Iran uses three official calendar systems, including the Solar Hijri calendar as the main and national calendar, the Gregorian calendar for international events and Christian holidays, and the Lunar Hijri calendar for Islamic holidays.
In 2008, the Iranian government's English-language newspaper Iran Daily wrote that "[the] problem of too many annual public holidays has perpetually been a subject of concern," [1] pointing out that the government would often declare "unofficial holidays [...] to allow extended weekends" around the national holidays. "[I]f official and unofficial holidays are added to weekends, almost half the year the country is holidaying! The serious issue of so many holidays should not be tolerated [...]" [1]
Iran is one of the countries with the most public holidays in the world,[ citation needed ] with 28 holidays. Many holidays' exact dates are determined by the Islamic calendar, and therefore their Gregorian dates vary from year to year.
Date | Event | Local Name | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
Farvardin 1–4 | Nowruz (March 21–24) | نوروز – Nowruz | Iranian New Year |
Farvardin 12 | Islamic Republic Day (April 1) | روز جمهوری اسلامی – Ruz e Jomhuri ye Eslāmi | |
Farvardin 13 | Sizdah Bedar (April 2) | سیزده بدر | Commonly pronounced and spelled Sizdah Bedar |
Khordad 14 | Death of Khomeini (June 4) | مرگ روحالله خمینی – Rehlat e Xomeyni | |
Khordad 15 | Revolt of Khordad 15 (June 5) | قیام ۱۵ خرداد – Qiām e Pānzdah e Xordād | |
Bahman 22 | Anniversary of Islamic Revolution (February 11) | انقلاب اسلامی پنجاه و هفت – Enqelāb e Eslāmi | Officially the Islamic Revolution |
Esfand 29 | Nationalization of the Iranian oil industry (March 20) | ملی شدن صنعت نفت – Melli Šodan e Saneat e Naft |
Date | Event |
---|---|
Muharram 9 | Tasua |
Muharram 10 | Ashura |
Safar 20 | Arbaeen |
Safar 28 | Death of Muhammad and Hasan ibn Ali (Mujtaba) |
Safar 29 or 30 | Death of Ali al-Rida |
Rabi'-ul-Awwal 8 | Death of Hasan al-Askari |
Rabi'-ul-Awwal 17 | Birth of Muhammad and Ja'far al-Sadiq |
Jamaad-ath-Thaanee 3 | Death of Fatima |
Rajab 13 | Birth of Ali |
Rajab 27 | Mission of Muhammad |
Sha'aban 15 | Birth of Mahdi |
Ramadhan 21 | Death of Ali |
Shawwal 1 | Eid ul-Fitr (End of Ramadhan) |
Shawwal 2 | Eid ul-Fitr (End of Ramadhan) |
Shawwal 25 | Death of Ja'far al-Sadiq |
Dh-ul-Hajja 10 | Eid ul-Adha (Ghurban) |
Dh-ul-Hajja 18 | Eid al-Ghadeer |
April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Its length is 30 days.
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar, or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills.
December is the twelfth and final month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days.
A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often also observed as public holidays in religious majority countries. Some religious holidays, such as Christmas, have become secularised by part or all of those who observe them. In addition to secularisation, many holidays have become commercialised due to the growth of industry.
The Hijri calendar, or Arabic calendar also known in English as the Muslim calendar and Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual fasting and the annual season for the great pilgrimage. In almost all countries where the predominant religion is Islam, the civil calendar is the Gregorian calendar, with Syriac month-names used in the Levant and Mesopotamia but the religious calendar is the Hijri one.
July is the seventh month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., being the month of his birth. Before then it was called Quintilis, being the fifth month of the calendar that started with March.
The New Year is the time or day at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner. In the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar system today, New Year occurs on January 1. This was also the first day of the year in the original Julian calendar and the Roman calendar.
A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicate the season or almost equivalently the apparent position of the Sun relative to the stars. The Gregorian calendar, widely accepted as a standard in the world, is an example of a solar calendar. The main other types of calendar are lunar calendar and lunisolar calendar, whose months correspond to cycles of Moon phases. The months of the Gregorian calendar do not correspond to cycles of the Moon phase.
The Iranian calendars or Iranian chronology are a succession of calendars created and used for over two millennia in Iran, also known as Persia. One of the longest chronological records in human history, the Iranian calendar has been modified many times for administrative, climatic, and religious purposes. The most influential person in laying the frameworks for the calendar and its precision was the 11th century Persian polymath, Omar Khayyam. The modern Iranian calendar is currently the official civil calendar in Iran.
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day is the first day of the calendar year, 1 January. Most solar calendars begin the year regularly at or near the northern winter solstice, while cultures and religions that observe a lunisolar or lunar calendar celebrate their Lunar New Year at less fixed points relative to the solar year.
Lunar New Year is the beginning of a new year based on lunar calendars or, informally but more widely, lunisolar calendars. Lunar calendars follow the lunar phase while lunisolar calendars follow both the lunar phase and the time of the solar year. The event is celebrated by numerous cultures in various ways at diverse dates.
The Islamic New Year, also called the Hijri New Year, is the day that marks the beginning of a new lunar Hijri year, and is the day on which the year count is incremented. The first day of the Islamic year is observed by most Muslims on the first day of the month of Muharram. The epoch of the Islamic era was set as the year of the emigration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina, known as the Hijrah, which equates to 622 CE in the Gregorian calendar. All religious duties, such as prayer, fasting in the month of Ramadan, and pilgrimage, and the dates of significant events, such as celebration of holy nights and festivals, are calculated according to the Islamic calendar.
For exact dates in the Gregorian calendar see Jewish and Israeli holidays 2000–2050.
The Hijri year or era is the era used in the Islamic lunar calendar. It begins its count from the Islamic New Year in which Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib in 622 CE. This event, known as the Hijrah, is commemorated in Islam for its role in the founding of the first Muslim community (ummah).
The Rumi calendar, a specific calendar based on the Julian calendar, was officially used by the Ottoman Empire after Tanzimat (1839) and by its successor, the Republic of Turkey until 1926. It was adopted for civic matters and is a solar based calendar, assigning a date to each solar day.
Cyrus the Great Day is an unofficial holiday in Iran. Secular and nationalist in nature, it commemorates the legacy of Cyrus II of Persia, who founded the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE. It is observed annually on the 7th of Aban on the Iranian Solar Hijri calendar, thus corresponding to a date between the 28th and 31 October on the international Gregorian calendar.
The Solar Hijri calendar is a solar calendar and one of the various Iranian calendars. It begins on the March equinox as determined by the astronomical calculation for the Iran Standard Time meridian and has years of 365 or 366 days. It is the modern principal calendar in Iran and Afghanistan and is sometimes also called the Shamsi calendar and Khorshidi calendar. It is abbreviated as SH, HS or, by analogy with AH, AHSh.
The adoption of the Gregorian Calendar was an event in the early modern history of most cultures and societies, marking a change from their traditional dating system to the modern dating system – the Gregorian calendar – that is widely used around the world today. Some states adopted the new calendar from 1582, some did not do so before the early twentieth century, and others did so at various dates between. A few still have not, but except for these, the Gregorian calendar is now the world's civil calendar universally, although in many places an old style calendar remains used in religious or traditional contexts. During – and for some time after – the change between systems, it has been common to use the terms "Old Style" and "New Style" when giving dates, to indicate which calendar was used to reckon them.
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