Calendars Used by Turks

Mavi Boncuk |

Calendars Used by Turks

1-12 Animal Calendar: 1 year is divided into 365 days and 12 months, and the days are divided into 12 parts. [1]

2-Hijri Calendar: It was adopted after accepting Islam. The beginning of the Hijri calendar (622 AD) is the migration of Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. It is based on the lunar year. 1 year is 354 days. 

3-Takvim-i Meliki: It was prepared in the name of the Seljuk sultan Melikşah. 

4-Rum-i Calendar: It started to be used in financial affairs during the time of Mahmud I (1676). 

5-Gregorian Calendar: It was accepted by a law enacted in 1925. It begins with the birth of Jesus Christ.

[1] The ancient Turks conducted the chronology from “the creation of the world.” The Great steppe also became a peculiar natural calendar: nomads possessed rich information about the nature of the steppes, animals that became for them the temporary benchmarks. In ancient Turkic runic monuments a month of summer (July) and a month when the deer jumps in the mountains (August) are recorded (Malov, 1959). 

Also "the live chronology" was practiced, when a lifetime of the well-known persons was taken as a temporary reference point (Malov, 1952). 

Initially the annual calendar of the ancient Turks consisted only of ten months and their names coincided with ordinal numerals (Melioransky, 1899). The first month of the Turkic calendar coincided with the third month of the Chinese calendar. The first two months respectively were called "big and small months." This ancient calendar was practiced among the Turkic people, including the Bulgarians and the Tatars, quite a long time. 

Under the title "Persian notation" ("farsiyahisaby") one of the Iranian calendars means. In the Bulgarian times till 1079 in the East the Iranian calendar on an era of Yezdegerd was used. Then with the assistance of the outstanding Persian mathematician, astronomer, poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam (1040-1143) it was reformed. The chronology on this calendar was adopted in the state of Seljuk and therefore has been called the era of Jalal al-Din on behalf of the sovereign of the dynasty of Seljuk, or Seljuk, Sultan ("tarihiSoltani") era (Katanov N. F., 1920).