Jumada al-Akhirah is the sixth month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar, the second of the Jumada pair, its name meaning the last Jumada, again from the sense of a dry or parched season when the lunar names were set. It is not among the four sacred months and carries no major prescribed festival, though some communities keep commemorations within it. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, its twelve months following the phases of the moon and its year of about 354 days making no adjustment to the solar year, so the months drift steadily earlier through the solar seasons. These are the features of the Islamic calendar tradition, in which Jumada al-Akhirah completes the pair of Jumada months and leads toward Rajab, the next of the sacred months of the year.
Jumada al-Akhirah, also called Jumada al-Thani, the second month of Jumada, completes the pair of "dry" or "freezing" months whose name, like those of the two Rabi months, preserves a seasonal reference from the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar rather than describing this month's actual season under the fixed, purely lunar Islamic calendar. With Jumada al-Akhirah's close, the calendar reaches its midpoint for the year and moves into Rajab, the first of the sacred months to fall consecutively with two more, Dhu al-Qadah and Dhu al-Hijjah, later in the year, a run distinct from Muharram, the fourth sacred month, which stands alone at the calendar's start.