26.5.8.7 Hebrew- and Islamic-Date Diary Entries

Your diary file can have entries based on Hebrew or Islamic dates, as well as entries based on the world-standard Gregorian calendar. However, because recognition of such entries is time-consuming and most people don’t use them, you must explicitly enable their use. If you want the diary to recognize Hebrew-date diary entries, for example, you must do this:

(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-listing-hook 'list-hebrew-diary-entries)
(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-marking-hook 'mark-hebrew-diary-entries)

If you want Islamic-date entries, do this:

(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-listing-hook 'list-islamic-diary-entries)
(add-hook 'nongregorian-diary-marking-hook 'mark-islamic-diary-entries)

Hebrew- and Islamic-date diary entries have the same formats as Gregorian-date diary entries, except that ‘H’ precedes a Hebrew date and ‘I’ precedes an Islamic date. Moreover, because the Hebrew and Islamic month names are not uniquely specified by the first three letters, you may not abbreviate them. For example, a diary entry for the Hebrew date Heshvan 25 could look like this:

HHeshvan 25 Happy Hebrew birthday!

and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Heshvan 25 on the Hebrew calendar. And here is Islamic-date diary entry that matches Dhu al-Qada 25:

IDhu al-Qada 25 Happy Islamic birthday!

and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Dhu al-Qada 25 on the Islamic calendar.

As with Gregorian-date diary entries, Hebrew- and Islamic-date entries are nonmarking if they are preceded with an ampersand (‘&’).

Here is a table of commands used in the calendar to create diary entries that match the selected date and other dates that are similar in the Hebrew or Islamic calendar:

i h d

Add a diary entry for the Hebrew date corresponding to the selected date (insert-hebrew-diary-entry).

i h m

Add a diary entry for the day of the Hebrew month corresponding to the selected date (insert-monthly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary entry matches any date that has the same Hebrew day-within-month as the selected date.

i h y

Add a diary entry for the day of the Hebrew year corresponding to the selected date (insert-yearly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary entry matches any date which has the same Hebrew month and day-within-month as the selected date.

i i d

Add a diary entry for the Islamic date corresponding to the selected date (insert-islamic-diary-entry).

i i m

Add a diary entry for the day of the Islamic month corresponding to the selected date (insert-monthly-islamic-diary-entry).

i i y

Add a diary entry for the day of the Islamic year corresponding to the selected date (insert-yearly-islamic-diary-entry).

These commands work much like the corresponding commands for ordinary diary entries: they apply to the date that point is on in the calendar window, and what they do is insert just the date portion of a diary entry at the end of your diary file. You must then insert the rest of the diary entry.