Kurdish Calendar - Days of The Week

Days of The Week

As with the months of the year, a variety of names exist for each day of the week; although different Kurdish groups throughout Kurdistan follow the same principal structure for the "Kurdish days of the week". The Kurdish name for the first day of the week Sheme (Saturday) is in fact descended from Akkadian word Shabattu (In Sumerian Shabbât, Arabic Sabbath, Pahlavic Shunbat, Persian Shambed; Shamba; Shanbeh, even transferred to Greek as Sabbaton, German Samstag, Italian sabato, Spanish sábado, French Samedi). The Akkadian called the 15th day of the month, the day a full moon appears, Shabbattu. The question still remains why such an adoption was made for Kurdish and Persian days of the week.

It has been documented that the Babylonian calendar preserved a vestige of the original bipartition of the natural year into two seasons, just as the Babylonian months to the end remained truly lunar and began when the New Moon (a Shabattu) was first visible in the evening. The day began at sunset. From a New Moon (a Shabattu) up to the next New full Moon each day were named by a digit like one-Shabattu, two- Shabattu, three-Shabattu and so on. The seven-day week also originated in ancient Mesopotamia and became part of the Roman calendar in 321 BC.

At about the time of the conquest of Babylonia in 539 BC, the kings of Persia made the Babylonian cyclic calendar standard throughout the Persian Empire, which at the time comprised Kurdistan as well. The Seleucids, and afterwards the Parthian, rulers of Iran maintained the Babylonian calendar. The fiscal administration in northern Iran, from the 1st century BC, at least, used Zoroastrian month and day names in documents in Pahlavi (the Iranian language of Sasanian Persia). It became official under the Sasanian dynasty, from about AD. 226 until the Arab conquest in AD 621. The Arabs introduced the Muslim lunar year, but the Persians continued to use the Sasanian solar year, which in 1079 was made equal to the Julian year by the introduction of the leap year.

Probably under the same circumstances, the Kurds learned to use the same abductions for the days of a week. The first Kurdish day of the week Sheme, gets a digit prefix to mark the first, second, third, forth and fifth day after first day of week. The last day of the week is Héní or Júme (Friday) which is a free day of work for many cultures in Mideast. Héní (none, relax) make a best explanations for the last free day of the week in Kurdish. Júme, Jivín, Jemín and Jemu (gathering or jamboree) which is Avestay world Jem that have survived in Iran languages. For more efficiency on using the Kurdish name for the days of a week on Internet these abbreviations are suggested as Sh (Shem.), Ye (Yekshem.), Du (Dushem.), Sé (Sékshem.), Ca (Cakshem.), Pé (Pékshem.), and Ín.