Daily time keeping and time calculation of major events in advance has been very important since ancient times when human knowledge was passing through an age of infancy. Telling the occurrence of several forthcoming solar and lunar...
Daily time keeping and time calculation of major events in advance has been very important since ancient times when human knowledge was passing through an age of infancy. Telling the occurrence of several forthcoming solar and lunar eclipses was known even in the times of prehistoric civilizations such as the Babylonians and Egyptians. The use of calendar was also known in these societies. For the Muslims, calculating the clock-times of Salah, the most important ibadah (worship) in Islam, and having them tabulated was very appealing so they laid down rules and principles for their accurate and precise calculation. Similarly, the prediction of crescent visibility was another source of interest to them, because another important ibadah i.e., keeping the fasts of Ramadan was associated with the visibility of the new moon. The correct time of crescent visibility has thus been critical to the initiation of the new month as sometimes erroneous observations would lead to conflicts among laymen. The great Muslim astronomer Abu Raihan Muhammad bin Ahmad Al-Beruni was one of the earliest people who worked considerably on this issue. The project aims at calculating precise and accurate salah times for the entire world or a country by developing an easy to use and intuitive GUI application, named “Salah Times 2016/17” which is backed by the well-known and powerful MySQL database server. Currently, the data about all geographical locations is unavailable to the project but the program will offer the facility to its users to supply just a nominal set of data such as latitude, longitude and time zone for their geographical location of interest and enjoy the full power of the program.
