کتاب ترجمه مکاتبات و اسناد 1

neither! Thus, when a new year starts at, say, 6:00 pm, people wonder to which year the time between 6:01 and midnight belongs! This is why sometimes there is no complete match between converted dates. Only sophisticated software, which can actually keep a record of every single year in the history in both the Gregorian and the Khorshidi calendar, can come up with the exact date matches between the two calendars¹.

Below I will present a manual method of date conversion between the Gregorian and the Khorshidi calendars. Reservations, however, have to be made as the method could be flawed by a margin of one or two days. This, of course, is due to the discrepancies explained above.

To convert a Khorshidi date to its Gregorian counterpart, add the sums 2/21/621 to the months/days/years figures respectively². Thus, if the Persian date is Farvardin 7th, 1377, the Gregorian equivalent will be something like:

Day: 7+21=28

Month: 1+2=3

Year: 1377+621-1998

Therefore, the converted date (with a reservation of one to two days) is

March 28, 1998.

However, things are not always this straightforward! What if the figures exceed their ceilings, i.e. what if 'days' exceed a maximum of 31, or 'months' exceed 12? Consider this Persian date: Bahman 17, 1354. Using the above formula, we will have:

ad. Day: 17+21=38

1. In this respect then, Persian is still using a system similar to the Julian calendar of the old Roman Empire (introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.) which considered year as consisting of 365 days, with an extra day every four years for the leap year.

2. Throughout this book, we will use the American method of writing dates, wherein

days appear in the middle.