Hijri Months in Order: Names, Meanings and Spellings

What Are the 12 Hijri Months in Order?

The Hijri calendar follows the moon, and each year holds twelve months. The order is fixed, so every name has a number from 1 to 12.

The Arabic spellings below follow the forms in Wikipedia’s article on the Islamic calendar. Some months have two accepted names, which a later section covers.

What Do the Month Names Mean?

Wikipedia’s article lists a literal sense for each name. Treat these as glosses, because sources differ on the roots of old Arabic words.

The two Rabi months and the two Jumada months each come as a pair. That is why one carries the label “first” and the other “second” or “last”.

Which Months Are Called the Sacred Months?

Sources name four months as the sacred months. They are Dhu al-Qadah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab.

This page only records the label. It does not cover the practices that sources connect to these months.

In the table, these four sit at positions 1, 7, 11 and 12. Months 11 and 12 follow each other, and month 1 comes straight after them in the next year.

How Many Days Does Each Month Have?

It depends on the calendar. The tabular civil calendar follows a fixed rule. A calendar based on sighting the moon runs 29 or 30 days, as the sky decides.

The Tabular Rule

1. Odd-numbered months have 30 days.
2. Even-numbered months have 29 days.
3. In a leap year, month 12 has 30 days.

The arithmetic is simple. Six months of 30 days make 180, and six months of 29 days make 174. Together that is 354 days in a common year.

A leap year adds one day to month 12, so it has 355 days. The 30-year cycle holds 11 leap years. They are years 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26 and 29.

Why the Running Total Matters

The running total lets you find a day of the year without counting. After month 6 you have used 177 days. So 1 Rajab, the first day of month 7, is day 178 of a common year.

Printed calendars can differ from the tabular rule. Umm al-Qura and sighting calendars may differ by a day from it. See Hijri calendar systems for the variants.

Why Are There Two Names for Some Months?

Months 4 and 6 each have two forms. Month 4 is Rabi al-Akhir or Rabi al-Thani. Month 6 is Jumada al-Akhira or Jumada al-Thani.

Both forms are in use. Urdu writing in Pakistan usually takes “second”, as in Rabi us Sani and Jamadi us Sani.

The difference shows in the Abjad value. Here are ربيع الآخر and its sister form ربيع الثاني:

ر 200 + ب 2 + ي 10 + ع 70 + ا 1 + ل 30 + آ 1 + خ 600 + ر 200 = 1114

ر 200 + ب 2 + ي 10 + ع 70 + ا 1 + ل 30 + ث 500 + ا 1 + ن 50 + ي 10 = 874

The two spellings give 1114 and 874. They name the same month, but they are different strings of letters.

Why Do Some Month Names Mention Spring and Parched Land?

The names of months 3 to 6 point to seasons. Rabi means spring, and Jumada is linked to dry, parched land.

Wikipedia notes that these names go back to older seasonal associations. The lunar calendar cannot track the seasons, so the names no longer match the weather in the year.

Wikipedia also gives folk explanations for names such as Safar and Ramadan. It does not give a firm origin for every name, so treat them as explanations and not as settled facts.

Why Do the Months Move Through the Seasons?

A lunar month averages about 29.530588 days between new moons. Twelve of them come to 354.37 days.

A solar year is about 365.24219 days. Subtract and you get a gap of about 10.875 days. So each Hijri year starts roughly 11 days earlier in the solar year.

How Do You Find the Day of the Year From a Hijri Date?

Add the running total of the months before it, then add the day. This works for the tabular calendar only, in a common year.

• 15 Shaban: months 1 to 7 total 207, so 207 + 15 = day 222.
• 1 Ramadan: months 1 to 8 total 236, so 236 + 1 = day 237.
• 29 Dhu al-Qadah: months 1 to 10 total 295, month 11 has 30 days, so 295 + 29 = day 324.

The last day of a common year is day 354, and a leap year ends on day 355.

What Are the Longer Names Used in Urdu?

Urdu often adds a describing word after a month name. Urdu Wikipedia lists forms such as Muharram ul Haram and Ramzan ul Mubarak.

The added word changes the letters, so it changes the Abjad value too. The table compares each long form with the plain name.

Both are correct as writing. Which one you count depends on the exact words you want a value for.

How Do Hamza and Alif Forms Affect the Count?

Arabic writes the first letter of الأول with a hamza above the alif. Urdu usually drops it and writes الاول.

The engine gives 350 for ربيع الأول and 350 for ربيع الاول. A hamza sitting on an alif adds nothing, so these two spellings agree.

The ending of a word is different. A final ى counts 10, so keeping or dropping it changes the sum.

How Do Urdu Spellings Compare With Arabic?

Urdu script uses its own letter shapes, such as ی for ي. Those pairs have the same value in the engine, so some names match. Others differ because Urdu drops or changes a letter.

Urdu spellings are those in the month table of Urdu Wikipedia’s calendar article. A different printed calendar may spell them another way, and its value will change with it.

Why Does One Month Have So Many English Spellings?

English has no letters for several Arabic sounds. Writers choose their own, which gives Ramadan, Ramazan, Ramzan and Ramadhan for one Arabic word.

The Abjad value follows the Arabic letters, not the English ones. So رمضان stays at 1091 however you write it in English.

ر 200 + م 40 + ض 800 + ا 1 + ن 50 = 1091

Why Do Roman Spellings Use “ul” and “us”?

The small words come from the Arabic article ال, which means “the”. Before some letters, its ل is not pronounced and the next sound doubles.

That is why ربيع الثاني is said Rabi us Sani and not Rabi ul Sani. Wikipedia transliterates it as ath-Thani for the same reason.

Spellings You Will See in Pakistan

• Jamadi ul Awwal and Jamadi us Sani for months 5 and 6, with Jumada or Jumadi in other places.
• Zil Qada and Zil Hajj for months 11 and 12, where Arabic-based English writes Dhu al-Qadah and Dhu al-Hijjah.
• Ramzan and Ramazan for month 9, where Arabic-based English writes Ramadan.

No single Roman spelling is official. The right choice is the one that matches the source you are working from.

Which Spelling Should You Use for Counting?

For counting, the script spelling matters more than the English spelling. The English only helps you find the right Arabic or Urdu letters.

1. Pick the script spelling that your calendar or document uses.
2. Count that exact spelling and say which one you used.
3. Do not mix an Arabic value with an Urdu value in one comparison.

This keeps results repeatable and easy to check later. Two people who use the same spelling will always get the same number, and the engine records the steps.

How Is a Month Written Inside a Hijri Date?

A full Hijri date has three parts: the day, the month and the year. The year is usually followed by AH, short for the Latin words for “in the year of the Hijra”.

The month can be written as a name or as a number from 1 to 12. So the month number and the name carry the same information, and the table above links them.

Names Are the Same in Every Variant

The tabular calendar, the Umm al-Qura calendar and sighting calendars all use these twelve names in this order. What differs between them is the day each month begins.

That is why the month name alone does not fix a date on the Gregorian calendar. For the conversion step, see the Hijri to Gregorian formula.

What Mistakes Do People Make With Month Names?

• Mixing up the pairs. Rabi ul Awwal is month 3, not month 4, and Jumada al-Ula is month 5.
• Taking Safar for the last month. The last month is Dhu al-Hijjah, month 12.
• Counting an English spelling. Only Arabic or Urdu letters have Abjad values.
• Treating the tabular days as sightings. A sighting calendar can differ by a day.

A quick check is the running total from the table. A day of the month above 30 is always an error. In the tabular calendar, an even-numbered month never has 30 days, except month 12 in a leap year.

How Do You Find the Abjad Value of a Month Name?

1. Write the month name in Arabic or Urdu script.
2. Give each letter its Abjad value, such as ر = 200.
3. Add the values, and leave out spaces and vowel marks.

The twelve values in the first table add up to 6878. This is a sum for interest only, with no meaning attached. The same method works for any name on the phrase value calculator.

Spelling choices change the answer, as with جمادى الأولى at 136 and جمادی الاول at 126. For details on letter values, see why values differ.

Sources and Further Reading

• Islamic calendar, Wikipedia. The month names in Arabic script, literal senses and the four sacred months.
• Tabular Islamic calendar, Wikipedia. Month lengths, leap years and the 354 and 355 day years.
• Islamic calendar (Urdu), Urdu Wikipedia. Month names as written in Urdu.
• Abjad values come from this site’s tested engine. See the methodology.

Frequently Asked Questions