Christian Easter (which frequently began before the equinox). The local lunar
calendars of the Near East—of Christians, but perhaps also of others^177 —thus
adapted themselves, in various ways, to new calendrical concepts that were
better suited to Christian liturgical practices.
The diversification (with, in some places, an element of Christianization) of
the Babylonian calendar in late-antique Persian Mesopotamia was possible
only because under the Sasanians, this calendar was no longer the concern of
the imperial rulers. Fragmentation was the natural result of the Babylonian
calendar’s no longer being under central political control. After more than one
millennium, the supremacy of the standard Babylonian calendar thusfinally
came to an end. But it survived in the Persian Near East as a lunar calendar in
a variety of derivative forms.
(^177) The Jewish rabbinic calendar in Babylonia also adoptedfixed calendrical schemes in this
period: on the possible relationship between these two phenomena, see Stern (2001) 141–3,
222 – 6, (2004) 471–2, and below, Ch. 6 near n. 117.
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 297