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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Parthicus, post: 2794916, member: 81887&quot;]Most Islamic coins use AH (Anno Hegirae) or Hijra dating, which starts the calendar with Muhammad&#039;s hijra (journey from Mecca to Medina) in 622 AD.&nbsp; The Islamic religious calendar is lunar-based and is only 354 (or in leap years 355) days long.&nbsp; Thus, over centuries it gets out of synch with the solar calendar.&nbsp; The year 1319 in the standard AH calendar corresponds to 1901 AD.&nbsp; (Actually, April 20, 1901 to April 9, 1902, to be precise.)&nbsp; Your coin&#039;s previous owner assumed the date was in AH, looked up the conversion, and wrote down 1901.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, just to make life confusing, some coins from Iran and Afghanistan use a variant calendar called Solar Hijra (SH).&nbsp; This also starts from 622 AD, but uses a solar year of 365 (or leap year of 366) days.&nbsp; Your coin type uses the SH system, so 1319 SH does indeed correspond to 1940 AD.</p><p><br /></p><p>How can you tell if a coin uses the AH or SH system?&nbsp; If it&#039;s Islamic but not from Iran or Afghanistan, you can forget the SH.&nbsp; If it is an Afghan or Iranian coin... you have to look it up, the coins don&#039;t specify which calendar to use.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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