The Pandra Sala Calendar for India gives fifteen Hijri years, Shaban 1447 to Dhu al-Hijjah 1462, against the Gregorian years 2026 to 2040. Every month is worked from the moon's altitude at Surat, and the Saudi dates are printed beside the Indian ones.
Fifteen Hijri years set out in advance, Shaʿbān 1447 to Dhū al-Ḥijjah 1462, against the Gregorian years 2026 to 2040. The reason he gives for making it is a practical one and comes first in his own list: so that a family can book its leave a year ahead and know that the date will hold. The second reason is not practical at all: so that a whole country settles on one date, and false testimony has nothing left to stand on.
Each month is worked from where the moon actually is. The dates, the moon’s altitude, the
minutes it stays above the horizon, its age and the time of the new moon are all taken from
the tables of the H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, computed for the latitude and longitude
of Surat and given for the whole of India. The rule the calendar is built on is stated on its
first page: the moon must stand ten degrees high and stay forty-five minutes above the
horizon before it will be seen. Beside each month is that month’s timeanddate calendar, and
the world visibility map from moonsighting.com, whose colours show where the moon can be
seen and where it cannot.
The Saudi dates are printed next to the Indian ones throughout, and the front of the book carries a summary table: for each of the fifteen years, Ramaḍān, ʿĪd al-Fiṭr, Baqr-ʿĪd, the tenth of Muḥarram and Shab-e-Barāt, in India and in Saudi Arabia, with the weekday.
What it is not. The book says in its own list that it is a guide only, and that acts of worship are performed after the moon is seen. He sets out his position on calculation at length: the hadith that this is an unlettered ummah which neither writes nor calculates was said of an age when calculation was rough, and today’s is fine enough to be relied on. But what it settles is that a claimed sighting was impossible, not that a month has begun. If cloud hides a moon that could have been seen, the month is completed at thirty days as it always was.
The same fifteen years are worked for Pakistan and for England, each on its own horizon.
First published in January 2026 by Maktaba Thamir, Manchester.