Thirteen Days to a Station: The Calendar the Desert Still Runs On

For the people of the Peninsula the year is not only twelve months. It is a set of stations of thirteen days each, grouped into seasons, every season named for the work it carries. The Al-Ojeiri Scientific Centre publishes this calendar and sells it as a printed almanac and as an app.

Where today sits

The Suhail season runs from 24 August to 15 October and holds four stations: Al-Tarfa, 24 August to 5 September; Al-Jabha, 6 to 19 September; Al-Zubra, 20 September to 2 October; and Al-Sarfa, 3 to 15 October. Today falls inside Al-Jabha, whose entry at the centre reads: relative humidity, and the migration of turtle doves.

The calendar is work, not poetry

• Al-Sarfa: the nights begin to lengthen, and the falcons pass. That tells a falconer when to be ready.
• Al-Wasm, 16 October to 6 December, is the rain season; the word means the mark rain leaves on the ground.
• Al-Marbaaniya, 7 December to 14 January, is forty days of cold, opening with Al-Iklil.
• Saad Al-Dhabih, 10 to 22 February: water runs in the branch, grass thickens, and the truffles come.
• The Scorpion season is three stars the centre names Aqrab Al-Sam, Aqrab Al-Dam and Aqrab Al-Dasm — the last so called because livestock fatten in it.

And Suhail itself

The most important star to the Bedouin of the Peninsula: when it rises, the last of the night turns cool. The centre completes the picture with a planting calendar on the same seasons — pumpkin sown in August only, strawberries in October only, mung beans and chickpeas in November.

The limit of this piece

All of the above is the calendar as the centre publishes it today. How Kuwaitis used it before 1950 specifically would need an independent historical source, and nothing undocumented has been put here.

Photo: A dune under a star-filled sky. Photograph by Tim de Groot, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: The Al-Ojeiri Scientific Centre — its seasons, astronomical terms and agricultural calendar pages.