WHAT is the origin of the crescent moon symbol seen throughout Islamic cultures? | Notes and Queries

WHAT is the origin of the crescent moon symbol seen throughout Islamic cultures?

• THE USE of the so-called crescent moon in many Islamic symbols cannot be related to the importance attached to the new moon in Islam. The moon depicted on, e.g. many Islamic flags is the old moon, the reverse shape of the new moon, which is like a letter C backwards. Again 'crescent,' implying 'increasing,' is properly applicable only to the young moon: the old moon is diminishing in phase. Presumably the moon is depicted as a crescent in Islamic, and many other, contexts as that shape is unambiguously lunar.

  A A Davis, London SW7.