Rajab

Rajab is the seventh month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar and one of its four sacred months, in which warfare was traditionally forbidden; its name is linked to respect and honour. It is one of the two sacred months that stand apart from the others rather than in a run. For many Muslims the twenty-seventh of Rajab commemorates the Isra and Mi'raj, the Prophet's night journey to Jerusalem and ascension through the heavens, and the month is kept by some with voluntary fasting and devotion in preparation for Ramadan, now two months away. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, its year of about 354 days drifting against the solar seasons. These are the observances of the Islamic calendar tradition, in which Rajab is honoured as a sacred month and, for many, as the month of the Night Journey.

Rajab, one of the four sacred months, is traditionally associated with the Isra and Mi'raj, the Prophet Muhammad's night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and subsequent ascension through the heavens, commemorated by many Muslims on the twenty-seventh, though, as with several dates tied to events in the Prophet's life, the exact date and even year of the journey are not fixed with certainty in the earliest sources and are a matter of some scholarly disagreement. Rajab's sanctity, restricting warfare, predates Islam itself; pre-Islamic Arabian tribes are recorded as having already observed Rajab, along with Muharram, Dhu al-Qadah and Dhu al-Hijjah, as months of truce, a practice the Quran affirms rather than introduces.

The name is glossed as to revere or to hold in awe. It is one of the four sacred months. The twelve month names are Arabic and predate Islam, retained from the calendar of the Arabian peninsula when the Hijri reckoning was established.

Four of the twelve are the sacred months, al-ashhur al-hurum, in which warfare was forbidden in pre-Islamic Arabia and which the Quran confirms at sura 9 verse 36: Dhu al-Qadah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab. Three run consecutively and the fourth stands alone in the middle of the year, an arrangement that fitted the pilgrimage season and the trading truces that went with it.

The Hijri calendar admits no intercalation. The verse immediately following the one that names the twelve months condemns nasi, the pre-Islamic practice of postponing or adding a month, and the calendar has run as a strict lunar reckoning since. The consequence is a year of 354 or 355 days that moves against the seasons by about eleven days annually, so any month passes through the whole solar year in roughly thirty-three years.

Rajab is the sacred month that stands alone, separated from the other three, and the pre-Islamic sources call it Rajab of Mudar after the tribal group that observed it most strictly. The night journey of the Prophet is placed in this month in much of the tradition, and the association is widely observed although the dating is not agreed.