"Meet me at noon, in the morning, and in the evening";
The use of these terms in defining time and dates is still prevalent today, and some may not know that it is a remnant of the ancient Islamic civilized time... Rather, it dates back to the early days of the Arabs.
And if those dates in their circulation now mean an escape from control and a lack of accuracy;
In the past, it referred to specific dates and connected to certain known times.
The Arabs knew time and estimated time in clear divisions, and Islam increased them in contact with timings to control their worship and transactions, and historians of Islamic civilization recorded its events in hours and minutes.
And that is only because time had a great place in the Arab and Islamic heritage.
There is no honor that can be said in the value of time greater than the authentic hadith of the Prophet: “Do not abuse time, for God is time” (Narrated by Muslim and in Sahih al-Bukhari with a similar wording), even if eternity refers to the Lord metaphorically.
The time for the Arabs was this important before Islam;
Prince Al-San’ani said in his book “Al-Tanweer Sharh Al-Jami Al-Sagheer” when explaining the previous hadith: “The Arabs used to insult eternity if something bad happened to one of them, and believed that the one who had befallen him was the deed of eternity.
This is in agreement with what the Noble Qur’an has transmitted from the Arabs that they said: “We die and live, and nothing but time destroys us”;
(Surat Al-Jathiya / Verse: 24).
If Islam came to correct the belief of the Arabs in the cause of causes;
It only increased the time in veneration and respect, and that is why he decided in his teachings that the first thing that a Muslim will be asked about in the afterlife: “How did he spend his life?”
(An authentic hadith transmitted by al-Tirmidhi and others).
Since time had such a status in the culture of the Arabs before and after Islam, it was natural for them to have a degree of excellence in dealing with it, and taking precedence in the ways of dividing and measuring it, and expressing its flow and fluctuations;
But were they counting their time as we do now?
They divide their day and night into twenty-four hours?
Was one of them dating the other at five or six, for example?
And if they do, how do they measure it?
And what is their way of telling it?
This is what our article discusses, reviewing its theoretical and historical evidence.
Twenty-four hours
The Arabs used to divide the day into twenty-four hours, as people do now, but they were not equal hours like the hours of the day, rather the day was twelve hours for them, and the night twelve hours, one of them long or short.
Based on this;
In the summer the daylight hours were lengthened - along with the length of the day - until they reached more than seventy minutes per minute of the day, and in return the night hours were shortened to less than fifty minutes, and in the winter the opposite happened, so the night hours were extended and the daylight hours were shortened.
Perhaps the oldest documented Arabic text that mentions these hours is what was narrated by the two Imams Al-Bukhari (d. 256 AH / 870 AD), Muslim (d. 261 AH / 875 AD) and others from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah (d. 59 AH / 680 AD): And whoever goes in the second hour, it is as if he sacrificed a cow, and whoever goes in the third hour, it is as if he sacrificed a horned ram, and whoever goes in the fourth hour, it is as if he sacrificed a chicken, and whoever goes in the fifth hour, it is as if he sacrificed an egg.
The jurists differed about the meaning of the hour in this hadith: does it mean the hours of the day - which we are talking about - or does it mean the hour in the sense of an unspecified part of the time?
They had suggestions and discussions, during which no one said that these hours were not known at the time of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him. Rather, they were unanimous in their existence and on working with them at that time, but they differed in the purpose of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him.
Then those who saw that the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, intended the known hours of the day;
Imam al-Nawawi (d. 676 AH / 1277 AD) said - in his explanation of Sahih Muslim - commenting on this hadith: "Our companions differed: Is the setting of the hours from the rising of dawn or from the rising of the sun?
He also said: "It is known that the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, used to go out to Friday prayer, connected to the noon, and it was after the sixth separation."
Twelve hours of the day or night are mentioned in other hadiths, but the above was the most famous and correct example, and it is around which the discussions of the jurists revolved, through which the division of time can be inferred.
The discussion that took place around this hadith and others indicates that they have been using this counting since ancient times, so they say: the first, second, and third hours...and so on.
This is supported by what Al-Waqidi (d. 207 AH / 822 AD) mentioned in his book 'Futuh al-Sham', specifying in hours the beginning and end of the journey of the companion Abdullah bin Qurt Al-Azdi (d. 56 AH / 677 AD) to Medina, when he presented a letter from the commander of the armies of the Levant, Abu Ubaidah bin Al-Jarrah ( Died 18 AH / 640 AD) asking for extensions from the Commander of the Faithful Omar Ibn al-Khattab (died 23 AH / 645 AD) before the Battle of Yarmouk (which took place in the year 15 AH / 637 AD).
Ibn Qirt said: “I rode from Yarmouk on Friday at the tenth hour in the afternoon, and twelve days had passed from the month of Dhul-Hijjah and the moon was plus light, so I arrived on Friday at the fifth hour and the mosque was full of people.”
Arabic names for the clocks
, and each of the twenty-four Arab clocks had a name. These names were transmitted by Abu Mansour al-Tha’alibi (d. 429 AH/1039 AD) in his book “Fiqh al-Lughah”;
فسَاعَاتُ النَّهارِ: "الشُرُوقُ، ثُمَّ البكورُ، ثُمَّ الغُدْوَةُ، ثُمَّ الضُّحَى، ثُمَّ الهاجِرَةُ، ثُمَّ الظَهِيرَةُ، ثُمَّ الرَّوَاحُ، ثُمَّ العَصْرُ، ثُمَّ القَصْرُ، ثُمَّ الأصِيلُ، ثُمَّ العَشِيُّ، ثُمَّ الغُروبُ. وسَاعَاتُ اللَّيلِ: الشَّفَقُ، ثُمَّ الغَسَقُ، ثُمَّ العَتَمَةُ، Then al-Sadfa, then al-Fahmah, then al-Zalfa, then al-Zalfa, then al-Buhra, then al-Sahr, then al-Fajr, then al-Sabbah, then al-Sabbah.”
Al-Thalabi said: “The rest of the names of the times come by repeating words whose meanings are in agreement.”
This is what al-Thaalibi transmitted from the Arabs;
The truth is that some of the names of the hours he mentioned I did not see in any of their words in dictionaries or books of literature and poetry.
Thus, in the Arabian Peninsula, they were counting the hours of the day starting from sunrise, and the hours of the night after sunset.
If the Arab says: I will meet you at two o'clock in the day, then he will meet you at about seven o'clock in the morning, today's time, and if he says to you, I will meet you at one o'clock in the night, that means shortly after sunset.
Their method of calculating and counting hours was very accurate by tracking the shadow during the day, the setting of the sun, the twilight, and the gradation of darkness at night.
Among their words about the accurate calculation of hours is the saying of Imam Ibn Battal al-Qurtubi (d. 449 AH/1058 AD) in his explanation of Sahih al-Bukhari: “The people of knowledge of times and arithmetic do not disagree that the sun only sets at the beginning of the seventh hour, and the prayer takes place if the sun reaches an arm’s length, and that is at the eighth hour After traveling one-fifth of it during summer time, and after traveling half of it during winter time.”
The meaning of his words is that if the fi’i fulfills a cubit in the summer, it has passed from the eighth hour, and if the fi’i fulfills a cubit in the winter, then half of it has passed from the eighth hour, because the hours of the day are longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.
Ibn Battal was discussing a saying of Imam Abdul Malik bin Habib al-Maliki (d. 238 AH / 852 AD) in which he saw that the sun sets at the sixth hour of the day.
All of this indicates their accuracy in calculating hours with a fifth and a half and a quarter since ancient times.
It is most likely that the Arabs took this division of hours from the Greeks and Egyptians, due to its great resemblance to their method.
Peter Boardman mentioned - in a paper he published entitled: 'Counting Time: A Brief History of the Twenty-Four Hours' - that the ancient Greeks used to count their times on twenty-four hours, half of them during the day and half of them at night "based on the description that corresponds to what the Arabs were doing, and that the credit goes to them in Re-counting the hours from midday and then midnight in the thirteenth century, because they saw counting as easier than midday because the clock was clear at noon, when the sun was at its highest level in the sky.
According to him.
This is what the Arabs expressed by the fact that the sun at that time would be “in the midst of the sky.”
He supports the statement that the Arabs took this division from the Greeks and Egyptians;
The ancient Arab geographers - such as Ibn al-Haik al-Hamdani (d. 334 AH / 945 AD) in his book 'The Description of the Arabian Peninsula' - attributed their division of time to Hermes al-Hakim, who is Egyptian in most sayings, and to Ptolemy (d. 170 AD), a Greek-Egyptian.
Expressing the time the
night for the Arabs precedes the day;
Or, in the words of Ibn Muflih al-Hanbali (d. 884 AH / 1479 AD), "the Arabs in history prevailed over nights over days";
The Arab day begins at sunset, not at midnight, so the Arab is not confused as others are, so he says: The party took place on the night between the last Monday and Tuesday, but he says: the night of Tuesday, meaning after sunset on Monday.
That is why Muslims pray Tarawih before they fast their first day of Ramadan, and they call the first night of Shawwal “the night of Eid” before the sun rises on them.
And starting from nightfall - not from sunrise - is in accordance with what is attributed to the Greeks as well;
As mentioned by Peter Boardman in his research.
We knew that the Arabs used to call each hour by a name specific to it, such as dawn, dusk, noon, dusk, twilight, and darkness;
But how did they express those hours?
Were they using names or numbers?
How did they divide the hour?
The Arabs often used the names of the hours to express time, and they rarely mentioned numbers;
They used to say: I will come to you at the emigration, and they derive from it: They say: He came to me displaced, that is, at the fifth Arab hour of the day, that is: before noon!
It came in the hadith of Abdullah bin Omar (d. 73 AH / 693 AD) in the Hajj: “Even if it was at the time of the noon prayer, the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, went into exile, so he combined between noon and afternoon”;
(Sunan Abi Dawood).
It was predominant in the use of the Arabs to mention these names without the number, but they also mentioned the number, and used it in their poetry and literature, and in their daily speech, and in their official dealings.
Whoever mentions them counting the hours in their poems is the saying of Bashar ibn Burd (d. 169 AH / 785 AD) that counts the hours, and that is only for a unit that can be counted:
as if if I hope to meet her ** on an invitation, I see the one who invites
him with it ** No, you represent it to me
Among their ancient determination of the time by a few hours is what was reported by al-Hafiz Ibn Abd al-Barr al-Qurtubi (d. 463 AH/1071AD) - in his book 'Al-Tamheed' - that the Caliph Omar bin Abdul Aziz (d. 101 AH/720AD) was "anticipating the times and having the signs of the hours" to determine times prayers.
Ibn Abd al-Barr transmitted with his chain of transmission on the authority of Imam al-Awza’i (d. 157 AH / 775 AD) that this Umayyad Caliph used to “pray the noon prayer at the eighth hour and the afternoon at the tenth hour.”
This is supported by what has been reported by many historians - from a very early time - of the dates of birth and death of scholars, caliphs, princes and leaders and public and private events
, as they were reminded of the day, date, hour and sometimes part of the hour.
Perhaps one of the oldest examples of this is what al-Maqrizi mentioned in his book 'Ita'az al-Hanafa' that the birth of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah (d. 365 AH / 977 AD) was after "four hours and four-fifths of an hour from Monday the eleventh of Ramadan in the year three hundred and nineteen."
This is an accurate determination that depends on the hour and the part of the hour!
Among this is the saying of Muhyi al-Din al-Qurashi (d. 775 AH / 1373 AD) - in 'The Shining Jewels in Tabaqat al-Hanafiya' - that the glorified Ayyubid Sultan Ibn al-Adil "died in Salakh (= the last day) of Dhul-Qa'dah at the third hour of Friday in the year six hundred and twenty-four in Damascus. ".
And the historian Ibn Taghri Bardi (d. 874 AH / 1469 AD) records in 'Al-Manhal al-Safi' that the Mamluk Sultan Al-Zahir Jaqmaq (d. 857 AH / 1453AD) "removed himself from the Sultanate at the second hour on Thursday the twenty-first of Muharram in the year eight hundred and fifty-seven."
In the dates of birth and death of scientists;
Al-Nuaimi al-Dimashqi (d. 927 AH / 1521 AD) tells us in his book 'The Student in the History of Schools' that the Judge of Judges in Damascus Sharaf al-Din Ibn Qadi al-Jabal al-Hanbali (d. 767 AH / 1365 AD) "was born in the first hour of Monday, the ninth of Sha'ban in the year six hundred and ninety-three."
As Taj al-Din al-Subki (d. 771 AH / 1369 AD) tells us in the "Mu'jam al-Shuyoukh" that the scholar Amina bint Ibrahim al-Wasiti "died on the last Saturday of the sixth day of Dhul-Hijjah in the year seven hundred and forty in Damascus, and prayed for her at the fourth hour of Sunday in the Muzaffari Mosque."
in using the watch at public events;
The Abbasid historian al-Safadi (d. after 717 AH / 1317 AD) informs us in his book 'Nuzha al-Malik and al-Mamluk' that the Egyptian city of Belbeis was besieged by torrential rains in the year 716 AH / 1316 AD, until "the street road to Belbeis was cut off from Bab Egypt to Bab al-Sham, and that was all in one hour. and half an 'hourglass' of the said day."
The historian al-Maqrizi (d. 845 AH / 1441 AD) - in his book 'Al-Suluk' - states that on Monday, 18 Jumada al-Akhirah in the year 787 AH / 1385 AD, "Cairo shook at the fourth hour a slight earthquake."
The Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr al-Kinani (d. 614 AH / 1217 AD) tells us the exact date of his arrival in Mecca in the year 579 AH / 1183 AD;
He says: "And we entered Mecca, may God guard it, in the first hour of Thursday, the thirteenth of Rabi`, which is the fourth of August (= August)" in the year 1183 AD.
And one of the funniest things that al-Maqrizi mentioned - in “Al-Muawa’at wa’l-I’tibar” - is the official Fatimid use of watches;
It was mentioned in the events of the year 395 AH/1006 AD in Egypt that “a record was read that the call to noon prayer is called at the beginning of the seventh hour, and the call to prayer is called for the afternoon prayer at the beginning of the ninth hour.”
This is a documentation of the use of clocks in official ceremonies, and their action is similar to what the ministries of endowments make today in scheduling the times of prayers and printing the Ramadan calendars, and other things that help people to control the times of their worship.
The Fatimids tended to be disciplined in this regard, as they used astronomical calculations to enter the lunar month, not to see the crescent.
And one of their exaggerations in this is what al-Dhahabi (d. 748 AH / 1347 AD) - in the “Sir of the Nobles’ Flags” - told of those who killed them in the year 335 AH / 946 AD, “the martyred imam, the judge of the city of Barqa, Muhammad ibn al-Habil”, for refusing to issue an order for people to break their fast during Ramadan without seeing the Eid crescent. By eye.
Al-Dhahabi then commented: "This was from the opinion of Al-Obaidiya. They break their fast by calculation and are not considered seeing."
When the first hour
of the day has passed, or when the second hour of the night has passed, or when three or four hours of the day or night have passed, and so on.
They did not use the term "one hour" at all, but rather say: "the first hour."
Nor did they divide hours into minutes and seconds as we do today, but say, for example: three-quarters of an hour, four-fifths of it, one-seventh of an hour, and one-half of seven hours...and so on.
Ibn Qutayba al-Dinuri (d. 276 AH/889 AD) said in his book 'Al-Anwa', speaking about the crescent and its stay in the sky starting from the beginning of the month: more than his stay the night before by six seven hours.
Some of these uses are still present in our speech today;
So we say: Meet me at noon, in the morning, and in the evening, with the names of the ancient hours among the Arabs.
And we say: four and a half, and five and a third, and a sixth and a quarter, and we do not go beyond that to the fifth, sixth, and seven - as some of our ancestors did - but we use minutes.
The minutes and seconds are mentioned in our ancient heritage books, such as the book 'The Description of the Arabian Peninsula' by Ibn al-Haik al-Hamdani;
But he used to mention them as astronomical units of measurement, which were soon replaced by units of time measurement because they were related to each other.
More talk will come about that.
And they used a unit of time that still exists today in some countries of the Maghreb, such as Tunisia, which is the staircase.
The use of stairs in expressing the parts of time is very old among the Arabs, and it is much older than minutes, and they borrowed it from the scrolls of the orbs in which they used to measure time, as is well known.
That is why we find the poet Al-Farazdaq (d. 110 AH / 729 AD) saying: I say to the defeated, his bones die ** The stairs of the floating stars follow;
Al-Farzuq used the “stairs of stars” (= their movements) as a unit of time, as was the case with the people of knowledge of the celestial spheres and arithmetic at that time.
Al-Marzouqi Al-Isfahani (d. 421 AH / 1031 AD) said in his book 'Times and Places' that "the succession of the stars [is] that the people time the length of their journey for a time, so that is their obstacle (= the duration of their journey). That is from them, that is the succession of the steps of the planet.”
Then the scrolls soon became mentioned in conjunction with the clocks, and it is beautiful to mention them in poetry, the saying of Ibn Al-Afif Al- Talmisani
(d. 688 AH / 1289 AD):
It was mentioned in some histories that in the hurricanes, the stairs became a distinct unit that could be divided. They used to mention half of the stairs, a quarter and a fifth, for example, as Ibn Taghri Bardi documented the events in his book 'Al-Najm al-Zahirah'.
Among this is his saying that the Muzaffar Sultan Abu Al-Saadat Al-Circassian (d. 833 AH / 1430 AD) assumed power “on the lapse of five steps from midday on Monday the ninth of Muharram in the year eight hundred twenty-four.”
Inherited uses
I did not find a temporal unit from the owners of famous dictionaries, such as “Lisan al-Arab” and “Taj al-Arus”, who mentioned “the stairs” as a unit of time. Rather, I stumbled upon it by chance in history and literature books.
But these dictionaries include the "degree" in terms of astronomy calculations;
Ibn Manzur (d. 711 AH / 1311 AD) said in 'Lisan al-Arab' that "each of the constellations of the sky has thirty degrees."
The astronomer and philosopher Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni (d. 440 AH/1049 AD) - in his book 'The Realization of What India Says About Acceptable in Reason or Rejected' - says that "it gathers from the zodiac for months and from the stairs for days."
and before Al-Biruni;
The astronomer Ibn Jaber Al-Battani Al-Harani (d. 317 AH / 929 AD) - in his book 'Al-Zej Al-Sabi' - gave us a specification of the astronomical degree;
He said, "It is divided into sixty sections called minutes, and every minute of it is divided into sixty sections also called seconds, and every second of it is divided into sixty thirds, and after that, on this drawing from division to tenths and beyond."
Arabs today differ greatly in expressing the hour, especially between the Arab East and the Maghreb.
In Tunisia, for example;
If you are not from her family and you ask someone about the time, he says to you: “Five and seven”!
Perhaps you will be surprised by his answer and say: O these people, how accurate they are in determining the time!
You think it: 5:07, then if you know the way of the people, you will understand that he meant 5:35.
That is because every five minutes they call a staircase, and what he meant was: the hour is five and seven steps;
As for the people of the Arab East, they say: “Five and a half and five.”
I do not think the Maghreb staircase - meaning five minutes - is in agreement with the length of the stairs in the words of the ancients.
The five minutes are far from fragmentation, and they used to divide the stairs into parts, as we find in Ibn Taghri Bardi in his saying that “The Shafi’i judge hurried in the sermon and prayer to the end, as the Sultan referred to this [because he was sick], so that the sermon and prayer were in a manner Three sand stairs and a few minutes,” which indicates that “the stairs” is a very short time.
Rarely do you find from the people of Tunisia - and perhaps in all the countries of the Maghreb - who say: Meet me at the twelfth hour. Rather, he says: “We will meet for the middle of the day,” or “the half of the night.” They add to it half, quarters, and stairs, so they say: Half of the day and a quarter, Half of the night and half, and half of the night and two stairs.
It is rare for them to say also: the hour is “one,” or the hour is “two,” as the Masharqa does, rather they say: “an hour has passed” and “two hours have passed,” or “the two hours have passed.”
Perhaps the Maghreb way of expressing time is more eloquent and closer to the way of the ancestors.
The hours of the equator
and if the Arabs’ way of dividing time prevailed, they used the twenty-four hours of the day and the night, varying in length between summer and winter;
Their ancient history was not free from those who calculated their time on twenty-four equal hours (sixty minutes each) exactly like the hours of the day, but this was almost confined to astronomers and geographers, and they called these hours “equatorial hours” or “flat hours” or The hour of the equinox", as distinguished from the general hour, which lengthens and shortens according to the four seasons.
Ibn al-Haik al-Hamdani said - in his advanced book - that the Iraqi city of Basra “rises upon the sun after its rise to the equatorial position by two flat hours, other than a third of five hours.”
We note here his mention of the equator and he sometimes distinguished it by saying "the longitudinal equator", explaining it as the astronomical "half-day circle".
What is meant by this line is what is known today as the "first longitude" (Greenwich line)!!
Which divides the globe into eastern and western parts, and is universally adopted to determine time differences between time zones.
Ibn Al-Haik explained in detail about these hours of the Istiwa’.
He used to mention minutes and seconds as astronomical units (and time-wise), and with them he mentioned another unit that is no longer mentioned, and has not been transformed into a time unit in our time, as is the case with minutes and seconds.
This unit was called "the finger", and the finger is divided into minutes and seconds, and from this he said about the sun that "the amount of its shadow in the summer solstice is three fingers, eighteen minutes, and thirty-eight seconds from a finger, and the shadow of the winter solstice from the head of Capricorn has seven fingers, and four Eighty minutes and forty-eight seconds from a finger.
Many contemporaries claim that Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Ansari, known as Ibn Al-Shater (d. 777 AH / 1375 AD), was the first to make a device that measured the sixty-minute equator hours;
However, we find in our traditional books evidence that they were able to measure the equator hours many centuries before Ibn al-Shatir.
It is from this that Abu Bakr al-Razi, the famous physician and philosopher (d. 311 AH / 923 AD) mentioned in his book “Al-Hawi fi al-Tibb” medical diagnoses and treatment prescriptions that depend on these hours, such as his saying in diagnosing the symptoms of a type of fever that it lasts in some people “two hours of equatorial hours.” ";
This indicates his ability - as well as those who will read his book from among the people of his time - at the expense of the equator hours easily.
Al-Battani also elaborated on how to calculate hours and determine times with accurate calculations.
We have quoted it previously.
Perhaps Ibn al-Shatir’s most important achievement lies in the accuracy and permanence of his instrument, and it is attested to this that Ibn Aybak al-Safadi (d. 764 AH / 1363 AD) mentioned - in his book 'Al-Wafi with Deaths' - that he saw Ibn al-Shater's "astrolabe" (the astrolabe is an ancient astronomical device that detects the movement of celestial bodies and determines time and directions);
So he admired him so much that he composed poetry in that, making Ibn al-Shatir’s instrument an example of its good rotation and its regularity:
the orbits of my longing since your absence ** revolved around the poles of the atmosphere in my mind,
without a period in its turn, the most eloquent **
This was the story of our ancestors with time and their use of his most famous unit, the "hour".
As for their story with the clock - which is the machine used in calculating and measuring time - and the types of their inventions in its field.. Perhaps it has another story that is greater and stranger!!