Provided by: itools_1.1-1_amd64 bug

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 conversion 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 counterparts (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 © 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.