ʿUmar then said, “Excellent; establish the calendar.”
They asked, “From which year shall we begin?”
Some replied, “From the year of his commissioning.”
Others said, “From the year of his passing.” They finally concurred that it should be from the year of the Hijrah.
They next asked, “With which month shall we open the year?”
Some suggested, “Ramadan.”
Others proposed, “Rather Muḥarram, for it is the time when the pilgrims disperse after the Hajj, and it is a sacred month.” They therefore agreed on Muḥarram.
Ibn Jarīr (1) reports: Qutaybah narrated to us; Nūḥ b. Qays al-Ṭāḥī (2) narrated to us, from ʿUthmān b. Miḥṣan, that Ibn ʿAbbās used to say about the verse, “By the dawn, and by the ten nights” (al-Fajr 89:1–2), that it refers to Muḥarram—the dawn of the year.
It is also related from ʿUbayd b. ʿUmayr (3): “Muḥarram is the Month of Allah; it is the head of the year. In it the Kaʿbah is clothed, people date their documents by it, and silver coin is minted.”
Aḥmad (4) narrates: Rūḥ b. ʿUbādah told us; Zakarīyā b. Isḥāq told us, from ʿAmr b. Dīnār, who said, “The first person to date written documents was Yaʿlā b. Umayyah in Yemen. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, yet people dated events from the beginning of the year.”
Muḥammad b. Isḥāq (5) transmits from al-Zuhrī, and Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ from al-Shaʿbī, that they said: “The descendants of Ismāʿīl once dated events from the fire of Abraham; then from Abraham and Ismāʿīl’s rebuilding of the House; then from the death of Kaʿb b. Luʾayy; then from the Year of the Elephant. Thereafter ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb dated events from the Hijrah—either in the seventeenth or eighteenth year of his caliphate.” We have set out this discussion in detail, with its chains of transmission, in the biography of ʿUmar (6)—and praise belongs to Allah. The upshot is that the starting point of the Islamic calendar was fixed at the year of the Hijrah, and its first month was set as Muḥarram, as is widely known; this is the view of the overwhelming majority of the scholars.
Al-Suhaylī and others, however, report that Imām Mālik held: “The first month of the Islamic year is Rabīʿ al-Awwal, because that is the month in which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ emigrated.” [In another place al-Suhaylī supports this by citing the verse, “A mosque founded on piety from the very first day” (al-Tawbah 9:108), arguing that “the first day” means the Prophet’s ﷺ first day in Madinah, which, he maintains, should be counted as the first day of the calendar, just as the Companions agreed that the first year of the calendar is the year of the Hijrah.] (7)