Ancient Calendar Systems Series

Pre-Islamic Arab Calendar

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Before Islam the Arabian Peninsula used a calendar that followed the Moon and the Sun together. In that period Ramaḍān still pointed to the scorching heat, Jumādā to the dried-up water and Rabīʿ to the spring pasture. 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. The primary source for this reconstruction 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. There is, however, an enormous archive that tells us how this calendar worked, which stars brought which rains and which season each month name carried, and that archive is pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. The Muʿallaqāt, the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, the Dīwān al-Hudhaliyyīn and the Aṣmaʿiyyāt are its principal collections. Hundreds of poets wrote tens of thousands of verses, and those verses keep a record of the stars, the months, the rains and the storms.

When the poet says Jumādā he means dried-up water, when he says Rabīʿ he means pasture, and when he says Ramaḍān he means scorching heat. The pre-Islamic poet nevertheless 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 names the season instead through a star, a rainfall, a pasture or an abandoned campsite. Imruʾ al-Qays likens the Pleiades to the pearls on a woman's sash. Labīd has the rains of the spring constellations wash away the traces of the campsite. Abū Dhuʾayb uses al-Jabbār, that is Orion, as the orienting marker of the night hunt. These verses are not weaker testimony for failing to name a month. They are stronger, because they are first-hand documents that keep the calendar alive in its own imagistic language.

This tool rebuilds that system in the light of poetry. For the year you select it lists the twelve months in order. For each month you can read its etymology, its seasonal meaning, the verse fragments attributed to it where they survive, and the matching manāzil al-qamar (the twenty-eight lunar mansions) and anwāʾ (star-rain relations). The ashhur al-ḥurum, the four sacred months, are picked out in gold, since warfare and blood feud were suspended in them. The pilgrimage and fair cycle that runs from Dhū al-Qaʿda to Muḥarram is mapped as a single religious and economic season. The nasīʾ section sets two readings side by side: the classical Islamic astronomers who took the word as intercalation (al-Bīrūnī, Abū Maʿshar), and the modern orientalists who took it as the displacement of the sacred months (Mahmud Effendi, de Blois).

Modern scholarship, and above all the two landmark books that Suzanne and Jaroslav Stetkevych published in 1993, reads the pre-Islamic qaṣīda as a calendrical and ritual structure in its very form. On that reading the poet does not name a month because the qaṣīda itself, with its aṭlāl, raḥīl and 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 time stamp, and the geographical anwāʾ map of Imruʾ al-Qays' storm scene.

You will not find the cuneiform tablets of Babylon here, nor the stone walls of Egypt, the philosophical texts of Greece or the official records of Rome. In their place stands the elegy that Abū Dhuʾayb al-Hudhalī wrote for his sons. There is Imruʾ al-Qays' secret visit to his beloved, and there are the empty traces of tents that Labīd finds at Minā. Poetry is the language of the calendar here, and it forms the pre-Islamic Arabs' own system for recording the sky.

Muḥarram 1: ···

The Twelve Months

This is 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 of the months are ḥarām, and in them war and blood feud are taboo, while the fairs near the Kaʿba carry the economy of that inviolability. Click a month to see its etymology, its poetic record, the matching lunar mansions and the anwāʾ star-rain pairings.

A note on the model: The dates on the cards come from 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 works its way through all the seasons in roughly 33 years. The etymological season of a month, such as the scorching heat of Ramaḍān or the pasture of Rabīʿ, would only have stayed in place while a nasīʾ or intercalation regime was in force. Since we do not know which years received an extra month, 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, which is the standard for historical dating in this period. Crescent visibility is schematic, taken as conjunction plus one or two days, because a real sighting depends on the weather and on the state of the horizon.
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 on an economic logic as much as a religious one. For three months the fairs around the Kaʿba, at ʿUkāẓ, Majannah and Dhū al-Majāz, gather tribes from across the Arabian Peninsula. Blood feud is suspended, and trade, poetry, divination and marriage are all arranged 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 such mansions, and in each of them the period of the Moon's conjunction with the Sun is linked to particular rains or winds. The system runs parallel to the Indian nakshatra and the Chinese xiu, and their shared origin is most likely Mesopotamian. In the pre-Islamic era it lived as the anwāʾ system. With Islam, astrological and mystical layers were added to it, among them Ibn ʿArabī's treatment in al-Futūḥāt.

The Anwāʾ Year Wheel · The Star-Rain Calendar

The anwāʾ system works like this. 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, and 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 that 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 comes from the Meeus series, the mansion boundaries are equal divisions starting from beta Arietis, and they are 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 observation of the stars, the dates are approximate.

al-Wasmī الوسمي
"The marking rain". These are the first rains of autumn, and 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. This is the main season, and it decides the fate of the herd and the 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, and 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 them.
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 vary from source to source, and the position of al-dafaʾī varies most of all. Ibn Qutayba places it after the spring rains, while the lexicographical tradition places it at the end of winter, and the arrangement used here follows Varisco's reconstruction. The dates in the schedule are computed with the equal-division approximation for the mansions. In an equal division some indicator stars, Aldebaran among them, fall into the neighbouring segment, and real observation may shift by a few days according to the brightness of the star and the state of the horizon.

The Pre-Islamic Sky

These are the stars the poet invokes most often, and each of them carries its own season, its own image and its own rain. The same sky belongs to Babylon, to Greece and to India as well, and the same star is named with the same function in all three languages.

The Nasīʾ Debate

The Qurʾān (Tawba 36-37) strictly forbids nasīʾ, "postponement". The prohibition confirms that the practice was active in the pre-Islamic period. Scholars still disagree, however, about what that practice actually was, and two main interpretations hold the field.

Classical Interpretation · Intercalation

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

The pre-Islamic Arabs added a thirteenth month every two or three years, much as the Jewish calendar does. The addition anchored the calendar to the seasons, so that Ramaḍān stayed in summer and Rabīʿ in spring. Nasīʾ was the name of that intercalation.

In al-Āthār al-bāqiya al-Bīrūnī reports that an official of the Banū Kināna tribe, called the qalammas or nāsiʾ, announced the intercalation during the pilgrimage season. Scholars have proposed either a nineteen-year cycle with seven intercalations, on the Metonic pattern, or a twelve-year cycle with four.

The strongest argument for this interpretation is poetic. In the last century before Islam the month names were used in active agreement with their seasonal meanings. A pure lunar calendar would invert the seasons over 33 years, and 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 wanted to pursue a blood feud, they pushed the Muḥarram of a given year onto Ṣafar, and in this way they manipulated which stretch of time counted as "forbidden". The same shift could also move the pilgrimage into a different season.

Evidence for this interpretation comes from an early Sabaean inscription in which the verb nsʾw carries the sense of "postponing a religious rite because of war". What is postponed there is an event, not a month.

If this view is correct, the Arab calendar was already purely lunar by the early years of Islam. The prohibition of nasīʾ then halted a social manipulation rather than reforming a calendar. This reading is hard to reconcile with the poetic evidence.

Under ʿUmar the Hijri years were standardised, with 1 AH beginning on 1 Muḥarram in 622 CE. The Hijri calendar is purely lunar and uses no nasīʾ. Ramaḍān can therefore fall in any season, and the original seasonal meaning of the month names survives today only as etymology.

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. Dahr is an invisible, impersonal and unquestionable force, the passing time that consumes everything. It resembles the Hellenistic heimarmene or the Roman fatum, but it lives without any astronomical technique behind it, as an intuitive and poetic faith in fate. The stars witness dahr and the rains set its seal. With the coming of Islam the role of dahr was redefined theologically, and a hadith, "Do not curse dahr, for God is dahr", bound the blind time of pre-Islamic poetry to the divine will. That is one of the critical points in the transition from poetry to religion. The perception of time here is cosmological rather than theological, since the stars and the seasons are the visible face of dahr and a human life is only a brief line in its record.

The Calendrical Structure of Poetry

Why does the pre-Islamic poet never name a month directly, when his whole poem carries a calendrical structure? The verse, the season, the star, the rainfall and the aṭlāl all belong to a single cosmological language.

To search pre-Islamic poetry for a 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 or an abandoned campsite. These images are not chosen at random, because each one is a concrete marker of the way the pre-Islamic Arab read his calendar. The star-rain pairing he calls anwāʾ, the nightly shift of the lunar mansions he calls manāzil al-qamar, and the cycle of sacred and profane months whose imprint the aṭlāl still bears years later all belong to one calendar.

This section examines the four pilot cases in which the pre-Islamic poetic canon offers direct testimony. Three of them come from the Muʿallaqāt and one from the structural analysis of the qaṣīda. Each shows in a concrete text how the poetic evidence interlocks with the calendar and its rituals. 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, and the calendar lives inside the 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 the calendrical consciousness of pre-Islamic poetry. When the poet sees the effaced campsites in the valley of Minā, he counts the years that have passed over them. He counts them not in an ordinary unit of time but in the cycle of sacred and profane months, and that gives us direct poetic evidence of how the pre-Islamic Arab thought about time.

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 in cycles of sacred and profane months rather than in ordinary days. 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 that 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 is measured here by the pilgrimage cycle of Dhū al-Ḥijja, which binds the calendar directly 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 tied to particular rains, and every rain carries its own star. This body of knowledge reaches us not as a technical calendar but as a directly poetic language. When the poet says "The spring constellations gave their rain", he is naming 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) does not translate as plain "spring stars" but as "star groups that bring the rains of spring". The anwāʾ literature lists those groups systematically, among them al-Dabarān, al-Haqʿa, al-Hanʿa and al-Dhirāʿ (Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-Anwāʾ fī Mawāsim al-ʿArab, Hyderabad 1956). In a single line of verse Labīd sets out 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, and he weighs them as first-hand testimony.

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

An important distinction: The verse does not say "Rabīʿ al-Awwal", yet what it describes is exactly what Rabīʿ al-Awwal is. The poet gives the astronomical content of the month instead of its name.

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

In pre-Islamic observation the first appearance of the Pleiades on the horizon just before dawn, their heliacal rising, marks a particular season, early autumn, and a particular hour of the night. In this verse Imruʾ al-Qays does not say "at that time". He says "the Pleiades had risen at that moment", and so he fixes the event by an astronomical clock.

Astronomical Content
At the latitude of the Arabian Peninsula the heliacal rising of the Pleiades begins in mid-May, and their culmination at night falls in October and November. By naming this star pointedly the poet fixes the seasonal position of the event.
Echo in the Qurʾān
Sūrat al-Najm opens with wa-l-najmi idhā hawā (53:1), "by the star, when it sets". The Safaitic inscriptions, the anwāʾ books and the interpretation handed down from the pre-Islamic period all suggest that al-najm here is most probably the Pleiades.

In the same Muʿallaqa Imruʾ al-Qays 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 night stretches out and the stars appear not to move. That image of an endless night comes out of a technical culture in which a 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 given over entirely to rain and storm. Even the classical Arabic commentators set this passage apart as "the most marvellous section of the Muʿallaqa". The poet begins from the sky, likens the lightning to a monk's lamp, and 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 and the Wādī Jiwāʾ. These names are not chosen at random, because together they form a real geographical map of Najd and the Hejaz. The poet follows the rain, and he observes and measures the direction of the cloud, its speed, the height it covers and the valley in which it turns into a river.

  • 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, and only the 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. The classical commentators warn that "Sitār, Yadhbul and Qaṭan cannot be seen from a single vantage point", and the poet stages the scene with the wide imaginative reach that poetry allows. Each name is nonetheless a real place, and the list reflects the real seasonal geography of an actual tribe. The rain poem narrates anwāʾ knowledge in dramatic form.

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 the splendour of the rain rather than himself, so that nature becomes his witness. The pre-Islamic perception of dahr-time reaches its summit here.

Conclusion: This closing of the Muʿallaqa expresses a principle: it is not "the poet who observes the calendar" but "the calendar that speaks the poet". The rain names itself, and the poet only writes it down.

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) and the lost beloved. This is the phase of drought, the place where life has ended and only a trace remains. Seasonally it is the lean season, and ritually it is the encounter with the dead.
II
Raḥīl
رَحِيل
Liminality
A solitary journey across the desert, with the description of the she-camel or the wild ox. Seasonally it is the moment of transition, neither scarcity nor abundance. Ritually it is movement along the threshold between the wild and the civilised.
III
Fakhr
فَخْر
Aggregation
Boasting, the success of the tribe, feasting and rain. Seasonally it is the season of plenty, and ritually it is reincorporation into the community. Labīd's spring rains in v. 4 open up exactly here.

Stetkevych's thesis is that the pre-Islamic poet does more than narrate events when he composes a qaṣīda. He performs the symbolic architecture of a rite of passage, moving from the aṭlāl of drought and death, through the threshold wandering of the raḥīl, to the fakhr in which the rain comes and life is renewed. The qaṣīda form is itself the poetic record of the seasonal cycle that runs through the year.

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. On his reading pre-Islamic poetry is not a local Arab phenomenon but one branch of the shared pastoral and calendrical poetic tradition of the Mediterranean basin, and the triangle of season, ritual and poem reflects a cosmological language found well beyond Arabia.

Another group of scholars connects the aṭlāl motif to an older Inanna and Ishtar fertility ritual pattern; see a thesis from Najah University in Palestine and F. A. S. Alshormani in Umm al-Qura Journal, 2024, "Rituals of the First Poem". On that reading the poet's weeping at the abandoned campsite is the form in which the Sumero-Akkadian motif of nature drying up after the goddess departs has passed into Arabic poetry, as a talbiyāt or invocation structure that waits for the rain and calls the goddess back. The view is more contested, but the question of whether the aṭlāl-rain axis reaches back to myth-ritual roots is still actively discussed in the scholarly literature.

Conclusion: The pre-Islamic qaṣīda speaks the triangle of poet, calendar and ritual in a single utterance. A verse holds a moment, a qaṣīda holds a cycle, and the canon of qaṣīdas holds a whole cosmological language. This tool sets out the concrete ground for that reading.

Pre-Islamic Poets

These are the poets at the top of the tradition: the seven of the Muʿallaqāt, the corpus of the Hudhayl tribe and the tribal poets around them. Each of them spoke his own season, his own star and 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.
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Lunar Mansions, Fairs and Poets Index

Below are 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 both 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 · This is the first month of the year and one of the four sacred months. Its root, ḥ-r-m, carries the senses of forbidden, sacred and 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. The name 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. This is the second half of Rabīʿ and the end of the pasture season. In some sources it appears as Rabīʿ al-Thānī (second spring). The spring rains diminish here and the herdsman begins to migrate. 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, which means to exalt and 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, which means to branch and to scatter. Once the sacred status of Rajab has ended, the tribes scatter in this month 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, which means to scorch and 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, which means to raise and 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 · The name Dhū al-Qaʿda comes 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. It is the third sacred month, and the first of the three consecutive sacred months that run 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 is the month of the pilgrimage. In the pre-Islamic period the fairs prepare the pilgrimage season throughout Dhū al-Qaʿda, and the season reaches its peak in the first ten days of this 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, and 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. This is the star most often invoked in pre-Islamic poetry. It carries 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 · Aldebaran follows the Pleiades, and 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 · Suhayl breaks the season. It is 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. A widespread pre-Islamic saying runs: 'When Suhayl appears the heat is broken.' Suhayl also served as the symbol-star of the Yemeni rulers, and some of the tribes among the ancestors of Quraysh used it as 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 · This star is 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 name means 'the daughters of the bier'. In Arab mythology these seven stars form a funeral procession, with the daughters keening as they carry 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. It is a constant image in 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 the poetic contests, and the Muʿallaqāt were composed and displayed here. 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, and it carries a very forceful fakhr, or boasting, 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, and it ranks among 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
He belongs to the last generation of the pre-Islamic poets. He travelled widely and visited the Byzantine, Sasanian and Abyssinian courts. He won fame for his descriptions of wine (khamriyya), and 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, and 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 of them, and it 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 of 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 work as precise temporal markers that place the events of the poem within a specific season, and at the same time 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 such as 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.