Ramadan

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar and the most sacred, the month of the obligatory fast that is one of the five pillars of Islam. Through its days the faithful abstain from food, drink, and other bodily needs from dawn to sunset, breaking the fast each evening, and the month is given to heightened prayer, charity, and the recitation of the Quran, which tradition holds began to be revealed in this month. Its odd nights near the end include the Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, held greater than a thousand months. The name recalls intense heat, from the season it once marked. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, so Ramadan moves through all the solar seasons over time. It ends with the sighting of the new moon and the festival of Eid al-Fitr. These are the observances of the Islamic tradition.

Ramadan is fixed as the month of obligatory fasting, sawm, by the Quran itself (2:183-185), which states the Quran's revelation began in this month, traditionally located on Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, observed on one of the odd-numbered nights of the month's final ten, most commonly the twenty-seventh, though the Quran does not name the exact date and different traditions vary in which night they emphasise. The fast runs from dawn to sunset daily, abstaining from food, drink and other specified acts, and is broken each evening with iftar; because the Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Ramadan itself cycles through all four solar seasons over roughly a thirty-three-year span, so fasting hours have varied considerably in length depending on the season and latitude in which a given Ramadan falls.

The name is glossed as scorching heat. It is not 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.

Ramadan is the month of the obligatory fast, one of the five pillars, and the Quran names it as the month in which the Quran was sent down. Its name refers to intense heat, a season the lunar calendar carries it through and away from, so the fast falls in every part of the solar year over the course of a lifetime.