Muslim calendar

Muslim calendar (also known as Moslem calendar, Arabic calendar, Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar) is calendar used in many Muslim countries of Asia like Iraq, Egypt, Syria etc. This calendar used primarily for religious purposes, but often you can see these dates on coins or banknotes.

In general, there are several differences to our well known Gregorian calendar:

• Usage of Arabic numbers instead of "normal". This problem can be solved easily, just look at this table:
  
  
  
  
• Another years count: Gregorian calendar starting years from Jesus Christ birth, Muslim calendar – from emigration of Islamic prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. This event occurred in 622 AD, so to convert between Muslim and Gregorian calendars we need just to add or to subtract 622 value. For example:

  Year 2008 (Gregorian date) is equal to 2008 – 622 = 1386. But this is not real Muslim year, it is year in Persian calendar, because:

• Muslim calendar is lunar calendar, not solar like Gregorian or Persian. One lunar year has about 354 days, so we need extra correction to find out real year. Easiest way to do this - multiply or divide year on 354/365 ≈ 0.97.

  In our case (2008 – 622) / 0.97 ≈ 1429 year in Muslim calendar.

So finally:

5 piastres (Egypt, 1972) with both Muslim and Gregorian dates.

As mentioned before, described formulas are very rough, so this way is inadmissible for precise calculations. Moreover Muslim year does not start on 1st of January, so 2008 year corresponds to 1428-1429 years of Islamic calendar.

Is it too difficult? Sometimes on coins/banknotes both Muslim and Gregorian years printed.

Online conversion

Press Arabic numbers shown on your coin:

Muslim year conversion