Letter from The Universal House of Justice¶
The Universal House of Justice sent a letter dated 10 July 2014 to the Bahá’ís of the World indicating a change to the Badí’ Calendar. Tehran, Iran was set as the point at which the Vernal Equinox and the sunset before it will be observed thus starting the beginning of each Bahá’í year. They did not provide exact coordinates. Later that year they provided the 50 year table outlining all dates of interest to the Bahá’í world.
I was told in a letter from the Department of the Secretariat that the House of Justice could in the future change “the parameters” that the calendar is based on.
The House of Justice made certain decisions, including the selection of the specific spot in Ṭihrán used to determine the moment of the vernal equinox, that made it possible to calculate the Badí‘ dates for a fifty-year period. A table containing these dates was provided to the Bahá’í world in 2014. When that fifty-year period draws to a close, the House of Justice will again make the necessary decisions to extend the calculation of the Badí‘ dates into the future. Naturally, then, any algorithm designed to project the specification of these dates may well reach a faulty conclusion if the parameters on which it is based deviate from the criteria set by the House of Justice.
Important
As such any dates outside of the 50 years set by the House of Justice that are relied on from my code may well be wrong depending on future decisions made by the House of Justice.
However, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing the House of Justice could change is the latitude, longitude, and therefore the timezone of the location, which is easily fixable in my code, all other criteria have been outlined by Bahá’u’lláh as is seen below.
Also from the letter from the Secretariat.
In number 35 of “Questions and Answers”, which is supplementary to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá’u’lláh responds to a question concerning Naw-Rúz and states: “The Festival of Naw-Rúz falleth on the day that the sun entereth the sign of Aries”. This phenomenon coincides with the moment of the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere. Thus, the Festival of Naw Rúz falls on the day on which the vernal equinox occurs, and that day, 1 Bahá, according to the Badí‘ calendar, starts at sunset on 19 ‘Alá’ and ends at the following sunset, which marks the beginning of 2 Bahá.
