What is today's Hijri date?

Hijri vs Gregorian - what's actually different

The Gregorian calendar is solar: it tracks Earth's orbit around the sun and keeps seasons in roughly the same months. The Hijri calendar is lunar: each month starts around a new crescent moon, so a Hijri year is about 354 days instead of 365.

Umm al-Qura vs tabular Hijri - when each matters

Umm al-Qura is the Saudi civil calendar and is the practical reference for Hajj-related dates. Tabular Hijri is a fixed arithmetic calendar with a 30-year leap-year cycle. Use tabular when you need a repeatable calculation; use Umm al-Qura when Saudi alignment is closer to the planning context.

Why Ramadan can fall in any season

Because the Hijri year is shorter than the solar year, Ramadan moves about 10 or 11 days earlier each Gregorian year. Over roughly 33 years it passes through winter, spring, summer, and autumn.

Inside the two calculation engines

The tabular engine is pure arithmetic. Months alternate 30 and 29 days starting from Muharram, and years 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26, and 29 of every 30-year cycle add a thirtieth day to Dhul-Hijjah. The Umm al-Qura engine works differently: it estimates each lunar conjunction from a mean synodic month of about 29.5306 days, starts the month a fixed interval after that moment, and clamps every month to 29 or 30 days. It is aligned with the Saudi civil calendar rather than copied from the official table, so an occasional one-day difference from published Saudi dates is possible.

Tabular month lengths at a glance

Odd-numbered months carry 30 days and even-numbered months carry 29, with a single exception at the end of the year:

Observances the converter can locate

The festival view anchors seven dates to fixed Hijri days: Islamic New Year on 1 Muharram, Ashura on 10 Muharram, Mawlid on 12 Rabi' al-Awwal, the start of Ramadan on 1 Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr on 1 Shawwal, the Day of Arafah on 9 Dhul-Hijjah, and Eid al-Adha on 10 Dhul-Hijjah. Since a Hijri year lasts 354 or 355 days, each observance arrives about ten or eleven days earlier on the Gregorian calendar every year, and an observance falling in early January can return again in late December of the same Gregorian year.

Hijri conversion FAQ