Provided by: itools_1.1-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       idate - A Gregorian/Meladi to/from Hijri/Islamic date converter

SYNOPSIS

       idate [--gregorian yyyymmdd] [--hijri yyyymmdd] [--simple] [--umm_alqura] [--help]

DESCRIPTION

       The  idate  program  is  a  Gregorian to Hijri (and vice-versa) date converter.  The application uses and
       offers multiple calculation methods with not all of them agreeing at all  times.   The  reason  for  this
       multiplicity  is  due  to  not having one agreed upon method and so various entities develop and advocate
       their calculations.

       idate is able to comprehend and calculate both pre-epoch or pre-Hijrah, denoted  as  "B.H",  as  well  as
       post-epoch  or post-Hijrah, denoted as "A.H", dates.  idate also utilizes Gregorian's pre-epoch "B.C" and
       post-epoch "A.D" dates and notes them per its output.  When entering pre-epoch  years,  negative  numbers
       ought to be utilized.

       idate  when  run  without  any  command-line  options  uses the host machine's current Gregorian date and
       converts it to Hijri.

OPTIONS

       idate follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with  two  dashes  (`-').   A
       summary of all options is noted below:

       -h, --help
              Show summary of options

       -g, --gregorian yyyymmdd
              Specify  the  Gregorian  date to be converted where 'y' stands for year, 'm' for month and 'd' for
              day

       -hi, --hijri yyyymmdd
              Specify the Hijri date to be converted where 'y' stands for year, 'm' for month and 'd' for day

       -s, --simple
              Specify a simplified output mode

       -u, --umm_alqura
              Specify to use the Umm Al-Qura calculation method (used mostly in Saudi Arabia)

BACKGROUND

       The Hijri calendar is used in most of the Arab world and is the symbolic calendar of the Islamic  faithed
       worldwide.   This  calendar  is  known as the "Hijri" (based on the word "Hijrah" - denoting migration in
       Arabic) to signal Prophet Mohammed's (PBUH) migration from Makkah to Medinah on Thursday, July 15, 622 AD
       (Julian) or July 19, 622 AD (Gregorian).

       The Islamic Hijri calendar is strictly lunar (ie. moon-based) with  twelve  lunar  months  which  do  not
       correspond  or  track their solar counterparts (the Gregorian calendar is a solar or sun-based calendar).
       Lunar years and thus Hijri years are, on average, about 354 days long resulting in  a  Hijri  year  being
       roughly about 11 days shorter than its Gregorian counterpart.

       There  is  much discussion and confusion regarding how best to track the Hijri calendar.  A great deal of
       that confusion is based on the fact that many rely on a human moon sighting to denote the start (or  end)
       of  a  month  (each  month of the Hijri calendar starts when a new moon's crescent is observed or is made
       visible at sunset) as opposed to using an empirical mathematic certainty.  The methods presented in  this
       application  and its underlying ITL library are strictly arithmetic in nature and do NOT take moon-phases
       into consideration (in short, observational approximation is not used).

LIMITATIONS

       The Umm Al-Qura option doesn't function with pre-epoch settings.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs on the web using http://bugs.arabeyes.org

AUTHOR

       Written by Nadim Shaikli as part of the Arabeyes.org project.

COPYRIGHT

       idate is subject to the GNU General Public License (GPL).
       Copyright © 2005, Arabeyes, Nadim Shaikli.

SEE ALSO

       The ITL library (libitl) from the Islamic Tools and Libraries project.  It is the underlying  requirement
       for idate to function.  The ITL library was created and is hosted at www.arabeyes.org.

idate                                           January 05, 2005                                        IDATE(1)