Ancient Calendar Systems Series

Pre-Islamic Arab Calendar

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A lunisolar calendar of the Arabian Peninsula before Islam. The period when Ramaḍān still marked the scorching heat, Jumādā the dried-up water, and Rabīʿ the spring pasture. The calendar in which the Bedouin read the sky as a web of rain-and-star relations, the poet wrote of the Pleiades as an image of the night, and the soothsayer watched Suhayl as the breaker of the season. A reconstruction whose primary source is poetry.

Why This Reconstruction?

The pre-Islamic Arab calendar disappeared without leaving behind a clear Mesopotamian-style tablet corpus. No systematic astronomical text comparable to Babylon's MUL.APIN, Egypt's decan lists, or the Greek parapegma has reached us from the pre-Islamic era. Yet there is an enormous archive that tells us how this calendar worked, which stars brought which rains, and which season each month name carried: pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. The Muʿallaqāt, the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, the Dīwān of the Hudhayl, the Aṣmaʿiyyāt. Hundreds of poets, tens of thousands of verses. Each one filled with stars, months, rains, storms.

When the poet says Jumādā, he means dried-up water; when he says Rabīʿ, he means pasture; when he says Ramaḍān, he means scorching heat. But note: the pre-Islamic poet does not name the month directly. A line such as "Shaʿbān arrived and my camels grew thirsty" simply does not exist in the canon. The poet instead names the season through a star, a rainfall, a pasture, an abandoned campsite. Imruʾ al-Qays likens the Pleiades to the pearls on a woman's sash; Labīd has the spring constellations' rains wash the traces of the campsite; Abū Dhuʾayb uses al-Jabbār (Orion) as the orienting marker of the night hunt. Because these verses do not directly name a month, they are not weaker testimony; on the contrary, they are stronger, because they are first-hand documents that keep the calendar alive in its imagistic language.

This tool reconstructs that system in the light of poetry. In the year you select, the twelve months are laid out in sequence; for each month the etymology, the seasonal meaning, the verse fragments attributed to it where available, and the corresponding manāzil al-qamar (the twenty-eight lunar mansions) and anwāʾ (star-rain relations) are shown. The ashhur al-ḥurum (the four sacred months) are highlighted in gold; during these months warfare and blood feud were suspended. The pilgrimage and fair cycle, stretching from Dhū al-Qaʿda to Muḥarram, is mapped as a single religious-economic season. The nasīʾ debate places the classical Islamic astronomers' interpretation as intercalation (al-Bīrūnī, Abū Maʿshar) alongside the modern orientalist reading as the displacement of the sacred months (Mahmud Effendi, de Blois).

Modern academic scholarship (especially the two landmark 1993 books by Suzanne and Jaroslav Stetkevych) reads the pre-Islamic qaṣīda as a calendrical-ritual structure in its very form. The poet does not name a month because the qaṣīda itself (aṭlāl-raḥīl-fakhr) is the poetic architecture of the seasonal cycle. The section The Calendrical Structure of Poetry grounds this reading in four pilot cases: the cycle of sacred and profane months, the lyric expression of the anwāʾ system, the Pleiades as a temporal stamp, and the geographical anwāʾ map of Imruʾ al-Qays' storm scene.

The cuneiform tablets of Babylon, the stone walls of Egypt, the philosophical texts of Greece, the official Roman records, none of these are here. In their place stand the elegy of the sons of Hudhayl, Imruʾ al-Qays' secret visit to his beloved, and the empty traces of tents Labīd finds at Minā. Poetry is the language of the calendar; the pre-Islamic Arabs' own system for recording the sky.

Muḥarram 1: ···

The Twelve Months

The Meccan calendar of the pre-Islamic era. Each month begins with the first sighting of the new crescent in the sky of the Hejaz. Four months are ḥarām; in these months war and blood feud are taboo, and the fairs near the Kaʿba carry the economy of this inviolability. Click to see the etymology, the poetic record, the corresponding lunar mansions, and the anwāʾ star-rain pairings.

A note on the model: The dates on the cards are a pure lunar back-projection: counted back from the Hijri epoch (1 Muḥarram = 16 July 622, Julian) in steps of twelve lunar months. In this model Muḥarram begins about eleven days earlier each solar year and cycles through all the seasons in roughly 33 years. The months' etymological seasons (the scorching heat of Ramaḍān, the pasture of Rabīʿ) would only have stayed in place while a nasīʾ (intercalation) regime was in force; since it is not known to which years a month was added, the cards deliberately show two pieces of information side by side: the computed lunar date and the season the name evokes. Dates are given in the Julian calendar, the standard of historical date-writing for this era; crescent visibility is schematic (conjunction + 1-2 days), real sighting depends on weather and horizon conditions.
Ashhur al-ḥurum (sacred month)
Nasīʾ month (disputed intercalary month)

The Pilgrimage Season and the Fair Cycle

The sacred status of Dhū al-Qaʿda, Dhū al-Ḥijja, and Muḥarram rests not only on a religious but also on an economic logic. For three months, the fairs around the Kaʿba (ʿUkāẓ, Majannah, Dhū al-Majāz) gather tribes from across the Arabian Peninsula. Blood feud is suspended; trade, poetry, divination, and marriage are organised during this season.

Manāzil al-Qamar · The Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions

In its sidereal cycle the Moon lodges each night in a different constellation. There are twenty-eight mansions; in each one, the period of the Moon's conjunction with the Sun is linked to particular rains or winds. The system is parallel to the Indian nakshatra and the Chinese xiu; their shared origin is most likely Mesopotamian. In the pre-Islamic era it lived as the anwāʾ system; with Islam, astrological and mystical layers (Ibn ʿArabī's al-Futūḥāt) were added.

The Anwāʾ Year Wheel · The Star-Rain Calendar

How the anwāʾ system works: as one mansion sets in the west at dawn (suqūṭ), its raqīb, fourteen mansions away, rises heliacally in the east. The setting mansion is the holder of the nawʾ; it "brings" the rain, wind, or heat attached to it. In the classical count each nawʾ period lasts thirteen days; only al-Jabha's lasts fourteen, and this is how Ibn Qutayba completes the year (27 x 13 + 14 = 365). The schedule below is computed for the year you selected above: solar longitude from the Meeus series, mansion boundaries as equal divisions starting from beta Arietis, carried to the selected year by precession; the intervals therefore vary around ~13 days with the Sun's elliptical speed. Since the classical anwāʾ rest on real star observation, the dates are approximate.

al-Wasmī الوسمي
"The marking rain": the first rains of autumn; they stamp the earth and bring out the first pasture. They peak around the dawn setting of the Pleiades.
al-Shatawī الشتوي
The winter rains; the main season that decides the fate of herd and pasture.
al-Dafaʾī الدفئي
The rains of the warming period at the end of winter.
al-Ṣayf الصيف
The late-spring rains. In classical usage "ṣayf" is the name of this rain period; the word's present-day sense of "summer" is a later extension.
al-Ḥamīm الحميم
The last showers on the threshold of the summer heat; the dry season follows.
Nawʾ begins (Julian) Setting mansion (nawʾ holder) Rising raqīb Note

The names of the rain periods come from the classical anwāʾ literature (Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-Anwāʾ; see also Varisco 1987 and 1991 in the bibliography); their boundaries, and especially the position of al-dafaʾī, vary by source: Ibn Qutayba places it after the spring rains, the lexicographical tradition at the end of winter; the arrangement here follows Varisco's reconstruction. The dates in the schedule are computed with the equal-division mansion approximation; in an equal division some indicator stars (e.g. Aldebaran) fall into the neighbouring segment, and real observation may shift by a few days according to the star's brightness and the horizon.

The Pre-Islamic Sky

The stars the poet invokes most often. Each carries its own season, its own image, its own rain. These are at the same time the sky of Babylon, of Greece, and of India; the same star is named with the same function in three languages.

The Nasīʾ Debate

The Qurʾān (Tawba 36-37) strictly forbids nasīʾ ("postponement"). This prohibition confirms that an active practice existed in the pre-Islamic period. But what that practice was is still disputed. Two main interpretations.

Classical Interpretation · Intercalation

Abū Maʿshar (787-886 CE) · al-Bīrūnī (973-1050 CE) · al-Masʿūdī

The pre-Islamic Arabs, in a manner similar to the Jewish calendar, added a thirteenth month every two or three years. This anchored the calendar to the seasons; it kept Ramaḍān in summer and Rabīʿ in spring. Nasīʾ was the name of this intercalation.

In al-Āthār al-bāqiya, al-Bīrūnī mentions an intercalation decision announced during the pilgrimage season by an official (the qalammas or nāsiʾ) of the Banū Kināna tribe. A nineteen-year cycle with seven intercalations (similar to the Metonic cycle) or a twelve-year cycle with four intercalations have been proposed.

The strongest argument in favour of this interpretation is poetic: in the last century before Islam, the month names were used in active accord with their seasonal meanings. A pure lunar calendar would invert the seasons over 33 years, but no such drift is visible in the poetry.

Modern Interpretation · Displacement of the Sacred Months

Mahmud Effendi (1858) · A. Moberg · F. C. de Blois (EI²)

Nasīʾ was not an intercalation but the practice of shifting the position of the sacred months. When tribes wished to pursue a blood feud, they would push the Muḥarram of a given year onto Ṣafar, and so the identity of the "forbidden" time was manipulated. The pilgrimage too could then fall in a different season because of this shift.

Evidence for this interpretation comes from an early Sabaean inscription: the verb nsʾw is used in the sense of "postponing a religious rite because of war"; not intercalation, but the postponement of an event.

If this view is correct, by the early years of Islam the Arab calendar was already purely lunar. The prohibition of nasīʾ only halted a social manipulation; it was not a calendar reform. This reading, however, is hard to reconcile with the poetic evidence.

With Islamic history, the Hijri years (1 AH = 1 Muḥarram, 622 CE) were standardised under ʿUmar. The Hijri calendar is purely lunar; no nasīʾ is used. As a result, Ramaḍān can fall in any season; the original seasonal meaning of the month names today is an etymological heritage.

Dahr · The Pre-Islamic Arab Conception of Fate

إِنَّمَا الدَّهْرُ الَّذِي يُفْنِينَا

"It is only dahr that destroys us."

A common pre-Islamic motif · recurring in Labīd, Zuhayr, and many other poets

Dahr (دَهْر) and zamān (زَمَان) are the central concepts of fate in pre-Islamic poetry. An invisible, impersonal, unquestionable force; passing time that consumes everything. This resembles the Hellenistic heimarmene or the Roman fatum, but it lives without an astronomical technique, as an intuitive-poetic faith in fate. The stars are the witnesses of dahr; the rains are its seals. With the coming of Islam, the role of dahr is theologically redefined; a hadith, "Do not curse dahr, for God is dahr", binds the blind time of pre-Islamic poetry to divine will. One of the critical points in the poetic-religious transition. Time perception here is not theological but cosmological; the stars and seasons are the visible face of dahr, and human life is only a brief line of its record.

The Calendrical Structure of Poetry

Why does the pre-Islamic poet never directly name a month, yet his entire poem carries a calendrical structure? The verse, the season, the star, the rainfall, the aṭlāl: all are parts of a single cosmological language.

To search pre-Islamic poetry for a directly month-specific line such as "Shaʿbān arrived and my camels grew thirsty" is to ask the wrong question. The poet does not speak that language. He names the season through a star, a rainfall, a pasture, an abandoned campsite. These are not images chosen at random; they are concrete markers of the pre-Islamic Arab's calendar-reading system. The star-rain pairing he calls anwāʾ, the nightly shift of the lunar mansions he calls manāzil al-qamar, the cycle of sacred and profane months whose imprint the aṭlāl bears years later, all are parts of a single calendar.

This section examines the four pilot cases in which the pre-Islamic poetic canon offers direct testimony; three from the Muʿallaqāt canon and one from the structural analysis of the qaṣīda. Each shows, in a concrete text, how the poetic evidence is interwoven with the calendar-ritual system. The work of Suzanne and Jaroslav Stetkevych (1993), Daniel M. Varisco's anwāʾ research (1989-1994), and Ibn Qutayba's Kitāb al-Anwāʾ (mid-9th century CE; Hyderabad 1956) all support this reading.

In short: the poet does not name the month, because the star and the rainfall are already the month itself. Poetry carries the calendar; the calendar lives in poetry. This section unfolds that weave.

I
The Cycle of Sacred and Profane Months
The aṭlāl as the unit by which years are counted

The opening nine verses of Labīd b. Rabīʿa's Muʿallaqa are the most powerful expression of pre-Islamic poetry's calendrical consciousness. When the poet sees the effaced campsites in the valley of Minā, he counts the years that have passed over them, but he counts them not as an ordinary unit of time but as the cycle of sacred and profane months. This is the direct poetic evidence of the pre-Islamic Arab's calendar consciousness.

Muʿallaqa · Verse 3
دِمَنٌ تَجَرَّمَ بَعْدَ عَهْدِ أَنِيسِها
حِجَجٌ خَلَوْنَ حَلَالُها وَحَرَامُها

"These are dwelling places; since the departure of those who lived in them, many long years have rolled by, full with the proper reckoning of profane and sacred months."

Labīd b. Rabīʿa al-ʿĀmirī (d. ca. 661 CE) · from William Wright's English translation (1961, Ursula Schedler edition)

The Arabic phrase ḥalāluhā wa-ḥarāmuhā ("its profane and sacred") in the original verse is an unambiguous calendrical reference. The poet measures the years that have passed not in ordinary days but in cycles of sacred-and-profane months. A year is the sum of twelve months following one another, from the sacred status of Muḥarram to the profane status of Shaʿbān, and the aṭlāl is the place over which this cycle has rolled many times.

Philological Evidence
The Arabic ḥijaj (حِجَج) is the plural of ḥijja; a full year running from one pilgrimage season to the next. The year here is measured by the pilgrimage (Dhū al-Ḥijja) cycle; the calendar is directly bound to ritual.
Classical Commentary
Al-Anbārī (d. 916) in his commentary on the Muʿallaqāt glosses this verse: "The years rolled by and passed with their sacred and profane months." The commentator confirms this idiom as a calendrical counting unit.

Context: This verse stands at the heart of the Muʿallaqa's opening sequence (vv. 1-9). First the campsites have been effaced (vv. 1-2), then the years are counted by the sacred-profane cycle (v. 3), then the rains of the spring constellations come (v. 4), then spring revives plants and animals (vv. 6-7). The sequence calendar, rain, fertility, renewal is the full expression of the ancient Near Eastern seasonal-ritual pattern.

II
The Poetic Expression of the Anwāʾ System
The lyric map of star-and-rain knowledge

The technical name for the pre-Islamic Arab's reading of the sky is anwāʾ. Each of the twenty-eight mansions has a conjunction period with the Sun that is linked to particular rains; every rain carries its own star. This knowledge is not a technical calendar but a directly poetic language. When the poet says "The spring constellations gave their rain," he names a specific astronomical cycle.

Muʿallaqa · Verse 4
رُزِقَتْ مَرابيعَ النُّجومِ وَصابَها
وَدْقُ الرَّواعِدِ جَوْدُها فَرِهامُها

"They were granted the rains of the spring constellations; the water of the thundering clouds fell on them in downpour and in drizzle."

Labīd b. Rabīʿa · Muʿallaqa, v. 4 · Wright's translation

The phrase marābīʿ al-nujūm (مَرابيعَ النُّجومِ) translates not as plain "spring stars" but as "star groups that bring the rains of spring." In the anwāʾ literature (Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-Anwāʾ fī Mawāsim al-ʿArab, Hyderabad 1956) these star groups are listed systematically: al-Dabarān, al-Haqʿa, al-Hanʿa, al-Dhirāʿ. In a single line of verse, Labīd states the title page of an astronomical calendar.

Anwāʾ Literature
In Kitāb al-Anwāʾ Ibn Qutayba lists each of the twenty-eight mansions in turn, names the corresponding rain and season for each, and cites for each the line from a pre-Islamic poet in which it is named. This work is the philological archive of the anwāʾ system.
Modern Scholarship
Daniel Martin Varisco (Studia Islamica 74, 1991: "The Origin of the Anwāʾ in Arab Tradition") reads the anwāʾ books not as borrowed "folk astronomy" but as the direct record of the pre-Islamic Bedouin calendar. It can be compared to a sworn testimony.

Labīd's next verses (vv. 5-9) work out the consequences of this rain: the cloud of the night, the cloud of the morning, the cloud of the evening follow one another; wild rocket sprouts; the gazelle and the ostrich bring forth their young; antelopes rest their fawns; the flood reopens the traces of the campsite. These nine verses are the lyric phenomenology of the anwāʾ system; the sequence star, rain, fertility, renewed dwelling.

An important distinction: This verse does not say "Rabīʿ al-Awwal," yet what it says is exactly what Rabīʿ al-Awwal is. The poet states not the name of the month but the astronomical content of the month.

III
The Star as a Time Stamp
The rising of the Pleiades as the hand of poetry's clock

The pre-Islamic poet stamps the time of an event not with an ordinary hour or the name of a day, but with the position of a star in the sky. The most frequent reference is the Pleiades (الثُّرَيَّا, al-Thurayyā) and their heliacal rising. The Muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays contains one of the best-known uses of this device.

Muʿallaqa · the Pleiades verse
إِذَا ما الثُّرَيَّا في السَّماءِ تَعَرَّضَتْ
تَعَرُّضَ أَثْنَاءِ الوِشاحِ المُفَصَّلِ

"I slipped past my enemies when the Pleiades appeared in the sky, like the parts of an ornate sash falling sideways, with the gaps in it worked with pearls and gems."

Imruʾ al-Qays al-Kindī (d. ca. 540 CE) · Muʿallaqa, Pleiades verse · compiled from the translations of William Jones and Sir Charles Lyall

The Pleiades' first appearance on the horizon just before dawn (heliacal rising) stamps, in pre-Islamic observation, a particular season (early autumn) and a particular hour of the night. With this verse Imruʾ al-Qays does not say "at that time"; he says "the Pleiades had risen at that moment." He fixes the moment of the event with an astronomical clock.

Astronomical Content
The heliacal rising of the Pleiades begins, at the latitude of the Arabian Peninsula, in mid-May; their culmination at night falls in October-November. The poet's pointed naming of this star stamps the seasonal position of the event.
Echo in the Qurʾān
Sūrat al-Najm (53:1): wa-l-najmi idhā hawā ("by the star, when it sets"); from the Safaitic inscriptions and the anwāʾ books down to the traditional view that has come from the pre-Islamic period, al-najm here is most probably the Pleiades.

In the same Muʿallaqa Imruʾ al-Qays also paints his night with the stars: "What a night it was, with you, the stars as if bound to Mount Yadhbul by firm ropes, the Pleiades as if drawn from the rock to a barn by linen strings." The endless stretching of the night, the stars seeming not to move; this image of an endless night is the poetic expression of a technical culture in which the wakeful observer tracked the motion of the stars.

Comparison: In ancient Greece, Hesiod in Erga kai Hēmerai uses exactly the same technique: he tells the farmer when to plough by "when the Pleiades set." The pre-Islamic star-calendar language is one branch of the shared astronomical culture of the Mediterranean basin.

IV
The Geography of Rain and Storm
The closing twelve verses of Imruʾ al-Qays' Muʿallaqa

The last twelve verses of Imruʾ al-Qays' Muʿallaqa are entirely a description of rain and storm. This is the passage that even the classical Arabic commentators set apart as "the most marvellous section of the Muʿallaqa." The poet begins from the sky; he likens the lightning to a monk's lamp; he names, one by one, the mountains and valleys onto which the rain falls.

Muʿallaqa · storm scene, opening
أَصاحِ تَرَى بَرْقاً أُريكَ وَميضَهُ
كَلَمْعِ اليَدَيْنِ في حَبِيٍّ مُكَلَّلِ

"O friend, do you see the lightning? Let me show you its flashing: like the gleam of two hands among piled, crowned clouds."

Imruʾ al-Qays · Muʿallaqa, storm section, opening · Suheil Laher's translation

After this opening the poet names eleven different places onto which the rain falls: ʿUdhayb, Dārij, Yadhbul, Sitār, Qaṭan, Quṭayfa, Taymāʾ, Thabīr, Mujaymir, al-Ghabīṭ, the Wādī Jiwāʾ. These place names are not chosen at random; they are the real geographical map of Najd and the Hejaz. The poet follows the rain; the direction of the cloud, its speed, the height it covers, the valley in which it forms a river, all are observed and measured.

  • The lightning is the gleam of two hands among crowned clouds, then like a monk's lamp filled with olive oil
  • At Quṭayfa the rain lays low even the large trees
  • On Mount Kanān the wild goats come down by every slope
  • At Taymāʾ not a single palm tree stands; only stone-bound towers hold
  • Mount Thabīr, covered with rain, resembles an old man in a striped robe
  • By morning Mujaymir is encircled with foam, like the wheel of a spinning loom
  • The al-Ghabīṭ plain wears a green mantle, like cloth spread out by a merchant
  • At Jiwāʾ the whistling birds sing as if they had drunk spiced wine

This list is the instantaneous geographical map of a single storm. As the classical commentators warn, "Sitār, Yadhbul, and Qaṭan cannot be seen from a single vantage point"; the poet stages this with the wide imaginative reach of poetry. Yet each name is a real place, and the list reflects the real seasonal geography of an actual tribe. The rain poem is the dramatic poetic narration of anwāʾ knowledge.

Anwāʾ and Geography
In Kitāb al-Anwāʾ Ibn Qutayba classifies the rains not only by mansion but also by place: the rain of Tihāma, the rain of Najd, the rain of al-Yamāma. The pre-Islamic Bedouin calendar, while astronomical, is also geographically layered.
Poetic Function
This final storm scene of the Muʿallaqa takes the place of the poem's fakhr (boast) section. The poet ends by praising not himself but the splendour of the rain: nature itself becomes the poet's witness. This is the summit of the pre-Islamic perception of dahr-time.

Conclusion: This closing of the Muʿallaqa is the expression of the principle that it is not "the poet who observes the calendar" but "the calendar that speaks the poet." The rain names itself; the poet is only its scribe.

The Stetkevych Paradigm: The Qaṣīda Is Itself a Ritual

The structure of the poem is the map of a seasonal cycle

In The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Cornell, 1993), Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych argues that the three principal sections of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda (nasīb, raḥīl, fakhr) correspond to the three stages of the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep's rite of passage. On this reading, pre-Islamic poetry is, in its form, a ritual structure, and that structure is directly a symbolic map of the seasonal cycle.

I
Nasīb
نَسِيب
Separation
The abandoned campsite (aṭlāl), the lost beloved. The phase of drought: the place where life has ended, the trace left behind. Seasonally, the lean season; ritually, the encounter with the dead.
II
Raḥīl
رَحِيل
Liminality
A solitary journey across the desert, the description of the she-camel or wild ox. Seasonally, the moment of transition; neither scarcity nor abundance. Ritually, the movement along the threshold between the wild and the civilised.
III
Fakhr
فَخْر
Aggregation
Boast, the tribe's success, feast, rain. Seasonally, the season of plenty; ritually, reincorporation into the community. Labīd's spring rains in v. 4 open up exactly here.

Stetkevych's thesis is this: when the pre-Islamic poet composes his qaṣīda, he does not only narrate events; he performs the symbolic architecture of a rite of passage. The aṭlāl (drought and death), the raḥīl (the threshold wandering), the fakhr (the coming of rain and the renewal of life). The poetic record of the seasonal cycle that runs through the year is the qaṣīda form itself.

In her analysis of Imruʾ al-Qays' Muʿallaqa (chapter 7), Stetkevych also adds Theodor Gaster's "seasonal pattern" myth-ritual paradigm. According to this paradigm, the basic recurring structure of ancient Near Eastern myth and ritual is pollution, purification, rebirth. The final storm scene of the Muʿallaqa is exactly the poetic expression of this rebirth: the rain comes, the polluted desert is purified, fertility returns, the hero becomes potent.

In The Zephyrs of Najd (Chicago, 1993), Jaroslav Stetkevych defines the nasīb as "the places of lost happiness" and shows the structural parallel between the aṭlāl motif and the Arcadia image of European pastoral poetry. This reading situates pre-Islamic poetry not as a local Arab phenomenon but as one branch of the shared pastoral-calendrical poetic tradition of the Mediterranean basin; the season-ritual-poem triangle is a reflection of a universal cosmological language.

Another group of scholars (a thesis from Najah University in Palestine; F. A. S. Alshormani in Umm al-Qura Journal, 2024, "Rituals of the First Poem") argues that the aṭlāl motif is connected to an older Inanna/Ishtar fertility ritual pattern. On this reading, the poet's weeping at the abandoned campsite is the form in which the Sumero-Akkadian motif of the drying of nature after the goddess's departure has been transmitted into Arabic poetry; a talbiyāt (invocation) structure that waits for the rain and calls back the goddess. This view is more contested, but the question of the aṭlāl-rain axis extending back into myth-ritual roots remains an active discussion in the academic literature.

Conclusion: The pre-Islamic qaṣīda is a single utterance of the "poet-calendar-ritual" triangle. The verse is a moment, the qaṣīda a cycle, the canon of qaṣīdas a cosmological language. The entire tool is the concrete ground of this reading.

Pre-Islamic Poets

The top tier of the poetry. The seven poets of the Muʿallaqāt, the corpus of the Hudhayl tribe, the tribal poets. Each spoke his own season, his own star, his own rain.

Primary and Secondary Sources

  • Muʿallaqāt; ed. A. J. Arberry, The Seven Odes, London: George Allen, 1957.
  • Dīwān of Imruʾ al-Qays; ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1958.
  • Dīwān of Labīd; ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Kuwait: Wizārat al-Irshād, 1962.
  • Mufaḍḍaliyyāt; ed. and trans. C. J. Lyall, The Mufaḍḍalīyāt: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes, Oxford: Clarendon, 1918-1921 (3 vols.).
  • Dīwān al-Hudhaliyyīn; ed. Sulaymān Fārūq, Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1965 (3 vols.).
  • al-Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya; trans. C. E. Sachau, The Chronology of Ancient Nations, London: William H. Allen, 1879.
  • Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-Anwāʾ; ed. M. Ḥamīdullāh and C. Pellat, Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1956.
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Lunar Mansions, Fairs and Poets Index

The twelve months of the pre-Islamic Arab calendar, the 28 lunar mansions (manāzil al-qamar), the anwā' stars, the fairs of the pilgrimage season and the poets of the Mu'allaqāt. Names are given in transliteration and in Arabic script.

The Twelve Months the pre-Islamic Arab year

Four of them are haram months, when warfare was forbidden.

1 Muḥarram (مُحَرَّم) haram month
Forbidden / inviolable · Beginning of the year; late autumn - early winter · The first month of the year and one of the four sacred months. The root of Muḥarram is ḥ-r-m: forbidden, sacred, inviolable. In this month war and blood feud are taboo; it is the month of the return after the pilgrimage and of finishing the commercial business left over from the fair of ʿUkāẓ. Classical sources note that Muḥarram was earlier called al-Muʾtamir, and only later, as its sacred status hardened, did it take the name Muḥarram.
2 Ṣafar (صَفَر)
Empty, yellow, exposed; the emptying of dwellings, or the yellowing of autumn · Late autumn - winter · The second month. Ṣafar carries two basic senses: (1) empty, the period when, with the end of Muḥarram's sacred status, dwellings are emptied for trade and raids; (2) yellow, the autumn yellowing of plant leaves. Some sources mention Muḥarram and Ṣafar together as al-Ṣafarān ('the two empty months'). In classical Islamic sources Ṣafar is considered 'inauspicious'; this belief passes from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period and is rejected in hadith.
3 Rabīʿ al-Awwal (رَبِيع الأَوَّل)
First spring / first pasture (rabīʿ = spring, fresh grass) · Early spring; the most vital month for the shepherd-Bedouin · The root rabīʿ means 'fresh grass, spring pasture.' This name confirms that, in the last century of the pre-Islamic era, the month genuinely fell in spring; it is the strongest linguistic evidence that the month names tracked the seasons, and therefore that intercalation was active. Critical for the shepherd-Bedouin: the herds are driven out to the new pastures after the rains, the camels give birth, the tribes migrate to the summer pastures. The post-pilgrimage business cycle is completed and the tribes prepare for the new season.
4 Rabīʿ al-Thānī (رَبِيع الآخِر)
Late spring / late pasture · Late spring · The fourth month. The second half of Rabīʿ; the end of the pasture season. In some sources it appears as Rabīʿ al-Thānī (second spring). The period when spring rains diminish, when migration begins for the herdsman. Livestock are sold and the herds rearranged.
5 Jumādā al-Ūlā (جُمَادَى الأُولَى)
First drying / freezing (jamada = to freeze, to dry) · Early summer or winter (interpretive variant) · The root of Jumādā is j-m-d: to freeze, to solidify. Two interpretations: (1) early summer, the drying season when waters evaporate (classical historians); (2) winter, the season when waters freeze (some sources, based on observations of cold nights). In the interior of the Arabian Peninsula winter nights can drop below freezing. The feminine grammatical gender of Jumādā (the feminine pattern Fuʿālā) gives it a particular place in classical Arabic linguistics; in poetry it is named with feminine forms.
6 Jumādā al-Ākhira (جُمَادَى الآخِرَة)
Late drying / freezing · Early summer or late winter (depending on interpretation) · The second half of Jumādā. On the early-summer reading, the height of the drying season, the period when the waters have actually withdrawn. The suffix al-Ākhira (the latter) is feminine; it follows the grammatical femininity of Jumādā. For the Bedouin, the period of preparation for the summer migration and the move to summer pastures near the watercourses.
7 Rajab (رَجَب) haram month
Respect, awe, reverence (rajaba = to exalt, to revere) · Summer · The root of Rajab is r-j-b: to exalt, to recall with awe and respect. One of the four sacred months but, unlike the other three, not consecutive; it is the sacred month that stands alone in the middle of the year. The pre-Islamic Arabs would remove the heads from their spears in this month and abstain from fighting. For this reason it is also linked to another root, rajaba ('to draw out'). It is the month most especially honoured at the Kaʿba by the Muḍar confederation of tribes; for that reason it is also called Rajab Muḍar.
8 Shaʿbān (شَعْبَان)
Dispersal, division, separation (shaʿaba = to branch, to divide) · Summer · The root of Shaʿbān is sh-ʿ-b: to branch, to scatter. The month in which, once the sacred status of Rajab has ended, the tribes scatter in search of water or prepare for raids. The two etymologies are close: distributing the herds among different sources during summer, when water is scarce, and resuming military movements are two faces of the same logic. Some sources also refer to Rajab and Shaʿbān together as al-Rajabān.
9 Ramaḍān (رَمَضَان)
Scorching heat, burning (ramaḍa = to scorch, to burn with fire) · Height of summer · The root of Ramaḍān is r-m-ḍ: to scorch, to burn. The direct meaning of the word in Arabic is 'scorching heat.' In the last century of the pre-Islamic era this month genuinely fell at the height of summer, the hottest period of the year. The concreteness of the etymology is among the clearest linguistic proofs of the calendar's alignment with the seasons. After the Hijri reform abolished nasīʾ, Ramaḍān began to fall in any season; today the original meaning of the word Ramaḍān is a poetic-etymological heritage.
10 Shawwāl (شَوَّال)
Raising, lifting the tail (shāla = to lift) · End of summer · The root of Shawwāl is sh-w-l: to raise, to lift. In the classical explanation, this is the month in which, if a she-camel is pregnant, her milk diminishes (the expression shālat bi-dhanabihā, 'she lifts her tail,' is a sign of pregnancy or of drying up). In pre-Islamic times it was considered inauspicious; it was avoided for marriages. This belief was deliberately broken by Islam (the marriage of ʿĀʾisha to the Prophet Muḥammad took place in Shawwāl, and this carries a symbolic meaning).
11 Dhū al-Qaʿda (ذُو القَعْدَة) haram month
Possessor of sitting (qaʿada = to sit); the month of leaving off war and sitting still · Early autumn; preparation before the pilgrimage · Dhū al-Qaʿda: from the verb qaʿada, 'to sit.' In this month the pre-Islamic Arabs leave off war and raids and sit in their dwellings and tribal centres. The third sacred month (the first of three consecutive sacred months together with Dhū al-Ḥijja and Muḥarram). The pilgrimage season begins: the fair of ʿUkāẓ (near Mecca) opens at the start of Dhū al-Qaʿda and lasts for twenty days. Tribes from across the Arabian Peninsula stream to it.
12 Dhū al-Ḥijja (ذُو الحِجَّة) haram month
Possessor of the pilgrimage; the month of the Ḥajj (ḥijja = pilgrimage visit) · Autumn; height of the pilgrimage · Dhū al-Ḥijja: the month of the pilgrimage. In the pre-Islamic period the pilgrimage season is prepared throughout Dhū al-Qaʿda with the fairs, and reaches its peak in the first ten days of the month. From the 8th to the 13th day the pilgrims circumambulate the Kaʿba in Mecca, stand at ʿArafāt, and spend the night at Muzdalifa. The fairs of Majannah and Dhū al-Majāz fall in this month; especially Dhū al-Majāz, which is held next to ʿArafāt. Poetry and oratory contests reach their height; tradition holds that the original Muʿallaqāt were recited at Dhū al-Majāz. In this period blood feud is absolutely suspended; enemy tribes walk together in peace across the same square.

The 28 Lunar Mansions manāzil al-qamar

The Moon lodges in one mansion each night; the anwā' tradition read rain and season from their risings and settings.

1 al-Sharaṭān (the two signs) الشَّرَطَان
β γ Ari · Sheratan, Mesarthim · Aries
2 al-Buṭayn (the little belly) البُطَيْن
δ ε Ari · Botein · Aries
3 al-Thurayyā (the little plural) الثُّرَيَّا
M45 Tau · Pleiades · Taurus
4 al-Dabarān (the follower) الدَّبَرَان
α Tau · Aldebaran · Taurus
5 al-Haqʿa (the mark on the forehead) الهَقْعَة
λ Ori · Meissa · Head of Orion
6 al-Hanʿa (the camel brand) الهَنْعَة
γ Gem · Alhena · Gemini
7 al-Dhirāʿ (the arm / paw) الذِّرَاع
α β CMi · Procyon · Canis Minor
8 al-Nathra (the nostril) النَّثْرَة
M44 Cnc · Praesepe (the manger) · Cancer
9 al-Ṭarf (the eye / glance) الطَّرْف
κ Cnc, λ Leo · Between Cancer and Leo
10 al-Jabha (the forehead) الجَبْهَة
α η γ ζ Leo · Regulus + · Leo's forehead
11 al-Zubra (the mane) الزُّبْرَة
δ θ Leo · Zosma, Chertan · Leo's mane
12 al-Ṣarfa (the turning point) الصَّرْفَة
β Leo · Denebola · Leo's tail
13 al-ʿAwwāʾ (the howler) العَوَّاء
β γ η Vir · Zavijava + · Virgo
14 al-Simāk (the elevated) [Spica] السِّمَاك
α Vir · Spica · Virgo
15 al-Ghafr (the cover) الغَفْر
ι κ λ Vir · The hem of Virgo
16 al-Zubānā (the scorpion's claws) الزُّبَانَى
α β Lib · Zubenelgenubi · Libra
17 al-Iklīl (the crown) الإِكْلِيل
β δ π Sco · The head of Scorpius
18 al-Qalb (the heart) القَلْب
α Sco · Antares · the heart of Scorpius
19 al-Shawla (the sting) الشَّوْلَة
λ υ Sco · Shaula · the sting of Scorpius
20 al-Naʿāʾim (the ostriches) النَّعَائِم
σ φ ζ τ Sgr · Sagittarius
21 al-Balda (the empty land) البَلْدَة
between Sgr and Cap · The gap between Sagittarius and Capricornus
22 Saʿd al-Dhābiḥ (the fortune of the sacrificer) سَعْد الذَّابِح
α β Cap · Algedi · Capricornus
23 Saʿd Bulaʿ (the swallower) سَعْد بُلَع
μ ν Aqr · Aquarius
24 Saʿd al-Suʿūd (the fortune of fortunes) سَعْد السُّعُود
β Aqr · Sadalsuud · Aquarius
25 Saʿd al-Akhbiya (the fortune of the tents) سَعْد الأَخْبِيَة
γ Aqr · Sadachbia · Aquarius
26 al-Fargh al-Muqaddam (the forward well-mouth) الفَرْغ المُقَدَّم
α β Peg · Markab, Scheat · Pegasus
27 al-Fargh al-Muʾakhkhar (the rear well-mouth) الفَرْغ المُؤَخَّر
γ Peg, α And · Algenib, Alpheratz
28 Baṭn al-Ḥūt (the belly of the fish) بَطْن الحُوت
β And · Mirach · Andromeda

Anwā' Stars heralds of rain

The principal stars used to forecast season and rainfall.

al-Thurayyā الثُّرَيَّا
Pleiades · α-η Tauri · M45 · Herald of the rains. Their heliacal rising (early May) is taken as the end of the rainy season, their heliacal setting (early November) as the beginning of a new rain period. The star most often invoked in pre-Islamic poetry. The same star with the same function in Hesiod's Boeotia and in the MUL.APIN of Assyria. Nawʾ al-Thurayyā is itself the name of a rain.
al-Shiʿrā الشِّعْرَى
Sirius · α Canis Majoris · The beginning of summer. There are two al-Shiʿrās: al-Shiʿrā al-Yamāniyya (the southern Sirius, the proper Sirius) and al-Shiʿrā al-Ghumayṣāʾ (the northern Sirius, Procyon). This distinction is evidence of systematic observation. The star of high summer; the flooding of the Nile in Egypt, the Dog Days in Greece, the scorching summer in Arabia.
al-Dabarān الدَّبَرَان
Aldebaran · α Tauri · The follower of the Pleiades. Its name means 'the one who follows.' In legend, the shepherd in love with the Pleiades (seven sisters), pursuing them across the horizon but never able to reach them. In the pre-Islamic era, a staple image of love-pursuit; he represents the poet in pursuit of the beloved. At the same time, a rain star (the nawʾ of al-Dabarān).
Suhayl سُهَيْل
Canopus · α Carinae · Breaker of the season. The brightest of the southern stars visible from Arabia. Its heliacal rising (late August, seen from the Hejaz) marks the breaking of the summer heat and the softening of the dry wind. The widespread pre-Islamic belief: 'When Suhayl appears the heat is broken.' Also the symbol-star of the Yemeni rulers; for some tribes among the ancestors of Quraysh, an orienting marker.
al-Jabbār الجَبَّار
Orion · especially Betelgeuse + Rigel · The god of the hunt / the giant. The Arab counterpart of the Greek Orion. In the pre-Islamic era a staple of the hunting theme; the orienting star of the night hunt. Especially important for the poets of Hudhayl (hunters living in the Tihāma mountains). Its heliacal rising (June) and heliacal setting (late November) coincide with Hesiod's; they open and close the season of seafaring and hunting.
Qalb al-ʿAqrab قَلْب العَقْرَب
Antares · α Scorpii · The heart of the scorpion. In Babylon the same star is the 'breast of the Scorpion' (Lisi); in Greek it is 'the heart of the Scorpion' (καρδία τοῦ Σκορπίου); in Arabic the same image. This is evidence of a shared sky-geography. It is observed in the evening sky around the autumn equinox; in pre-Islamic poetry it is invoked rarely but pointedly.
Banāt al-Naʿsh بَنَات النَّعْش
Ursa Major · the seven bright stars of the Great Bear · 'The daughters of the bier.' In Arab mythology these seven stars are a funeral procession: daughters keening as they bear the bier (naʿsh) of their dead father. Because they move all through the night (never setting on the horizon), this circumpolar constellation bears the lament across the whole night. A constant image of the pre-Islamic elegies (rithāʾ).

Fairs of the Pilgrimage Season

The great fairs held during the pilgrimage months, where poetry met trade.

Mid- to late Dhū al-Qaʿda ʿUkāẓ (عُكَاظ)
The largest and most prestigious fair of the pre-Islamic period. It was held near Ṭāʾif, east of Mecca, and lasted twenty days. It was the centre of poetic contests; the place where the Muʿallaqāt were composed and displayed. Tribes made peace with one another, marriages were arranged, and blood feuds were resolved by the payment of blood money. The poet al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī would sit at ʿUkāẓ under a red tent, in the role of arbiter, and judge the poems presented to him.
Late Dhū al-Qaʿda - early Dhū al-Ḥijja Majannah (مَجَنَّة)
The second great fair, held in a location close to Mecca. It would begin a few days after ʿUkāẓ. It was well suited for commercial business; the sale of marriageable girls, the trade in camels and wool, the gathering of jewellers and swordsmiths.
The first week of Dhū al-Ḥijja Dhū al-Majāz (ذُو المَجَاز)
The third fair, held next to ʿArafāt, a week before the beginning of the pilgrimage rites. As Majannah closed, Dhū al-Majāz opened. The last stop for the pilgrims' shopping; meat, water, tent materials, sacrificial animals. Tradition holds that some of the Muʿallaqāt were recited here.
Dhū al-Ḥijja 8-13 Ḥajj rites (الحَجّ)
The peak and the religious part of the fair cycle. Circumambulation of the Kaʿba (in the pre-Muhammadan era to Allāh and 360 idols), the standing at ʿArafāt (under the noon sun in front of the mountain), the overnight at Muzdalifa, the stoning of the pillars at Minā, and the sacrifice. The Meccan tribe Quraysh, as the official organisers of the pilgrimage, drew a great revenue from it. The basic rites of the Islamic Ḥajj were inherited from this pre-Islamic pilgrimage; only their direction was turned to monotheism.

Poets of the Mu'allaqāt

The seven odes said to have hung on the Kaʿba, and the poets around them.

ca. 500-540 CE Imruʾ al-Qays (اِمْرُؤ القَيْس) The first poet of the Muʿallaqāt · Exiled Kindite prince
The high point of pre-Islamic poetry. The prince-poet who swore vengeance upon his father's death and was driven from his tribe. His Muʿallaqa opens with 'Stop, friends' (قِفَا نَبْكِ); he canonised the motif of the abandoned campsite (aṭlāl). The Pleiades-sash comparison and the night descriptions are classics.
ca. 543-569 CE Ṭarafa b. al-ʿAbd (طَرَفَة بْن العَبْد) Muʿallaqa poet · died young
He lived among a tribe between Bahrain and the Hejaz. His Muʿallaqa is famous for its description of the camel; the longest and most detailed animal portrait in the Muʿallaqāt. A voice that handles wine, death, and fate alongside youth. Tradition holds that he was put to death by the Lakhmid king for words of his.
ca. 520-609 CE Zuhayr b. Abī Sulmā (زُهَيْر بْن أَبِي سُلْمَى) Muʿallaqa poet · the voice of wisdom
The best-known pre-Islamic representative of gnomic (wisdom) poetry. In his Muʿallaqa he praises those who made peace between the tribes of Dhubyān and ʿAbs. Motifs of season, campsite, death, and dahr recur often in his work. Long-lived; he died on the eve of Islam.
ca. 560-661 CE Labīd b. Rabīʿa (لَبِيد بْن رَبِيعَة) Muʿallaqa poet · a witness to Islam
From the tribe of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa. The opening verses of his Muʿallaqa (the effaced campsites at Minā and 'the rains of the spring constellations') are among the most beautiful expressions of the pre-Islamic calendrical-seasonal consciousness. He embraced Islam, and tradition holds that, after becoming Muslim, he wrote no more poetry.
ca. 525-615 CE ʿAntara b. Shaddād (عَنْتَرَة بْن شَدَّاد) Muʿallaqa poet · slave-warrior
Because his mother was an Abyssinian slave, he was held in contempt within his tribe but won renown through his valour in war. His Muʿallaqa is built around the themes of war and love (his cousin ʿAbla). The later Sīrat ʿAntar romance (a folk-epic) mythologised this figure.
ca. 525-584 CE ʿAmr b. Kulthūm (عَمْرُو بْن كُلْثُوم) Muʿallaqa poet · chieftain of Taghlib
Chieftain of the tribe of Taghlib. His Muʿallaqa is built around wine, war, and tribal praise; a very forceful fakhr (boast) voice. He is said to have killed the Lakhmid king ʿAmr b. Hind.
ca. 6th c. CE al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza (الحَارِث بْن حِلِّزَة) Muʿallaqa poet · the Bakr tribe
The spokesman of Bakr in the long war between Bakr and Taghlib. His Muʿallaqa has the character of a political address delivered in the presence of the Lakhmid king ʿAmr b. Hind. The political-diplomatic example among the seven Muʿallaqāt.
ca. 580-649 CE Abū Dhuʾayb al-Hudhalī (أَبُو ذُؤَيْب الهُذَلِي) Hudhayl poet · the ʿAyniyya (an elegy on his sons)
From the Hudhayl tribe of the Hejaz mountains. His most famous work is the ʿAyniyya, an elegy written on the deaths of his five sons during a plague; one of the great works of classical Arabic elegy. The night hunt, the mountain-and-valley geography, and the role of al-Jabbār and other stars in wayfinding are signatures of Hudhayl poetry.
ca. late 6th c. CE al-Aʿshā Maymūn (الأَعْشَى مَيْمُون) Poet of wine and travel · widely travelled
From the last generation of the pre-Islamic poets. He travelled widely; he visited the Byzantine, Sasanian, and Abyssinian courts. He won fame for his descriptions of wine (khamriyya); he uses month names such as Jumādā and Ramaḍān with concrete seasonal references.
ca. 530-587 CE al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī (النَّابِغَة الذُّبْيَانِي) Arbiter poet · poet of the Lakhmid court
The most respected arbiter poet of the pre-Islamic era; at the fair of ʿUkāẓ he would sit under a red tent and judge and rank the poems. His word carried weight, and he was a master of both panegyric and lampoon. He spent many years at the Lakhmid court at al-Ḥīra.

The year is lunar; the nasī' intercalation kept it aligned with the seasons. Mansion positions shift with precession.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the pre-Islamic Arab calendar

What are the Manāzil al-qamar, the twenty-eight lunar mansions?

The Manāzil al-qamar are the twenty-eight stations through which the Moon passes in the course of its sidereal cycle of approximately 27.32 days, each station corresponding to a recognisable star or asterism along the ecliptic. The system, attested in pre-Islamic poetry and codified in later Arabic astronomical works such as al-Marzūqī's Kitāb al-Azmina, divides the year into a fixed cycle of stellar risings and settings used for navigation, agriculture, and meteorological forecasting (anwāʾ). The twenty-eight mansions are paralleled in Indian (nakṣatra) and Chinese (xiu) astronomies, and their relationship is still debated.

What were the great seasonal fairs of ʿUkāẓ, Majannah and Dhū al-Majāz?

The pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula hosted a network of major seasonal fairs that combined commerce, poetry, arbitration, and worship. ʿUkāẓ, held near Ṭāʾif during the sacred month of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, was the most famous and is associated with the celebrated poetic contests in which the Muʿallaqāt are said to have been recited; Majannah followed at the boundary of the haram, and Dhū al-Majāz preceded the pilgrimage proper. These fairs structured the annual social and economic life of the peninsula and were protected by the four sacred months during which warfare was suspended.

What was the practice of nasīʾ in the pre-Islamic Arab calendar?

Nasīʾ - literally "postponement" - was the practice of intercalating an additional month into the twelve-month lunar year, or shifting one of the four sacred months, in order to keep the pilgrimage and the fairs aligned with a particular agricultural or commercial season. The practice was administered by a specialised tribal authority known as the Qalāmis of the Banū Kināna, and is explicitly described in al-Bīrūnī's Āthār al-Bāqiya and in the early Arabic chronicles. It was abolished in 10 AH (632 CE) by the Qurʾanic verse 9:37, which fixed the lunar year at twelve months and severed the calendar from the seasons.

How did the stars appear in the Muʿallaqāt and pre-Islamic poetry?

The seven Muʿallaqāt - the great pre-Islamic odes attributed to Imruʾ al-Qays, Ṭarafa, Zuhayr, Labīd, ʿAntara, ʿAmr b. Kulthūm, and al-Ḥārith b. Ḥilliza - are rich in references to the heliacal risings, settings, and movements of named stars, particularly Suhayl (Canopus), al-Thurayyā (the Pleiades), and the manāzil. These references function both as precise temporal markers - locating the events of the poem within a specific season - and as poetic metaphors for separation, distance, and longing. Studies by Ibrahim al-Hawi, Renate Jacobi, and Suzanne Stetkevych analyse these stellar tropes in detail.

What are the anwāʾ and how did they function as a meteorological calendar?

The anwāʾ (sing. nawʾ) are the calendrical units formed by the simultaneous heliacal setting of a lunar mansion in the west and the heliacal rising of its opposing mansion in the east, traditionally believed to bring specific weather phenomena - rain, wind, heat, or cold. The pre-Islamic Arabs used a fixed cycle of twenty-eight anwāʾ over the year to predict rainfall and to time agricultural operations. The corpus is preserved in works such as Ibn Qutaybah's Kitāb al-Anwāʾ and Abū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī's Kitāb al-Nabāt, which together constitute one of the richest non-religious literatures of early Islamic Arabia.

What sources document the pre-Islamic Arab calendar?

Direct primary evidence is rare because the pre-Islamic Arabs left a limited epigraphic record relative to neighbouring Sabaean, Nabataean, and Lihyanite traditions. The most substantial sources are later Arabic compilations: al-Bīrūnī's Āthār al-Bāqiya ʿan al-Qurūn al-Khāliya (eleventh century CE), Ibn Qutaybah's Kitāb al-Anwāʾ, al-Marzūqī's Kitāb al-Azmina wa-l-Amkina, and the encyclopaedic Nihāyat al-Arab of al-Nuwayrī. To these may be added the genealogical and prosographical works (Kitāb al-Aghānī, Sīra), as well as inscriptions in Old North Arabian (Safaitic, Thamudic, Lihyanite) which preserve month names and seasonal vocabulary.