It may not be improper in this place, seeing the many errors and mutilated translations which appear from time to time, of Arabic, Turkish and Persian papers, to give a list of the Muhamedan moons or lunar months, used by all those nations, which begin with the first appearance of the new moon, that is, the day following, or sometimes two days after the change, and continue till they see the next new moon; these have been mutilated to such a degree in all our English translations, that I shall give them, in the original Arabic character, and as they ought to be spelt and pronounced in the English character, as a clue whereby to calculate the correspondence between our year and theirs. They divide the year into 12 months, which contain 29 or 30 days, according as they see the new moon; the first day of the month Muharam is termed

Ras Elame, i.e. the beginning of the year.

As we are more used to the Asiatic mode of punctuation, that will be observed in these words.


Muharam
Asaffer
Arabia Elule
Arabea Atthenie
Jumad Elule
Jumad Athenie
Rajeb
Shaban
Ramadan
Shual
Du'elkada
Du Elhajah













The first of Muharram, year of the Hejra 1221, answers to the 19th March of the Christian æra, 1806.

Among the various languages spoken south of the Sahara, we have already observed that there are thirty-three different ones between the Western Ocean and the Red Sea, following the shores of the Nile El Abeed, or Niger: among all these nations and empires, a man practically acquainted with the Arabic, may always make himself understood, and indeed, it is the language most requisite to be known for every traveller in these extensive regions.

The Mandinga is spoken from the banks of the Senegal, where that river takes a northerly course from the Jibel Kuthera to the kingdom of Bambarra; the Wangareen tongue is a different one; and the Housonians speak a language differing again from that.

Specimen of the difference between the Arabic and Mandinga language; the words of the latter extracted from the vocabularies of Seedi Muhamed ben Amer Sudani.