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NAME

       ical - A Hijri/Islamic calendar (and converter)

SYNOPSIS

       ical [--gregorian yyyymmdd] [--hijri yyyymmdd] [--umm_alqura] [--fixed_view] [--dual] [--help]

DESCRIPTION

       The  ical  program  is  a Hijri/Islamic calendar displayer.  It utilizes and includes 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.

       ical  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.  ical 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.

       ical  when  run	without  any  command-line options uses the host machine's Gregorian date and converts it to Hijri to display that month's
       view.  Entries enclosed by [] denote exact day specified.

OPTIONS

       ical 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

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

       -f, --fixed_view
	      Show a fixed week view (ie. start on Sun and end on Sat) else default to showing the preferred week view of the  resulting  calendar
	      (Gregorian starts on Sunday, Hijri starts on Saturday)

       -d, --dual
	      Show both converstion from and to calendar months simultaneously

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).

       The  Islamic  Hijri calendar is strictly lunar (ie. moon-based) with twelve lunar months which do not correspond or track their solar coun-
       terparts (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 relay 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

       There is currently no Umm Al-Qura support.

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

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

SEE ALSO

       The  ITL  (Islamic  Tools  Library).   It is the underlying requirement for ical to function.  The ITL library was created and is hosted at
       www.arabeyes.org.

ical								 January 05, 2005							  IDATE(1)