Dhu al-Qadah is the eleventh month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar and one of its four sacred months, in which warfare was traditionally forbidden; its name means the master of truce or of sitting, from the season when people refrained from war and travel. It is the first of three months connected with the pilgrimage season, leading toward Dhu al-Hijjah. It carries no major prescribed festival of its own but is honoured as a sacred month and a time of peace. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, its year of about 354 days drifting steadily against the solar seasons. These are the features of the Islamic calendar tradition, in which Dhu al-Qadah is one of the four inviolable months and the threshold of the pilgrimage season that culminates in the month that follows.
Dhu al-Qadah, one of the four sacred months, takes its name from a root meaning sitting or truce, consistent with its traditional status, alongside Rajab, Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram, as a month in which warfare was forbidden among pre-Islamic Arabian tribes, a custom the Quran affirms. Dhu al-Qadah is also the first of the three months, together with Dhu al-Hijjah and the first ten days of Muharram, traditionally recognised in Islamic jurisprudence as the "months of Hajj," ashhur al-hajj, within which the rites of pilgrimage may be initiated, even though the pilgrimage's main rites themselves are concentrated in the following month, Dhu al-Hijjah.