Islamic New Year (Muḥarram)

When it falls

The first day of Muḥarram, the first month of the Islamic year, fixed by the sighting of the new crescent. The tenth day of the month, ʿĀshūrāʾ, is the day India keeps most widely.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The Islamic era begins from the Hijra, the Prophet Muḥammad's migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, chosen by the caliph ʿUmar as year one seventeen years later. The year is twelve lunar months and takes no account of the seasons, so it runs about eleven days short of the solar year.

Muḥarram is one of the four sacred months and its name means forbidden, since fighting was prohibited in it. Its tenth day, ʿĀshūrāʾ, is the day Ḥusayn, the Prophet's grandson, was killed with his family at Karbalā in 680 CE, and for Shīʿa Muslims the whole month is a time of mourning; for Sunnis the tenth is a recommended day of fasting, the day Mūsā (Moses) was delivered from Pharaoh.

The new year itself is quiet: there is no festival, only the change of date. In India Muḥarram means the processions of the tenth, with the taʿziya (models of Ḥusayn's tomb) carried through the streets of Lucknow and Hyderabad.

How the day is kept

• A fast on the ninth and tenth or the tenth and eleventh for Sunnis, following the Prophet's practice.
• Majlis gatherings through the first ten days for Shīʿa communities, retelling Karbalā, ending in the ʿĀshūrāʾ procession with the ʿalam standards and the taʿziya.
• In Hyderabad the Bibi ka Alam is carried on an elephant; in Lucknow the great Imāmbāṛā holds the majlis; in Tamil Nadu and Kerala Hindus join the processions of the tenth.
• Sweet dishes made and shared, sharbat given in the street from stalls (sabīl) for anyone passing, in memory of the thirst at Karbalā.

More new years