Proleptic Gregorian dates #120
Comments
|
Hi Theo,
Thanks for raising this. I suspect that older printed catalogues often omitted full date conversions to avoid this issue(!)
If converting to Julian is “standard practice”, would you mind citing published examples from scholars who deal with not only Julian but also Gregorian date conversions in the same publication? It would be enormously helpful to consult examples of those who deal with a wide range of dates as cataloguers do, not just a manuscript or corpus in a specific time period.
Furthermore, if we’re to be so precise, then before 1752, the Old Style Gregorian calendar year commenced on Lady Day, March 25, not Jan 1, but I know of no date convertor—much less any scholars in our field— that accounts for this discrepancy. Would you?
Thanks,
Jake
…________________________________
From: Theo Beers ***@***.***>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2023 11:40:52 PM
To: fihristorg/fihrist-mss ***@***.***>
Cc: Subscribed ***@***.***>
Subject: [fihristorg/fihrist-mss] Proleptic Gregorian dates (Issue #120)
I was looking at the entry<https://www.fihrist.org.uk/catalog/manuscript_6810> for Persian MS 317 in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, and noticed that the CE conversion of the colophon date is in the Gregorian calendar. (See the relevant lines<https://github.com/fihristorg/fihrist-mss/blob/abd293b71ae60097502747e9244da1672be71042/collections/the%20university%20of%20manchester/Persian_MS_317.xml#L79-L81> in the XML file.)
This is probably deliberate; the manuscript description schema seems to stipulate the use of Gregorian dates, whether actual or proleptic. I still wonder if this could cause confusion with researchers. The usual practice among historians of the premodern Islamicate world is to convert dates to Julian if they fall before the initial implementation of the Gregorian calendar reform (October 1582). So, in scholarship, the colophon date of this manuscript—22 Ramaḍān 977—would be converted to 28 February 1570.
Has this question come up before? It makes sense to me that the when attribute in the XML is always a Gregorian date, for consistency. Then there is the calendar attribute to reflect the calendar of the original date, in this case lunar Hijri. I'm not sure how, if at all, the equivalent Julian date could be included.
Thanks in advance for your help.
—
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#120>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOOYKC736PZOP7EWWGCJ423W4JHQJANCNFSM6AAAAAAV4P7LLQ>.
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>
|
Indeed, this is one of many complicating details. I think it's also questionable for us as historians of the Near East to switch from Julian conversion to Gregorian as of 1582, when it was only Catholic countries that implemented the reform at that point. It could be argued that the changes made by Great Britain in 1750–52 were of comparable international significance. What I can say is that, if you look at the commonly cited dates for historical events in the Islamicate world before 990/1582, and check AH against CE, I think you'll find that the conversion is typically to Julian. e.g., the Treaty of Amasya, 8 Rajab 962, or 29 May 1555. Let me think on this further and see if I can come up with a good published authority that says how it "should" be done. |
|
How would you feel about treating Freeman-Grenville's Muslim and Christian Calendars as a normative reference? (Here's a PDF.) That was one of the first books I was told to consult when I got interested in calendrical issues in grad school. Freeman-Grenville treats the question of the Julian-to-Gregorian transition in exactly the right way, in my opinion. He uses the Julian calendar exclusively for dates before 990/1582. Between that point and the British reforms effective 1752, his tables accommodate both Old (Julian) and New (Gregorian) Styles. After that, it's Gregorian only. Anyway, I think the important point is that there is not a strong basis in scholarship in our field for converting earlier AH dates proleptically to the Gregorian calendar. |
|
Theo, We discussed this issue at the last FIHRIST meeting. While we understand the problem, as rare book and special collections librarians and cataloguers, we reference standards from library consortia, in this case, very specific date guidelines outlined in ACRL AMREMM, which most English-language records adhere. §1B2.1 Content Date: "Convert dates given in these or other chronological systems to Arabic numbers and render them according to the Gregorian calendar. Convert all Old Style dates of the Julian calendar (including those prior to 1582) to New Style dates of the Gregorian calendar using January 1 as the beginning of the year. Make any necessary corrections of error. Record original statements of date of production in a note." §4D1: "Supply a date of production for an item as accurately as available evidence will allow, giving the date Of course, they offer no examples for Islamic date conversions, but MARC RDA guidelines also stipulate Gregorian year conversions as well, why electronic catalogues only record year dates. After discussing this issue and consulting with other non-Fihrist Middle East and Islamic cataloguers, unless the manuscript explicitly mentions a Julian date, we must use CE dates. While it may be technically correct to convert it to a JD date, adding that also requires further detailed explanations for others to comprehend (which overlaps with another issue regarding the use of undefined abbreviations), whereas the CE date, while admittedly proleptic, both accurately converts to the AH or other calendrical date format and most viewers readily comprehend what it means. We might individually elect in some cases to add a note regarding the calendar discrepancies, if pertinent, but to institute a new policy would mean setting us up against a number of standing conventions. I will add a note to our Wiki about this in due course. Best, Jake |
|
Ironically, I just discovered that Jan Schmidt employs a Julian date conversion in his catalogue entry for Chetham 7988 (now Rylands Persian MS 1012); however, he neglects to describe his conversions in his introduction. In creating the record now, I've noted the dating as "proleptic CE", with the JD date as well. Schmidt likely did this in his other published catalogues; however, it still doesn't constitute electronic records contributed to an Integrated Library System (much less Fihrist) that operates under ALA-RBSC, ACRL AMREMM, RDA, or any other English-language Anglo-North American library consortium guidelines. Since this changes/alters established guidelines, there may be a way to propose a revision to the Library of Congress, which in this case would in turn defer to the ACRL AAMES and MELA (as for romanisation) (only just how to broach it is a good question, but I can find out). One must be a member of an ACRL library to participate in AAMES, but anyone can join MELA, not just North American librarians. I currently serve on their Committee on Cataloging (CoC), which handles these issues (e.g. committee members recently overhauled the NACO guidelines for Persian name authorities). However, most MELA CoC members don't regularly handle pre-modern materials. So, I'm game to keep the dialogue about this matter open, but would like to hear more input from other Middle East & Islamicate cataloguers converting dates in electronic records. |
|
This is very interesting. Thanks for looking into it. The part that seems "unfair" is that I'm sure these guidelines were written from the perspective of cataloguing European materials. And they say that you're supposed to note the original date statement—i.e., the Julian date, in the case of most documents produced in Europe—while using proleptic Gregorian for the standard date. So nothing is lost. But there will be something missing when cataloguing a pre 990/1582 Islamicate manuscript. There's the AH date statement in the source; the converted Julian date that most responsible historians will use in scholarship; and the proleptic Gregorian converted date that we see in the catalogue entry. Fortunately, the difference is small (eleven days at most), and a lot of people these days don't know or care about it. |
|
These guidelines reflect widespread library cataloguing consortia standards, so Fihrist contributors are not at liberty to unilaterally adopt new ones from the bottom up. Instead, I strongly encourage you to take this issue up directly with ACRL and LC. While the latter accepts proposals for romanization standards, it seems these conversions fall under the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) and NACO. NB: I find guidelines for converting Chinese Lunar dates into both Gregorian and Julian calendars in these NACO Chinese/Japanese/Korean Name Authority guidelines, that pertains to life dates, not works, but it's a start. You can just send a query to "Ask a Librarian" and they will refer it to the right division, or perhaps approaching the National Union Catalog for Manuscript Records might also help. Proposals regarding Islamicate calendars will, in turn, be deferred to the ACRL AAMES and MELA Committee on Cataloging (CoC, which currently serve on, so it's an opportune moment). Bear in mind that any proposal will necessarily affect "normal" library procedures far beyond our sub-community. Most only catalogue in MARC (NB: Ideally, after enhancements, metadata librarians cross-walk TEI fields back into a MARC ILS for display in an OPAC, albeit admittely quite truncated, the point being to make records discoverable and requestable, not "perfect"). Current guidelines also stipulate proleptic New Style calendar dates for events before 1752, hence technically off by nearly 3 months. In contrast, I understand that some academic papyrologists (not librarians)— who use TEI unilaterally decided to encode their records to an underlying purely Julian calendrical standard, whereas everyone else uses CE. However, the resulting data generated proves non-interoperable with other systems. Also, many on the continent referenced Wüstenfeld & Mahler’s, Vergleichungs-Tabellen zur muslimischen und iranischen Zeitrechnung, 1961; (which, apparently many years ago, MELA CoC referenced. Rather than consulting other historians and academics, have you queried any librarians, like Christoph Rauch?). It's just good to bear these disparate factors in mind when going forward. |
I was looking at the entry for Persian MS 317 in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, and noticed that the CE conversion of the colophon date is in the Gregorian calendar. (See the relevant lines in the XML file.)
This is probably deliberate; the manuscript description schema seems to stipulate the use of Gregorian dates, whether actual or proleptic. I still wonder if this could cause confusion with researchers. The usual practice among historians of the premodern Islamicate world is to convert dates to Julian if they fall before the initial implementation of the Gregorian calendar reform (October 1582). So, in scholarship, the colophon date of this manuscript—22 Ramaḍān 977—would be converted to 28 February 1570.
Has this question come up before? It makes sense to me that the
whenattribute in the XML is always a Gregorian date, for consistency. Then there is thecalendarattribute to reflect the calendar of the original date, in this case lunar Hijri. I'm not sure how, if at all, the equivalent Julian date could be included.Thanks in advance for your help.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: