England would remain with the Old Calendar for another 170 years, ten days (eleven from
1700) behind of the rest of Europe and observing the New Year on March 25th. Letters to Europe carried two dates, one in the Old Style and one in the New Style.

Historians who study English events and dated documents prior to 1752 must be careful when interpreting dates. As an example, the letter from Sir Thomas Walsingham to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking, on behalf of the Queen, for his views on the calendar reform, was dated March 18th, 1582. This is an English date, in the Julian calendar. On the Continent, the year
1583 had already begun in January, and countries which had adopted the new calendar were ten days ahead. In Rome, the date was March 28th, 1583.
In the English calendar, the year changed on March 25th, a date which marked the Annunciation or Lady Day.

This date, together with June 24th (Midsummer Day), September 29th (Michaelmas) and December 25th, is one of the quarter-days when rents and other quarterly charges are traditionally paid. Thus in England, March 24th, 1582 was followed by March 25th, 1583. Historians and genealogists generally write these dates as March 24th, 1582/3 and March 25th, 1583. When writing about events in England and the Continent in the period after 1582, it is also common to indicate an English Julian date with the words “Old Style” and a Continental Gregorian date as “New Style.”

Reason finally prevailed over religious antagonism. In 1751, Parliament approved the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. By this time, the Julian calendar was eleven days out of step, and so September 2nd, 1752 was followed by September 14th. The same Act of Parliament decreed that from 1752, the year should begin on January 1st. The old calendar still lives on in the British tax year. This ends on April 5th each year, which is March 25th in the Old Style, plus eleven days.

The Age of Reason

The Gregorian calendar, aside from its rules for determining Easter, is hardly more complicated than the Julian calendar which it replaced. The regular procession of leap-years is interrupted only three times in four hundred years. Almost two centuries can elapse (from 1901 to 2099, for example) during which the Julian leap-year rule applies. And yet the Gregorian calendar will keep step with the seasons for three thousand years before a day’s correction is needed again.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, such considerations were secondary to the zeal to throw off everything which reminded the citoyens of the yoke of monarchy and the church. Thus the Gregorian calendar was replaced by one which paid no allegiance to religion. It was designed by astronomers and mathematicians and was held up as a product of the new Age of Reason. It harked back to the calendar of ancient Egypt. It had twelve equal months of thirty days, plus five or six festive days at the end of the year.

Each month was divided into three ten-day weeks or decades. The months were given names to reflect Nature and the changing seasons. They had a certain poetry. The winter months were Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose which translated to “Snow”, “Rain” and “Wind”. The spring brought Germinal, Floreal, Prairial which meant “Budding”, “Flowering” and “Meadows”. In summer, there were Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor or “Harvest”, “Heat” and “Fruitful”. Autumn rounded off the year with Vendemiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire or “Vintage”, “Foggy” and “Freezing”.


The five days at the end of the year were dedicated to the sans-culottides, the impoverished citizens who manned the barricades despite being under-dressed. The days were named after Virtue, Genius, Labour, Opinion and Recompense. In leap-years, the sixth day celebrated the French Republic itself. The New Year was to begin on the date of the Autumn Equinox.  The new calendar began on September 22nd, 1792. The French Republican calendar faced several difficulties. The first, and greatest, was that nobody outside France recognised it, so that the French were forced to put two dates – one Republican, one Gregorian - on any letter or document that was to be sent outside France.

The second arose when the citoyens realised that in place of 52 days of rest each year, the new calendar gave them only 36. The third was the rule which governed the New Year. To conform to truly scientific principles, and to reject all historical and religious precedents, it had been decided that New Year’s Day each year should be the day on which the Autumn Equinox fell, on the meridian of Paris. The problem is that the exact instant of the Equinox varies from year to year by up to 20 minutes either side of the mean instant that is predicted by the length of the tropical year.

The variation arises from a combination of the nutation or “nodding” of the Earth’s axis of rotation and the small deviations or perturbations of the position of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun due to the gravitational attraction of the other planet and the Moon. In order to predict the amount by which the Equinox is slow or fast, astronomers can construct complicated mathematical formulae for the perturbations and the nutation with the aid of computers. In 18th-century France, such calculations had to be done by hand, and this was very laborious and time-consuming. It was not a good way to design a calendar. In England, the Republican calendar met with derision. There was even a parody of the names of the months:

Autumn: Wheezy, Sneezy, Freezy
Winter: Slippy, Drippy, Nippy
Spring: Showery, Bowery, Flowery
Summer: Hoppy, Croppy, Poppy

France’s Republican Calendar, the calendar of the Age of Reason, survived almost thirteen years. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered that France should return to the Gregorian calendar.


The Islamic Calender (Crescent Moon)

There is one calendar which is central to the lives of a fifth of the world’s people and which owes nothing to Roman Emperors or Popes. It is a calendar of great simplicity, yet one whose observance has taxed the expertise of astronomers and mathematicians for over a thousand years. It is the Islamic calendar, and it is based solely upon the phases of the Moon.

The Islamic year contains twelve lunar months. It is roughly 355 days long, and moves around the seasons in a cycle of about 33 years. Each year, in the Islamic calendar, the seasons begin 10 or 11 days later than in the previous year. The beginning of the month is marked by the sighting of the new crescent Moon by a reliable witness. It is not enough to calculate the moment of astronomical New Moon. The crescent itself must be seen in the evening sky. Over the centuries, Muslim scholars and astronomers have attempted to establish rules to predict when the crescent Moon is likely to be visible. Such rules include criteria based upon the age of the Moon, the height of the Moon at sunset, and the length of time between Sunset and Moonset, or combinations of these.

Computers have been enlisted in the continuing search for a reliable rule, and national observatories and almanac offices are routinely asked to adjudicate in cases of disagreement. The question is especially important at the beginning and end of Ramadan, the month of fasting.


The Hebrew Calendar

In Biblical times, Jewish communities used a lunar calendar which included intercalary months at times determined by the Sanhedrin, the council of religious leaders. By the fourth century of the Christian era, this had been replaced by a calendar which followed explicit rules. It was still based upon the lunar month, but intercalary months were inserted according to the Metonic cycle which made 19 tropical years equal to 235 lunar months.

The first month of the Hebrew year is named Tishri, and it falls in the autumn. The second and third months, named Heshvan and Kislev, may have 29 or 30 days. In a leap year, the sixth month, Adar, is repeated, the first time (Adar I) with 30 days and the second (Adar II) with 29. The length of the Hebrew year is therefore rather variable. In an ordinary year, it can be 353, 354 or 355 days long; in a leap year, it may be 383, 384 or 385 days. Years of 353 or 383 days are called “deficient” years whilst those of 355 or 385 are called “complete”.  Leap years occur in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 of the 19-year Metonic cycle. There are a number of rules, known as dehiyyot, which are used to decide whether the first day of the new year (i.e. Tishri 1) must be postponed. These rules prevent Hoshana Rabba and Yom Kippur from falling on the Sabbath, and ensure that the adjustments do not cause the length of the year to fall outside the acceptable range.




The World Calendar

The limited success of the French Republican calendar is testimony to the enduring simplicity of the calendar handed down to the Western world by Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII. However, many individuals since 1582 have recognised the failings of the Gregorian calendar and suggested solutions. The lengths of the months are a haphazard sequence. The four quarters of the year are not of equal length - in a normal year, they are 90 days, 91 days, 92 days and 92 days. The year, whether 365 days or 366, does not contain a whole number of weeks, and so each day in the year can fall on any day of the week. The number of working days (i.e. not weekends) in a month varies from one year to the next. A phrase such as “the last Sunday in October” does not define a fixed day of the month.

Proponents of the “World Calendar” suggest a scheme which would eliminate all of these problems. They split the year into four quarters, beginning in January, April, July and October. The first month of each quarter would have 31 days, whilst the second and third months would have 30 days each, making exactly 13 weeks. There would be an extra day at the end of the year, called Year End Day, to bring the total to 365, and in leap-years the additional day would be placed in the middle of the year, between June and July.

Each quarter would begin on a Sunday. Since each quarter contains exactly 13 weeks, the sequence of days of the week would not be broken during the year, except in leap-years. Neither Year End Day and Leap Year Day would have a day of the week, in the same way that in the French Republican calendar, the five or six year-end days had their own names.

Towards the New Millennium
The approach of the year 2000 has been keenly anticipated in the Western world. We view the end of the old year and the birth of the new as a moment for reflection on things past and hope for things to come. How much more so, at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium.A thousand years ago, at the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, there was widespread panic that the end of the world was imminent. The Bible itself speaks of a thousand years as a special period of time, and links it with great upheaval. Today, a thousand years later, we can take a more rational view. We no longer dread the approach of the new millennium. Indeed, the Kiribati Republic, a widely-dispersed family of islands in the Pacific Ocean, has renamed one of its islands to “Millennium Island” and declared a change to the International Date Line so that it will be the first nation on Earth to see the sun rise on the morning of January 1st, 2000! In Britain, there was consternation in Lowestoft, the most easterly town in England, on learning that, despite its special geographical position, it would not be the first place in the country to see the sunrise in the new millennium. That honour goes instead to South Foreland, on the Kent coast just north of Dover.


2000? or 2001?

Does the new millennium begin on January 1st, 2000? Or must we wait another year, until New Year’s Day, 2001? The year 2000 has such a grip on the popular imagination that it seems futile to worry about the answer, but here it is:
The third millennium of the Christian era, and the 21st century, begins on January 1st, 2001. Why?

Because the year 1 B.C. was followed immediately by A.D. 1. There was no “year zero,” and so A.D. 1 was the first year of the Christian era. The first century of that era was complete after one hundred years, at the end of A.D. 100. The second century began with the year A.D. 101 and ended with A.D. 200.
The 19th century ran from 1801 to 1900 inclusive, and the 20th century from 1901 to 2000.

The year 2000 is the last year of the 20th century and of the second millennium. Calendar pedants will celebrate the beginning of the year 2000 (with the rest of humanity!) and the year 2001.

Epilogue

The calendar has a powerful hold on our lives and our imaginations. It has a rich and fascinating history, interwoven with the lives of remarkable men. It is mankind’s attempt to choreograph the eternal dance of the Sun, Moon and Earth. It has served well for two thousand years. No doubt it will serve for another two thousand!

About the author

David Harper has a B.Sc. in mathematics and astronomy from University College London and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Liverpool. In his early career, he was a professional astronomer. He taught astronomy and mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London and worked at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge. His areas of astronomical expertise are celestial mechanics (calculating the orbits of planets and satellites) and positional astronomy (calculating the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets). He currently serves on two Commissions of the International Astronomical Union (the world
governing body of astronomy) devoted to these fields. These days, David is paid to do computational biology, though he continues to enjoy astronomy in his spare time.