Hijri Calendar, Monthly
A full Hijri month at a glance, with the Gregorian date on every day.
What is the Islamic (Hijri) calendar?
The Islamic calendar, also called the Hijri calendar, is the lunar calendar Muslims use to date religious events and observances. It has 12 months and runs 354 or 355 days a year, about 11 days shorter than the Gregorian year. Each month begins when the new crescent moon is sighted, so a month is either 29 or 30 days long.
The years count from 622 CE, the year of the Hijra, the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ migration from Makkah to Madinah. That’s why Hijri years carry AH after them, short for After Hijra. The calendar above shows a full Gregorian month with the matching Hijri date in each cell, so you can read both at a glance and flip through all 12 months.
Why the Hijri date can differ by a day
If the Hijri date here looks a day off from your local mosque, that’s expected, not a mistake. The Islamic calendar depends on the sighting of the crescent moon, which can be seen a day earlier or later depending on where you are. A calculated calendar like this one lands within a day for most regions, but the official start of a month is set by local sighting.
This matters most at the start and end of a month. Mid-month, the calculated and sighted dates almost always agree. For the exact dates of Ramadan, the two Eids, and Hajj, follow your local sighting authority rather than any calculated calendar.
The 12 months of the Islamic year
The four months marked in gold are sacred months, when fighting was traditionally forbidden and worship carries extra weight:
- 1. Muharram
- 2. Safar
- 3. Rabi al-Awwal
- 4. Rabi al-Thani
- 5. Jumada al-Awwal
- 6. Jumada al-Thani
- 7. Rajab
- 8. Shaban
- 9. Ramadan
- 10. Shawwal
- 11. Dhul Qadah
- 12. Dhul Hijjah
Using this calendar
Use the arrows to move between months, or tap Jump to today to return to the current month with today highlighted in green. Days that fall on a major Islamic event are outlined in gold, with the event listed below the grid. To convert a single specific date instead, use the Islamic date converter, and to see just the current month name, the Islamic month today page.
The major dates marked on this calendar
Several days each year carry real weight for Muslims, and this calendar flags them in gold so you can see them coming. Knowing the Hijri date is the first step to planning worship around them. Here’s what each marker means:
Islamic New Year (1 Muharram) opens the Hijri year. It’s a quiet day of reflection, not festivity. Ashura (10 Muharram) is a day of voluntary fasting, marking the deliverance of Prophet Musa, and for Shia Muslims a day of mourning for Imam Hussain at Karbala.
Mawlid al-Nabi (12 Rabi al-Awwal) marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Shab-e-Meraj (27 Rajab) commemorates the Night Journey and Ascension, when the five daily prayers were prescribed. Shab-e-Barat (15 Shaban) is the Night of Forgiveness, just before Ramadan.
Ramadan begins on 1 Ramadan, the month of fasting, with Laylat al-Qadr sought in its last ten nights, most widely on the 27th. Eid ul-Fitr (1 Shawwal) celebrates the end of the fast. Then Day of Arafah (9 Dhul Hijjah), the peak of Hajj and a day of fasting for those not on pilgrimage, followed by Eid ul-Adha (10 Dhul Hijjah), the Festival of Sacrifice.
Why Muslims use a lunar calendar
The choice of a moon-based calendar isn’t an accident of history. The Quran ties Islamic worship to the lunar months directly: “They ask you about the crescent moons. Say, they are measurements of time for the people and for Hajj” (Surah al-Baqarah 2:189). The sighting of the new moon is what starts each month, which is why the calendar tracks the moon rather than the sun.
This has a practical effect you can watch on the grid above. Because the lunar year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, every Islamic date drifts earlier through the Gregorian calendar each year. Ramadan moves earlier, the Eids move earlier, Hajj moves earlier. Over roughly 33 years, each Islamic month passes through all four seasons. A Muslim who lives a normal lifespan will fast Ramadan in deep summer and in deep winter, and everything in between.
That movement is a feature, not a flaw. It means no month is permanently tied to one season, and the obligations of the faith rotate fairly across long days and short ones for everyone, everywhere.
How this calendar stays accurate
The dates on this calendar are pulled from a live date service and confirmed automatically. When you’re offline, or before the live data loads, the grid falls back to a calibrated calculation so it never sits blank or shows a wrong month. The calculation is tuned to match the sighting-based dates used across the Indian subcontinent, where the crescent is often sighted a day after Saudi Arabia.
Still, no calculated calendar can replace an actual moon sighting. The reason is built into the system: a month can be 29 or 30 days, and which one it is depends on whether the crescent is visible on the 29th evening. That can only be known on the night itself. So for the dates that carry legal weight in Islam, the start of Ramadan, the day of the two Eids, and the Day of Arafah, always follow the announcement of your local sighting authority. Treat this calendar as an accurate planning tool, not a substitute for that announcement.
A short history of the Hijri calendar
The calendar wasn’t numbered during the Prophet’s ﷺ lifetime. The months themselves, Muharram through Dhul Hijjah, were already in use among the Arabs before Islam, but there was no agreed year count. That changed about 17 years after the Hijra, during the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra).
Umar (ra) gathered the companions to settle on a starting point for the calendar. Several events were proposed, the Prophet’s birth, the first revelation, his passing. The migration, the Hijra from Makkah to Madinah, was chosen, because it marked the moment the Muslim community became a society with its own life and laws. So the year of the Hijra became year one, and every Hijri year since is counted from it, written with AH, After Hijra. That’s the history sitting quietly behind every date on this page.