Islamic event date finder

Two ways to ask the question

People come to this looking for one of two things. Either they want one day tracked forward, when is Eid for the next few years, so leave can be booked, or they want a whole Hijri year laid out, to see what falls where. The tool does both; the conversion underneath is the same.

Why the dates move every year

A lunar year runs about 354 days against the solar year’s 365. Every Islamic day therefore falls about eleven days earlier in the Gregorian calendar than it did last year, and works its way round the seasons in roughly thirty-three. It is why Ramadan is a winter month for a stretch of years and a summer one for another.

What a calculated date can and cannot tell you

These dates come from the tabular Islamic calendar: a fixed arithmetic scheme. The calendar in daily use begins each month when the new crescent is sighted, which is announced locally and cannot be predicted. So a calculated date is an estimate: usually within a day, sometimes two, and different countries will not agree with each other.

That is fine for knowing roughly when to expect something, and not fine for anything that has to be exactly right. Where a day matters, the announcement is the answer.

The days that carry an extra caveat

Some entries here are less settled than others, and the tool says which on the row rather than presenting them all with the same confidence.

Mawlid is kept on the 12th of Rabi al-Awwal by most and the 17th in Twelver Shia tradition, and whether it is marked at all varies. The date of Isra and Mi’raj is traditional rather than established by consensus. Laylat al-Qadr is not a fixed night. It is sought across the odd nights of the last ten of Ramadan, and the 27th is listed only because it is the night most widely singled out.

Eid al-Adha is a special case

Many countries follow the Saudi announcement of Dhu al-Hijjah for Eid al-Adha so that it lines up with the standing at Arafah, while using local sighting for the rest of the year. That means Eid al-Adha can sit further from a converted date than other days do, and can differ from the same country’s own calendar.

How long a holiday lasts

The tool gives the day an observance falls on, not how many days off it brings. Eid is frequently a multi-day public holiday and the number of days is a matter of national practice rather than of the calendar, so no length is given here, any number would be wrong for most of the world.