Shawwal

Shawwal is the tenth month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar, and its first day is Eid al-Fitr, the festival that breaks the fast of Ramadan, one of the two great feasts of the Islamic year, kept with communal prayer, charity given to the poor, and family celebration. Many Muslims then keep six voluntary fasts during Shawwal, held to complete the merit of the month of Ramadan. The name is glossed with the sense of raising or lifting up. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, its twelve months following the moon and its year of about 354 days drifting against the solar seasons. These are the observances of the Islamic calendar tradition, in which Shawwal opens with the joy of Eid al-Fitr after the discipline of the fasting month.

Shawwal opens with Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast, on the first, marking the end of Ramadan's month of obligatory fasting with communal prayer, charity (zakat al-fitr, specifically required before the prayer) and festive gathering. Many Muslims also observe six additional voluntary fast days at some point during Shawwal, a practice attributed to a hadith promising the reward of fasting the whole year to those who complete Ramadan's fast and follow it with six days in Shawwal. Shawwal was also, in pre-Islamic Arabia, considered an inauspicious month for weddings, a folk belief the Prophet's own marriage to Aisha in this month is recorded in hadith as having been cited to dispel.

The name is glossed as to lift or to raise. 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.

Shawwal opens with Eid al-Fitr on the first, the festival that ends the fast of Ramadan, and the sighting of the crescent that begins the month is therefore among the most closely watched observations in the calendar. Differences of sighting between countries produce differences in the date of the festival.