Qaraite New Moon Observation in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries and Its Ritual and Calendrical Implications

Throughout the ages setting the calendar by lunar observation has been one of the most salient Qaraite practices and a key component of the Qaraite religious identity. It is asserted in a variety of sources belonging to many different genres and can sometimes stand as a synecdoche for the entirety of Qaraite customs. The present article analyses the method of setting months by sighting the crescent as it is described in Qaraite legal and exegetical works from the 10th-11th centuries and compares it with the Jewish observational calendar and the Muslim calendar. The article also looks at the implications for the religious observance of a calendar in which beginnings of months could not be known in advance, and discusses attitudes to and the lived experience of calendar diversity that existed within the Qaraite movement and between Qaraites and Rabbanites.