A Guide To Read Islamic Dates (Hijri Dates)

With your web browsing program, McShilling.

Stephen Album wrote a good book:
'Islamic Coins, and How to Read Them'. (ancient coins)

When it comes number script in the modern Arabic - Turkish form, I was taught by a nine year old boy.

Way back in 1970, I helped the drive a double deck bus, Mumbai to London.
Our route took us by way of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, through the small seaside town of Babolsar.
We had camped there for the night. Before the evening meal, I communicated? to the young man in International Sign Language? and scratched the numbers 1 - 10 in the sea shore sand, using a stick. I got my version of what I had learned from road signs, slightly wrong, and the little guy corrected me.

This is one school lesson that I was taught by a school kid!

I had to do it the "hard way" and learn to read numbers in Arabic. It's not hard once you get it all memorized, but a cheat sheet would have really helped back then. :)

I'm going to throw a couple of monkey wrenches into the mix. Not all coins with the "arabic" numerals are AH or AD calendars. The AH calendar starts from the year 622 but uses a lunar year calender that is 3% longer than our year. There is also an SH calendar which also starts in 622 but which uses the same solar year that we do. SH dates can be changed to AD dates simply by adding 622. Then in Iran for two years they used an MS calendar that started in MS2535 and ended in 2537. (Iran has used all three calendars.) There may be a couple of other calendars used as well. The AD and MS calendars are easy to recognize but the AH and SH calendars are close enough and have both been used by enough countries that you may have to check to see what calendar was used and when to make sure you get your date conversion right.

Wow Bladd, it has been so long since I have been searching for an Emirati collector!

Iran might be an exception, since it's not an Arab country.
Thanks for the info Conder :)
I don't think SH is that much common as AH.

Thanks for all the replies.
I very much appreciate your kind words.

Nice timely post. Last night I found a small silver coin in a bag of pennies. 1944 coin from Iran. It has a lion holding a sword with the sun behind on one side and what looks like a curved one on the back.

Still Lookin