diff --git a/commit.c b/commit.c
index 878b4473e4..e2e4fd2db9 100644
--- a/commit.c
+++ b/commit.c
@@ -96,6 +96,7 @@ struct commit *lookup_commit_reference_by_name(const char *name)
 static timestamp_t parse_commit_date(const char *buf, const char *tail)
 {
 	const char *dateptr;
+	const char *eol;
 
 	if (buf + 6 >= tail)
 		return 0;
@@ -107,16 +108,56 @@ static timestamp_t parse_commit_date(const char *buf, const char *tail)
 		return 0;
 	if (memcmp(buf, "committer", 9))
 		return 0;
-	while (buf < tail && *buf++ != '>')
-		/* nada */;
-	if (buf >= tail)
+
+	/*
+	 * Jump to end-of-line so that we can walk backwards to find the
+	 * end-of-email ">". This is more forgiving of malformed cases
+	 * because unexpected characters tend to be in the name and email
+	 * fields.
+	 */
+	eol = memchr(buf, '\n', tail - buf);
+	if (!eol)
 		return 0;
-	dateptr = buf;
-	while (buf < tail && *buf++ != '\n')
-		/* nada */;
-	if (buf >= tail)
+	dateptr = eol;
+	while (dateptr > buf && dateptr[-1] != '>')
+		dateptr--;
+	if (dateptr == buf)
 		return 0;
-	/* dateptr < buf && buf[-1] == '\n', so parsing will stop at buf-1 */
+
+	/*
+	 * Trim leading whitespace, but make sure we have at least one
+	 * non-whitespace character, as parse_timestamp() will otherwise walk
+	 * right past the newline we found in "eol" when skipping whitespace
+	 * itself.
+	 *
+	 * In theory it would be sufficient to allow any character not matched
+	 * by isspace(), but there's a catch: our isspace() does not
+	 * necessarily match the behavior of parse_timestamp(), as the latter
+	 * is implemented by system routines which match more exotic control
+	 * codes, or even locale-dependent sequences.
+	 *
+	 * Since we expect the timestamp to be a number, we can check for that.
+	 * Anything else (e.g., a non-numeric token like "foo") would just
+	 * cause parse_timestamp() to return 0 anyway.
+	 */
+	while (dateptr < eol && isspace(*dateptr))
+		dateptr++;
+	if (!isdigit(*dateptr) && *dateptr != '-')
+		return 0;
+
+	/*
+	 * We know there is at least one digit (or dash), so we'll begin
+	 * parsing there and stop at worst case at eol.
+	 *
+	 * Note that we may feed parse_timestamp() extra characters here if the
+	 * commit is malformed, and it will parse as far as it can. For
+	 * example, "123foo456" would return "123". That might be questionable
+	 * (versus returning "0"), but it would help in a hypothetical case
+	 * like "123456+0100", where the whitespace from the timezone is
+	 * missing. Since such syntactic errors may be baked into history and
+	 * hard to correct now, let's err on trying to make our best guess
+	 * here, rather than insist on perfect syntax.
+	 */
 	return parse_timestamp(dateptr, NULL, 10);
 }
 
diff --git a/t/t4212-log-corrupt.sh b/t/t4212-log-corrupt.sh
index e89e1f54b6..85e90acb09 100755
--- a/t/t4212-log-corrupt.sh
+++ b/t/t4212-log-corrupt.sh
@@ -8,8 +8,9 @@ TEST_PASSES_SANITIZE_LEAK=true
 test_expect_success 'setup' '
 	test_commit foo &&
 
-	git cat-file commit HEAD |
-	sed "/^author /s/>/>-<>/" >broken_email.commit &&
+	git cat-file commit HEAD >ok.commit &&
+	sed "s/>/>-<>/" <ok.commit >broken_email.commit &&
+
 	git hash-object --literally -w -t commit broken_email.commit >broken_email.hash &&
 	git update-ref refs/heads/broken_email $(cat broken_email.hash)
 '
@@ -43,6 +44,11 @@ test_expect_success 'git log --format with broken author email' '
 	test_must_be_empty actual.err
 '
 
+test_expect_success '--until handles broken email' '
+	git rev-list --until=1980-01-01 broken_email >actual &&
+	test_must_be_empty actual
+'
+
 munge_author_date () {
 	git cat-file commit "$1" >commit.orig &&
 	sed "s/^\(author .*>\) [0-9]*/\1 $2/" <commit.orig >commit.munge &&
@@ -86,4 +92,45 @@ test_expect_success 'absurdly far-in-future date' '
 	git log -1 --format=%ad $commit
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'create commits with whitespace committer dates' '
+	# It is important that this subject line is numeric, since we want to
+	# be sure we are not confused by skipping whitespace and accidentally
+	# parsing the subject as a timestamp.
+	#
+	# Do not use munge_author_date here. Besides not hitting the committer
+	# line, it leaves the timezone intact, and we want nothing but
+	# whitespace.
+	#
+	# We will make two munged commits here. The first, ws_commit, will
+	# be purely spaces. The second contains a vertical tab, which is
+	# considered a space by strtoumax(), but not by our isspace().
+	test_commit 1234567890 &&
+	git cat-file commit HEAD >commit.orig &&
+	sed "s/>.*/>    /" <commit.orig >commit.munge &&
+	ws_commit=$(git hash-object --literally -w -t commit commit.munge) &&
+	sed "s/>.*/>   $(printf "\013")/" <commit.orig >commit.munge &&
+	vt_commit=$(git hash-object --literally -w -t commit commit.munge)
+'
+
+test_expect_success '--until treats whitespace date as sentinel' '
+	echo $ws_commit >expect &&
+	git rev-list --until=1980-01-01 $ws_commit >actual &&
+	test_cmp expect actual &&
+
+	echo $vt_commit >expect &&
+	git rev-list --until=1980-01-01 $vt_commit >actual &&
+	test_cmp expect actual
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'pretty-printer handles whitespace date' '
+	# as with the %ad test above, we will show these as the empty string,
+	# not the 1970 epoch date. This is intentional; see 7d9a281941 (t4212:
+	# test bogus timestamps with git-log, 2014-02-24) for more discussion.
+	echo : >expect &&
+	git log -1 --format="%at:%ct" $ws_commit >actual &&
+	test_cmp expect actual &&
+	git log -1 --format="%at:%ct" $vt_commit >actual &&
+	test_cmp expect actual
+'
+
 test_done