Nasi'

Nasīʾ (, an-Nasīʾ, "postponement"), also Romanized as Nasii or Nasie, was an aspect of the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar, mentioned in the Quran in the context of the "four forbidden months". In pre-Islamic Arabia, the decision of "postponement" had been administered by the Banu Kinanah, by a man known as the Qalammas (pl. qalāmisa). Different interpretations of its meaning have been proposed.

==Postponement unrelated to a fixed-season calendar== Some scholars maintain that the pre-Islamic calendar used in Central Arabia was a purely lunar calendar similar to the modern Islamic calendar. According to this view, nasīʾ is related to the pagan practices of the Meccan Arabs, where they would alter the distribution of the forbidden months within a given year without implying a calendar manipulation. This interpretation is supported by Arab historians and lexicographers, like Ibn Hisham, Ibn Manzur, and the corpus of tafsir. Thus the Encyclopaedia of Islam concludes, "The Arabic system of [Nasīʾ] can only have been intended to move the Hajj and the fairs associated with it in the vicinity of Mecca to a suitable season of the year. It was not intended to establish a fixed calendar to be generally observed."