This book presents an effort to satisfy the needs of Muslim parents who try to find a good and meaningful name for their newborn or to be born child/children. It is believed that the names have significant influence on their lives, so selecting meaningful names is a good practice among Muslim families. All names are given in English as well as in Urdu-Arabic (Nastaleeq Font).

In this book, the names are arranged in two categories:
Names for Boys
Names for Girls

Each of these categories has names arranged in the alphabetical order in English. It makes it easy to search the names of relevant gender. Some names are commonly used for both genders, so such names are given in both categories of genders.

Origin of names are also mentioned in abbreviated form as shown below:
A = Arabic
C = Colloquial
E = English
Hin = Hindi
Heb = Hebrew
L = Latin
P = Persian
S = Sanskrit
T = Turkish
U = Urdu

The numerics of Huroof-e-Abjad are also given as the total sum of each letter in each name.

As far as the meanings of names are concerned, various possible meanings have been given from different languages.

The question of correct timings of the five daily prayers has remained under discussion among the Muslim scholars (Fuqaha) for centuries. When the Turkish armies reached northern Bulgaria, and at the turn of 20th century some Muslim students went to attend the universities in Scotland they faced very unusual situations. However, the difficult nature of the problems was realized more fully when the Muslim communities established themselves in England, North America, and Northern Europe during the last few decades, especially in towns located beyond 50�N latitudes. At these locations the days and nights were unusually long in certain months and the twilights did not disappear in summer. The prayer schedules adapted from the temperate climates did not suit their needs. When the 'experts' (Ulama), with a limited informa-tion, were approached they, suggested solutions which did not work or were unsatisfactory. The confusion still exists though several international seminars and meetings have tried to solve the intricate issues related to the prayer schedules. For instance, in the last few years the Ulama in England have switched from 102� to 108� and then back to 102�, etc., and yet no satisfactory answer has emerged3.

This is an attempt to look into the matter from a global perspective. The guidelines from the Qur'an, and the Sunnah, scholarly opinions, recent observations, and astronomical information are put together to create a better understanding about the prayer timings. We hope that the Ulama will reconsider their respective positions very carefully in the light of the evidence presented here and will agree on principles which will help us prepare the prayer schedules for the maximum number of locations on earth without deviating from the established Islamic norms.

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This book presents a reconstructed Arab calendar dating important events during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad -- peace be upon him (salla Allahu 'alayhi wa sallam)*. It is desired to relate these important events with the Christian calendar dates, i.e. Common Era (CE) dates. The Christian calendar in the 6th century was the Julian calendar that started in Emperor Julius Caesar's time and was slightly modified later by Emperor Augustus. It is recognized that in the era of the Prophet, a lunisolar calendar was prevailing in Arabia with the practice of intercalation, adding a 13th month in some years to bring the lunar calendar in line with the solar calendar so that the most important annual events would fall in the same seasons every year. The Jews were doing intercalation in a similar fashion. To explain intercalation, a detailed discussion of the Jewish calendar is presented in the beginning of this book. Once the construction of the Jewish calendar is understood, it would help to correlate the Arab calendar for the memoirs of Prophet Muhammad's life in the light of dates presented in early Seerah literature. For checking the dates in lunisolar calendar, modern computerized calculations are used that are based on the visibility of the new crescent moon for lunar months corresponding to Christian calendar dates. The criteria of the visibility of the new crescent moon was developed by the author after 3 decades of research work that is well presented in a web site www.moonsighting.com

The Julian calendar's dates of important events, like the birth date of the Prophet, the date he married Hadrat Khadija (radi Allahu 'unha), the date of his Prophethood (Nubuwwah), and the date of his ascension to heavens (Me'raj), would then be possible to calculate. In this exercise it would help to decipher the different dates mentioned by early historians like Ibn Is'haq (Muhammad ibn Is'haq Ibn Yasar ibn Khiyar; d. 767, or 761 CE) and Waqidi (Abu `Abdullah Muhammad Ibn 'Omar Ibn Waqidi al-Aslami; 130-207 AH; 748- 822 CE), for the same events during the Prophet's life.