Re: Hebrew calendar direction

Mark J. Reed wrote at 2005-02-12 10:27:21 (-0500)
 > On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 10:09:37PM +1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
 > > The Islamic calendar is lunar, not solar.  Its seasonal swings
 > > are quite predictable, though not "ordinary" to anyone using the
 > > solar calendar.
 >
 > Yes, they're predictable (within the one-day-per-month variation
 > caused by atmospheric vagaries due to the observational basis of
 > the calendar), but that doesn't change my point, which is that it
 > doesn't make any sense to have a month named e.g. "first spring"
 > when that month only falls *in* the spring for about 9 years at a
 > time 35 years apart, and is just as likely to fall in any other
 > season. :)
 >

My understanding of this matter is that the lunar Islamic calendar
represents a reform of the pre-Islamic lunisolar Arabic calendar, in
which the month names made sense.

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