_Shana_ perhaps means ‘change’, ‘recurrence’, i. e. of the seasons. If the word is used in a calendarial sense, _yamim_ is a practical explanation. The result is that _chodesh_ stands for ‘month’, even where the idea of the new moon is completely excluded, e. g., with numbers of days added, as early as in the Yahwistic part of the old History of the Kings, II Sam. XXIV, 8, ‘nine months and twenty days’, or in the history of Solomon, I Kings V, 14: “And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home”. The older senses belong in general to the older writings; it is however to be presumed that before the beginning of the literary period the change of sense had already advanced rather far. In by far the greatest number of cases _chodesh_ stands in combination with an ordinal numeral, not in Deuteronomy, but in Jeremiah and the writers of the Exile, in the last Reviser of the Pentateuch, in the Priestly Code. Hence it follows that these numbered months are a late innovation, and they will be spoken of again in connexion with the matter of the beginning of the year[859]. 3. THE PRE-MOHAMMEDAN ARABIANS. The series of months now used by the Arabs is the ancient Meccan series, which, on account of the importance of Mecca as a centre of trade, had acquired a more than local extension and was adopted by Islam. Besides this series others are handed down, partly by Arabian writers, and partly in the Sabean inscriptions: the latter I pass over, since there is no translation of them, so that they are of no use for my purpose[860]. The Meccan series is:--1, _safar I_, now called _muharram_, ‘the holy’, a re-naming which, according to an Arabic author, Buchari, first took place under Islam; 2, _safar II_; 3, _rabi I_; 4, _rabi II_; 5, _jumada I_; 6, _jumada II_; 7, _rajab_; 8, _sha’ban_; 9, _ramadan_; 10, _shawwal_; 11, _dhu-l-qa’da_; 12, _dhu-l-hijja_. These names, in so far as they are explainable, refer to seasons and festivals. This is best seen from the three pairs of months which form the first half-year. I quote Wellhausen:[861]--“For the season Çafar the Lisan 6, 134 gives abundant examples; it gives a name to plants which grow at that time, animals which are born then, and rains which fall in it. It falls in the autumn. Gumâda often occurs in the old poetry and always refers to the worst winter-cold, the dear time in which the poor must be fed by the rich. Especially favoured is the description of the evil night in Gumâda, when the dogs do not bark, the snakes, which are otherwise out at night-time, remain in their holes, and the traveller eagerly looks out for a friendly fire. The Rabî’ falls, according to the calendar, between Çafar and Gumâda, and therefore in late autumn. But commonly the Rabî’ is the season when, after the autumn and winter rains, the steppe becomes green and the tribes disperse to the pastures, where the camels bring forth their young and the rich