THE
ISLAMIC CALENDAR
All
nations used to keep count of years as from a specific epoch.
Whenever there was a highly important event that is known to the
whole world, then people took it as a starting point of an epoch, to
start a calendar. The best way to start a calendar would have been to
date it back to the advent of Hazrat Adam (as) on earth or even start
the calendar as from the deluge in the times of Hazrat Nuh (as), for
these are highly important events in history. But unfortunately, we
do not have exact information on the times when these events
occurred. Therefore, each nation took as starting point a main event/
situation which they witnessed in their own times.
It
has been reported that the descendants of Hazrat Ibrahim (as) began
to count the days/ years as from the day that he was thrown into the
fire. As for the Arabs, they based their calendar on the Year of the
Elephant, and here is its story: