Dates

Dates anywhere in the text quoted can be tagged with precision using the <date>↗ element:

         He succeeded his father                   <persName ref="PRS8550sardaDe"><roleName type="title">ʾaṣe</roleName>
            Śarḍa Dǝngǝl</persName> when he was 15 years old in <date>1597</date>.
         

<date calendar="ethiopian" when="1888" when-custom="1881" evidence="internal">፲ወ፰፻፹ወ፩ ዓመት፡ ምሕረት፡ </date>
            

@when always carries the standard ISO date in the Gregorian calendar, while the @when-custom (or @notBefore-custom, @notAfter-custom) can hold the value in the calendar specified by @calendar.

BCE dates are therefore expressed with -: <death when="-0931">↗

date expressing a duration rather than a point in time, might use the @dur following w3c recommendations. A period of 10 years and 5 months would be encoded as

<date dur="P10Y5M"></date>

You can align a commemoration to a day in the calendar, without that being a specific day in history using a @ref like in the following example. You can use also @calendar if relevant.

              <date ref="ethiocal:Maskaram1">
         1st Maskaram
  </date>
  

The ethioCal namespace refers to the calendar file which can be found here, and Maskaram1 is an @xml:id in that file. Used in conjunction with the commemoration in @subtype of <div>↗ this can help collect commemorations for a given calendar day.