Ramadan: the ninth lunar month of crescent, fasting and festival

At the end of the month of Sha'ban, in many Muslim-majority countries, people look westward just after sunset. They are searching for the hilal, the very thin crescent that announces the start of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Its appearance opens a month of daytime fasting, prayer and reading of the Qur'an; the appearance of the next crescent closes it and begins the festival. Few rites in the world are so closely bound to the Moon.

A month named by the Qur'an

The second sura, at verse 185, names Ramadan as the month in which the Qur'an was sent down, a guidance for mankind. The same passage prescribes the fast for those present during the month and grants exemptions to the sick and to travellers, who will make up the days later. Fasting, sawm, is one of the five pillars of Islam and is observed from dawn to sunset, abstaining from food, drink and marital relations.

Tradition places the Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Destiny, which sura 97 calls better than a thousand months, in the last ten days of the month. Its exact date is not fixed by the texts; many seek it on the odd-numbered nights, and especially on the twenty-seventh, according to a very widespread custom. On those nights mosques stay open late for prayer and recitation.

The crescent and differences between countries

Since the month begins with the sighting of the crescent, the date of Ramadan may differ by a day from one country to another. Some communities follow local sighting, others align with the announcement of a reference country, still others adopt astronomical calculation. The debate between observation and calculation is old and not merely technical: it concerns religious authority, the unity of the community and the relationship between sacred text and science.

The month lasts 29 or 30 days. If the new crescent is sighted on the evening of the twenty-ninth day, the next day is the first of Shawwal and Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast, is celebrated; if it is not seen, Ramadan is completed at thirty days. This margin of uncertainty is part of the tradition and is lived as a collective wait, followed closely by the media as well.

A fast that moves through the seasons

Because the Islamic calendar is purely lunar, Ramadan comes about eleven days earlier each year relative to the solar calendar. Over a lifetime it is therefore experienced in every season: in summer, when days in northern regions exceed sixteen hours, and in winter, when the fast is much shorter. For those living at extreme latitudes, jurists have discussed particular solutions, such as following the times of Mecca or of the nearest place with regular days.

Over the centuries Ramadan evenings developed a culture of their own: the iftar, the meal that breaks the fast at sunset, often begun with dates and water following the example attributed to the Prophet; the suhur, eaten before dawn; the decorated lanterns, the fanous, symbol of the month in Egypt, whose origin popular tradition traces back to the Fatimid era.

Ramadan thus offers a living example of what a lunar calendar entails. Sacred time is tied not to a season, a harvest or a climate, but to the Moon alone, the same for every place on Earth. For many believers this independence from the farming cycle expresses the universality of the religious message; for the historian it is a rare case of a calendar that has stayed faithful to the same rule for fourteen centuries.