in Chronology, a celebrated epoch among the Mahometans. The word is Arabic, formed of هجرة, hajrath, "flight;" of هجر, "to fly, quit one's country, family, friends, &c."

The event which gave occasion to this epocha, was Mahomet's flight from Mecca. The magistrates of that city, fearing his impostures might raise a sedition, resolved to expel him: this, accordingly, they effected in the year of our Lord 622, on the evening of the 15th or 16th of July. See Arabia, No. 44.

To render this epocha more creditable, the Mahometans affect to use the word hegira in a peculiar sense for an act of religion, whereby a man forsakes his country, and gives way to the violence of persecutors and enemies of the faith: they add, that the Corashites, being then the strongest party in the city, obliged their prophet to fly, as not being able to endure his abolishing of idolatry. This flight was not the first of Mahomet's, but it was the most famous. It happened in the 14th year from his assuming the character of prophet and apostle, and promulgating his new religion.

The orientals do not agree with us as to the time of the hegira. Among the Mahometans, Amasi fixes it to the year of Christ 630, and from the death of Moses 2347; and Ben Caffem to the year of the world 5800: according to the Greek computation, among the Christians, Said Ebn Batrik refers the hegira to the year of Christ 614, and of the creation 6114.

Khondemir relates, that it was Omar, the second caliph, that first established the hegira as an epocha, and appointed the years to be numbered from it: at the time he made this decree, there were already seven years elapsed. This establishment was made in imitation of the Christians, who, in those times, reckoned their years from the persecution of Diocletian.

But there is another hegira, and that earlier too, though of less eminence. Mahomet, in the 14th year of his mission, was obliged to relinquish Medina: the Corashites had all along opposed him very vigorously, as an innovator and disturber of the public peace; and many of his disciples, not enduring to be reputed followers of an impostor, desired leave of him to abandon the city, for fear of being obliged to renounce their religion. This retreat makes the first hegira. These two hegiras the Mahometans, in their language, call hegiratan.

The years of the hegira consist only of 354 days. To reduce these years to the Julian calendar, i.e. to find what Julian year a given year of the hegira answers to, reduce the year of the hegira given into days, by multiplying by 354, divide the product by