Definition
A calendrical epoch used in Arabian and Turkish legal instruments, historical records, and official documents, marking the beginning of the Mohammedan era. The Hegira era begins from the day of Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina, generally reckoned as July 16, A.D. 622, under the reign of the Emperor Heraclius. When a date in a historical legal document is expressed according to the Hegira, it must be converted to the Common Era (Gregorian or Julian) before it can be placed in a proper chronological sequence or used as evidence of timing in a legal proceeding.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A journey taken to escape from danger; an exodus.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The flight of Mohammed from Mecca, September 13, A.D. 622; hence, any flight or exodus regarded as like that of Mohammed.
The common meaning has generalized outward from the specific historical event into a metaphor for any urgent departure or mass flight. The legal meaning never followed that generalization. In legal and historical sources, Hegira refers specifically and only to the calendrical system anchored to that event — it is a dating convention, not a description of movement or escape. A researcher encountering "Hegira" in a legal instrument should read it as a timestamp, not a narrative word.
Common Confusion
The date of the Hegira itself is not settled uniformly across historical sources. Rapalje & Lawrence fix the day as Friday, July 16, A.D. 622. Bouvier places the escape on the night of Thursday, July 15th, with the era beginning July 16th. Webster's 1913 gives September 13 — a figure that reflects a different scholarly tradition or a confusion between the date of departure and another event in the same journey. Researchers converting Hegira dates to Common Era dates should be aware that the base date assumed by the converting source matters and that a one-day or even larger discrepancy can appear depending on which reckoning is used. The Islamic lunar calendar also means that Hegira years do not align evenly with solar years, compounding conversion complexity.
Why It Matters in Research
Hegira appears in the Law Mind corpus almost exclusively as a reference problem rather than a substantive legal concept. Its significance is navigational and archival: any document originating from an Arabian, Turkish, Ottoman, or broadly Islamic legal context may express dates in Hegira years (abbreviated A.H., Anno Hegirae). A contract, deed, judgment, or diplomatic instrument dated by the Hegira requires conversion before a researcher can determine whether it falls within a relevant limitations period, predates or postdates a controlling legal event, or aligns with other documents in a timeline.
The conversion is not mechanical. The Islamic calendar is lunar, running approximately 354 days per year rather than 365, meaning Hegira years creep forward relative to the Gregorian calendar at a rate of roughly eleven days per solar year. A Hegira year does not begin on a fixed Gregorian date. Purpose-built conversion tables or calculators are necessary; rough arithmetic will introduce error. Historical dictionaries and glossaries of the nineteenth century — including those represented in this corpus — treat Hegira primarily as a vocabulary item requiring brief definition rather than as a practical conversion guide. Their definitions are useful for confirming what the term means but not for performing date arithmetic.
Researchers working with colonial-era documents touching the Ottoman Empire, North African legal records, or diplomatic correspondence involving Islamic states should flag any date-bearing instrument for Hegira review before drawing conclusions about chronology.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources in this corpus are in substantial agreement on the core definition: Hegira is a dating epoch, not a legal doctrine. All four sources anchor it to Mohammed's flight and to July 622 A.D. as the computational origin.
The sources diverge, however, on the precise base date. Rapalje & Lawrence give July 16 cleanly. Bouvier distinguishes between the night of departure (July 15) and the start of the era (July 16), the most granular and useful formulation for conversion purposes. Black's Law Dictionary in both editions supplies the same opening clause but the surviving text is truncated in the source material here, suggesting the entries were brief glosses rather than practical guides.
One editorial oddity in Bouvier is worth flagging for researchers using that dictionary: the entry contains an obvious mid-word break ("com- putation"), indicating a typographic artifact from the scanned source. The substance is intact. Bouvier also notes a variant spelling — Hejira — though the entry itself is cut off before completing that observation. Both spellings appear in historical legal sources and should be used as alternative search terms in corpus research.
None of the historical dictionaries address the lunar-year conversion problem or provide tables. That gap is significant: a researcher relying solely on these sources will know what Hegira means but will still need an external reference to use a Hegira date in practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Hegira dating has no operative role in domestic U.S. or English common law. Its relevance arises in private international law contexts, probate or property matters involving decedents or instruments from Islamic-majority jurisdictions, and historical research touching Ottoman or colonial-era records. Courts in those contexts have treated Hegira dates as factual questions of foreign law or historical fact requiring expert or documentary support for conversion.