From: zamie@zamiepcSanDiego.NCR.com (Zamie Mehraz)
Subject: Re: Iranian Calendar
Reply-To: zamie@zamiepcSanDiego.NCR.com (Zamie Mehraz)
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing, San Diego, CA
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 21:46:22 GMT


Drood Bar Doostan Gerami:

I have done a little research about our own calendar (Jalali) and found
out many interesting facts.  Hope you can benefits some from the
following outline.

- Jamshid Shah (Shah Pishdadi) was fond of Medicine and Astrology.  He
was the first who developed Telescope (Ostor-Lab in Farsi).  He did some
calculation and came up with the result of dividing up the year into
Summer and Winter with 365 days.

- This type of calendar ("Gah-Nameh" in Farsi) was being used until
(guess who?) invaded Iran.  Yes, of course Arabs pushed everything to us
as well as their handicapped lunar calendar which is very wiered based
on the rotation of moon around earth.  This calendar therefore was being
used until 1079 A.C.

- "Jalal-o-Din Malek-Shah Seljoghi" in 1079 invited eight of the
foremost astonomers and mathematician in Iran to calculate and establish
the Jamshid's calendar.  "Omar Khayyam Ney-Shapuri" and "Abul-Mozafar
Esfrazi" were among these group led the research by the Shah's order. 
They came up with more accurate version of this calendar (now known as
Jalali because of the king).  For example, 365 days + 6 hours, where
they accumulate the last 6 hours every 4 years and established the leap
year (Kabiseh in Arabic).

Based on the strong feeling of people toward Islam, Jalal-o-Din ordered
to set the base of this calendar according to the migration of Prophet
from Mecca to Medina.

- The interesting point was done recently.  Dr. George Sarten in his
book, "History of Science" proved that the error in Khorshidi (Jalili)
calculated by Khayyam's group was one hour every 500 years.  In
Georgian's calendar, this number is one day every 3330 years ( one hour
every 138 years).  

- Soon this calendar was put into the shelf by clergys and replaced by
the lunar calendar again.  And unfortunate to say that the lunar
calendar was in Iran until recently during Pahlavi's era.  For 12
centuries, lunar calendar was in Iran.  Reza Shah once again tried to
establish the destinction between Persians and Arabs and got this
calendar from the shelf and gave it the life for Iranian people.

- Hejri = Koochi in Farsi
- Calendar = Gah-Nama in Farsi

And Ostaad Ferdawsi Mefarmayand:
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