چکیده:
This article exposes an analysis of the Zoroastrian Persian calendar in a 12th century Hebrew book on the Jewish calendar (Sefer ha-‘Ibbūr). The Hebrew treatise was composed by the polymath Abraham bar Ḥiyya, probably in Northern France. Bar Ḥiyya depicts the structure of the Zoroastrian Persian calendar, its months and some of its festivals. He then expounds on calendrical algorithms which enable to convert between Persian and Jewish dates. Although one finds the names of some Persian months and festivals in earlier Jewish sources, Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s text not only elaborates in greater detail on these matters, but for the first time in Hebrew literature, one encounters conversion algorithms between the two calendars.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Although one finds the names of some Persian months and festivals in earlier Jewish sources, Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s text not only elaborates in greater detail on these matters, but for the first time in Hebrew literature, one encounters conversion algorithms between the two calendars.
He fixed the beginning of the year to the spring equinox and retained the traditional Zoroastrian Persian twelve months of 30 days each as well as the epagomenai (at the end of the year), but he added a sixth ‘stolen’ day at regular intervals and thus rendered the year equally long as in the Julian calendar.
When you wish to know on which weekday the Persian New Year falls and on which day of the lunar month, you count [literally, ‘know’] how many cycles and years which do not complete a cycle [have elapsed] from the Creation of the World and subtract 231 cycles.
Count from Tišrī the number of months you have removed from the distance and the month in which the calculation ends, add to the remaining distance the hours and the parts in the mōlād of the following month and you will come up with [the number of] complete days between the mōlād of that month and the beginning of the month Farwardīn.
Subtract it from 267 days, 11 hours and 591 parts, which was the distance between [1] Farwardīn in the first year of Persia and the mōlād of Tišrī.