What Does AH Mean? How Hijri Years Are Numbered

AH stands for Anno Hegirae, Latin for "in the year of the Hijra." It marks a year in the Islamic (Hijri) calendar, counted from the lunar year in which the Prophet ﷺ migrated from Makkah to Madinah in 622 CE. So "1448 AH" means the 1,448th Hijri year. That is the current year: 9 November 2026 is 29 Jumada al-Awwal 1448 AH on the calculated Umm al-Qura calendar.

You cannot get the AH year by subtracting 622 from the Gregorian year. Hijri years are about 11 days shorter, so the count runs faster, and the gap grows over the centuries.

Key Takeaways

• AH means Anno Hegirae, "year of the Hijra." Year 1 AH began on 16 July 622 in the Julian calendar.
• Year 1 starts at 1 Muharram of the year of the Hijra, not on the day of the journey itself.
• Hijri years are about 354 days long, so 2026 − 622 = 1404 is wrong. The year that began in 2026 is 1448 AH.
• For an estimate, use AH ≈ (CE − 622) × 33 ÷ 32. For an exact date, use a converter.

What the letters AH stand for

AH is short for the Latin anno Hegirae. AramcoWorld's guide to the hijri and Gregorian calendars gives the same expansion and translates it as "year of the hijrah." It works the same way as AD (anno Domini) in the Christian era.

A paper on translating Iranian documents, Date conversion essentials in the Journal of Specialised Translation, notes that the Islamic calendar is usually abbreviated to AH in Western languages. You may see it written several ways:

• 1448 AH or AH 1448, the usual English forms.
• 1448 H, a shorter form you may also see.
• 1448 هـ in Arabic text, where the letter hā' is short for hijri.

All of these mean the same year. Only the abbreviation changes.

Where year 1 AH begins

Year 1 AH began on 1 Muharram, the first day of the lunar year in which the Hijra took place. The US Naval Observatory's Islamic calendar page says the count "begins with 1 Muharram A.H. 1," which corresponds to Friday, 16 July 622 in the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was still the calendar of Europe at that time, which is why historians quote a Julian date.

Some tables give 15 July instead. R.H. van Gent of Utrecht University explains on his page about the tabular Islamic calendar that converters use one of two epochs: 15 July 622, known as the "astronomical" or Thursday epoch, or 16 July 622, the "civil" or Friday epoch. The choice shifts every converted date by one day, which is one reason old tables and software can disagree. The sister post on why Hijri converters disagree by a day covers the other reasons.

The year count is not the day of the journey

A common mistake is to treat 1 Muharram 1 AH as the date the Prophet ﷺ left Makkah. AramcoWorld's 1979 article The Turn of a Century, written for the start of the year 1400 AH, makes the distinction clear: the calendar begins with the first month, Muharram, not the day of the arrival in Madinah. The migration itself took place during that first year. The post on the Hijra of 622 covers the journey and its dates.

Who chose the Hijra as year 1

The Hijri era was not in use during the Prophet's ﷺ lifetime. Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry on the Islamic calendar says the second caliph, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, introduced the Hijra era in 639 CE and began year 1 with the first day of Muharram. AramcoWorld's calendar guide dates the decision to 638 CE, so sources differ by about a year.

The choice of starting point is recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari 3934. Sahl bin Sa'd reports that the Companions did not count from the day the Prophet ﷺ was sent as a messenger, or from the day of his death, but from his arrival in Madinah. Even so, the count is reckoned from 1 Muharram of that year, as Britannica notes, rather than from the arrival date itself. The details are in how Umar adopted the Hijri calendar.

The months themselves are older than the era. The Quran says, in a translation of the meaning from Surah at-Tawbah 9:36 (The Clear Quran, Mustafa Khattab), "Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve." The era decision only fixed which year is counted as year 1.

No year zero, and what BH means

There is no year 0 AH. The year before 1 AH is 1 BH, "before the Hijra," the same way 1 BC is followed directly by AD 1. You may occasionally see BH for events before the Hijra, though most writers simply give the CE year. If you count across the boundary, remember that the gap between 1 BH and 1 AH is one year, not two.

Why subtracting 622 gives the wrong year

Subtraction assumes both calendars have years of the same length. They do not.

The USNO explains that 12 lunar months are, on average, 11 days shorter than the civil year, so the Islamic year shifts earlier each year by about that amount. The average Hijri length above comes from the tabular calendar the USNO describes, in which 11 of every 30 years have an extra day: (19 × 354 + 11 × 355) ÷ 30 ≈ 354.37 days. The post on how many days are in a Hijri year has the full breakdown.

Those 11 days add up. After about 33 Hijri years, the Hijri count has gained a whole year on the Gregorian count. Since 622, that has happened more than 40 times:

• Simple subtraction: 2026 − 622 = 1404
• Actual Hijri years overlapping 2026: 1447 and 1448

The answer is off by 43 to 44 years, and the error keeps growing.

How to estimate the AH year

The ratio of the two year lengths is close to 33:32. That gives two rough formulas, also printed in AramcoWorld's calendar guide, which notes they convert "roughly":

• AH ≈ (CE − 622) × 33 ÷ 32
• CE ≈ (AH × 32 ÷ 33) + 622

Worked examples

These use the formulas, then check the result against the site's Umm al-Qura converter.

Read the formula's whole number as "about this year." It usually lands on one of the two Hijri years that overlap a Gregorian year, but it cannot tell you which one applies on a given day. For that you need the month and day.

The 1400 AH row also shows the sunset rule at work. AramcoWorld's 1979 article said the year 1400 would begin at sundown on 19 November 1979. It called this the start of a new Muslim century, the popular way of marking the turn of the 15th century AH; strictly, with no year zero, 1400 is the last year of the 14th century and the 15th begins with 1401. That is the evening before the 20 November date in the table, because the Islamic day begins at sunset.

One Gregorian year, two Hijri years

Because a Hijri year is shorter, almost every Gregorian year contains the end of one Hijri year and the start of the next. The new year (1 Muharram) moves 10 to 12 days earlier each time:

Each date begins at sunset on the evening before. Local announcements based on moon sighting may differ by a day.

Roughly every 32 or 33 Gregorian years, a whole Hijri year fits inside one Gregorian year, so 1 Muharram falls twice in it. Van Gent's table of such years for the tabular calendar lists 1429 AH in 2008 and 1463 AH in 2041, matching the Umm al-Qura dates below. On the calculated Umm al-Qura calendar, 2008 had two Islamic new years: 1429 AH began on 10 January 2008 and 1430 AH on 29 December 2008. The next time this happens is 2041, with 1463 AH beginning on 4 January and 1464 AH on 24 December. That is the extra year gained, seen on a wall calendar. The post on why Islamic dates move about 11 days earlier each year explains the drift in detail.

AH is not the same as SH

Iran also uses a calendar counted from the Hijra, but it is solar. The Journal of Specialised Translation paper notes that official documents in Iran are dated by the solar (Hejri-e Shamsi) calendar, whose year begins at the March equinox. Its years are usually marked SH (Solar Hijri) or AP.

Because its years are as long as Gregorian years, the solar count is lower than the lunar one. In November 2026 the solar year is 1405 SH, while the lunar year is 1448 AH. If an Iranian document shows a year in the 1400s, check which calendar it uses before converting. The post on lunar Hijri vs solar Hijri compares the two.

Common questions

What year is it in AH right now?

It is 1448 AH. The calculated Umm al-Qura calendar puts 1 Muharram 1448 at 16 June 2026, and 1449 AH is expected to begin around 6 June 2027.

Can I convert my birth year to AH?

You can estimate it with the formula, but a birth year in CE overlaps two Hijri years. You need the full birth date to know which one. The guide to finding your Hijri birthday walks through it.

Find the exact Hijri year for any date

For a quick estimate, multiply (CE − 622) by 33 and divide by 32. For anything you will write on a document or an invitation, convert the full date instead:

• Enter a Gregorian or Hijri date in the Hijri date converter to get the exact calculated equivalent.
• Browse the months of the current year in the 1448 AH calendar.

Treat calculated dates as a planning guide. Where your community starts months by local moon sighting, the announced date may be a day later.