Kurdish Calendar - Calendar

Calendar

The Ancient and religious calendar system in the Near East and the Middle East was a lunisolar calendar, in which months are lunar but years are solar, i.e., they are brought into line with the course of the Sun. This was used in the early civilizations of the entire Middle East, except in Egypt and Greece. The formula was probably invented in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Study of cuneiform tablets found in this region facilitates tracing the development of time reckoning back to the 27th century BC, around the time that writing was invented. The evidence shows that the calendar is a contrivance for dividing the flow of time into units that suit society's current needs. Though calendar makers put to use time signs offered by nature—the Moon's phases, for example—they rearranged reality to make it fit society's constructions.

In Zagros and Mesopotamia the solar year was divided into two seasons, the "summer", which included the barley harvest in the second half of May or in the beginning of June, and the "winter", which roughly corresponded to today's fall-winter. Three seasons (Assyria) and four seasons (Anatolia) were counted in northerly countries, but in Zagros and Mesopotamia the bipartition of the year seemed natural. As late as 1800 BC, the prognoses for the welfare of the city of Mari, on the middle Euphrates, were taken for six months at a time. The Proto-Kurdish names for bipartition of the year still remain in the Kurdish language, passed down from the ancient Kurds who lived in Zagros. Summer (Tawistan) (seven months), or the land of lightness or the land of the sunshine, and Winter (Zimistan) (five months), or the land of the coldness. Various Kurdish dialects also call Tawistan "Tawsan, Hawín, Hamin and Tawsu", words that are based on "Taw" (light or sunbeam), the connective "i", and "stan" (state as in a place or state as in state of being). This suffix is used quite often in the Kurdish language to create compound words like "Kurdistan," the land of Kurds. Zimistan or "Zimsan, Zistan, Zisan, Zimistu, Zimsu, Zimstun" is made of "Zim" (cold), the connective "i", and the suffix "stan."

Today the Kurdish solar system calendar is normally 365 days with the remaining natural few hours being marked by a leap year every fourth year. It starts with the exact first day of spring according to the Gregorian calendar (March 20 or 21).

Like the Gregorian system, the Kurdish calendar divides the year into four seasons: Buhar, Tawistan or Hawín, Payiz and Zimistan. It divides the year into 12 months, each month into four weeks and every week into seven days. In the Kurdish calendar the first six months (comprising spring and summer) are each 31 days long, while the next five months (in fall and winter) are 30 days each. The last winter month, the 12th month in the annual calendar, is normally 29 days but 30 in the leap years. The months coincide with the 12 zodiac signs, i.e., the first month is identical with the duration of Aries, the second with Taurus, the third with Gemini, and so on.