Hijri Date Converter

How to Use the Hijri Date Converter

1. 1. Choose the calendar. Umm al-Qura is Saudi Arabia's official calendar and the one most software uses. Tabular is the arithmetical calendar of 30-year cycles that historians use for older dates.
2. 2. Choose the direction. For Gregorian → Hijri, pick a date — the converter opens on today. For Hijri → Gregorian, enter the day, choose the month and type the year AH.
3. 3. Read the result. You get both dates, the weekday, the ISO date and the Hijri date as it is written in Arabic, plus what the other calendar says for the same day.
4. 4. Check the month and the year. Under the result are the length of the Hijri month, the Gregorian dates the Hijri year covers, and a table of all twelve months with the day each one begins.

How the Hijri Calendar Works

The Hijri calendar counts lunar months from the Hijra, the Prophet Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina; year 1 AH began in July 622 CE. Each month starts with the new crescent and lasts 29 or 30 days, so a Hijri year has 354 or 355 days — about 11 days shorter than a solar year. That is why Ramadan moves through the seasons: in the Umm al-Qura calendar, 1 Ramadan fell on 11 March 2024, on 1 March 2025 and on 18 February 2026.

Umm al-Qura, Tabular and Observed Dates

There is no single Hijri date for every day, because calendars disagree about when a month begins. Three approaches are in everyday use:

• Umm al-Qura is Saudi Arabia's official calendar for civil purposes, computed in advance by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST). Since 1423 AH, a month begins after the 29th when, at Mecca, the conjunction of sun and moon comes before sunset and the moon sets after the sun; otherwise the month runs to 30 days. Browsers carry its tables for AH 1300–1600 (1882–2174 CE).
• The tabular calendar ignores the sky. Odd-numbered months have 30 days and even-numbered months 29, and Dhu al-Hijja gains a 30th day in 11 years of every 30-year cycle (years 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26 and 29). It is predictable for any century, which is why historians convert with it, but its months can start a day or two away from the visible crescent.
• Observed dates begin a month when the new crescent is actually seen, so they depend on the weather and on where you are. Many communities fix Ramadan and the two Eids this way, and their dates can differ from any calculated calendar by a day or two.

The two calculated calendars do not always agree with each other either. On 7 July 2024 the Umm al-Qura calendar had already reached 1 Muharram 1446, while the tabular calendar still read 30 Dhu al-Hijja 1445. The converter shows the other calendar's date under every result, so you can see when the choice matters.

Hijri Dates in Citations and Research

Books and documents published in Arabic-speaking countries often carry only a Hijri date. A reference list needs the Gregorian year, so convert it — and remember that one Hijri year overlaps two Gregorian years. The year 1445 AH ran from 19 July 2023 to 6 July 2024, so a book dated 1445 with no month could be from 2023 or 2024. The result panel gives that span for every year, and the month table narrows it down when the source names a month.

Journals in the field set their own rules. The International Journal of Middle East Studies, for example, asks contributors not to double-date: give common-era dates only, and when quoting a source that uses a Hijri date, keep the date as quoted with the common-era equivalent in brackets. Names and titles from Arabic sources are romanized as well as dated — How to Cite a Source in Another Language covers that side.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is today's date in the Hijri calendar?

The converter opens on today's date and shows it in the Umm al-Qura calendar, with the tabular calendar's date underneath. Local practice can differ by a day: where a month begins with a moon sighting, it may start a day before or after the calculated date.

How do I convert a Hijri date to a Gregorian date?

Choose Hijri → Gregorian, enter the day, pick the month and type the year AH. The calendar libraries in browsers can only turn a Gregorian date into a Hijri one, so the converter estimates the day from the average month length and then checks the days around it until it finds the exact match.

Why do Hijri date converters disagree by a day?

They use different rules for when a month starts. Umm al-Qura uses Saudi Arabia's astronomical criterion, the tabular calendar uses fixed 30-year cycles, and other converters follow local sightings or other astronomical criteria. All are legitimate, so say which one you used when the exact day matters.

How many days are in a Hijri year?

354 or 355. Each month has 29 or 30 days, and twelve of them average about 354.37 days, roughly 11 days fewer than a Gregorian year. That is why about 33 Hijri years pass in every 32 Gregorian years.

What does AH mean?

AH stands for anno Hegirae, Latin for "in the year of the Hijra". 1445 AH is the 1,445th lunar year counted from the Hijra in 622 CE. In Arabic the abbreviation is هـ, written after the year.

Can I use this converter for the Persian solar Hijri calendar?

No. Iran's official calendar is the solar Hijri calendar, which counts from the same year 622 but uses solar years that begin at the spring equinox, so its year numbers and months are different. 1 Farvardin 1403 in that calendar was 20 March 2024 — which was 10 Ramadan 1445 in the lunar calendar.