Aashura: The Jewish Connection!

It is Aashura day, perhaps the most solemn day in Islamic calendar: The day the Prophet's  grandson Hussain was killed along with his family in the year 680 in Karbala.

This year it coincides with the most solemn day in Jewish calendar, Yum Kippur.

I am not sure of the rest of the Sunni world, but in Pakistan and India, Aashura has always been a solemn day for Muslims of all sects.

For the last few decades, there has been an concerted effort to keep the emphasis on Aashura but focus that its importance predates the massacre of Karbala.

We are told to realize that the Prophet  declared the observance of Aashura fasting for two days, on the 9th and 10th of Muharram, the first month of Islamic calendar, in the year of his migration to Madina. 

The story goes as follows: When the Prophet arrived in Yasreb ( present day Madina), he saw Jewish people observing fast on the tenth of the month. He inquired and was told that Jews observed that day for the deliverance of their people from Pharaoh by fasting for one day. Prophet declared that as Muslims were closer to Moses then the then-day Jews, Muslims would observe fasting for two days. So the tradition of fasting for those two days started. In the second year of Hijri, the Ramzan fasting became obligatory and thus the Aashura fasting became optional. 

I tried to look it up and ended up with more questions than answers.

Here is what I could gather.

The Jewish tradition of celebrating the freedom from Pharaoh is Passover, and that is in the month of Nisan, the first month the ecclesiastical year and the seventh month or eighth of the civil year. The Passover is celebrated on the 15th and not on the 10th of that month. They eat unleavened bread and there is celebration with wine, four cups to be precise. There is no fasting except for the first born, as they may have been dead in Pharaoh's Egypt.

The tradition which coincides with fasting is Yum Kippur. It is on the tenth day of Tishrei, the first month of the civil year. Jews observe fast on that day, 25 hours to be precise. But it does not coincide with the deliverance from Pharaoh's terror. It is a day to repent sins and relates to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. However the day is the same day when Moses received the second of his tablets of Ten Commandments. 

I tried to get old calendar dates. Muslim sources claim that Prophet entered Madina on July 16th, 622. This was the beginning of a new month, perhaps a month or two after Muharram. That is how the Hijri calendar was started ; backdated to that day during the time of the second caliph Umar. This date coincides with the first of Av, the fifth month of the Hebrew year 4382.  The day of Yum Kippur came two months later in September or so. The Passover would be another seven months.

So given the slight variation of calendar dates due to lack of clarity between the first and tenth year of Hijra, when intercalation (Nas) was clearly abolished in Islam, the most likely Jewish holiday Prophet Muhammad noticed was Yum Kippur and not Passover. The story fits nicely with Yum Kippur: fasting, solemn affair, the tenth day of the first month of the year. Perhaps it was not Passover, where there is celebration and is on the fifteenth of the month. Moreover Passover is always in the Spring, and not in the month of July or soon after. 

Unless the Jewish tribes of Medina were using a different calendar then rest of diaspora. That is possible as the Hebrew Calendar was firmly established as it is now in either 7th or 8th century, but that would probably not account for a variation of several months.

So, what is was: Yim Kippur or Passover.

If it were Yum Kippur then after 1439 lunar years or 1395 solar years, the days have come together again. Must have been more than 40 such coincidences.

A day to reflect and reconcile.