Shawwal () is the tenth month of the

Islamic calendar The Hijri calendar (), also known in English as the Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the Ramad ...

. It comes after

Ramadan Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting (''Fasting in Islam, sawm''), communal prayer (salah), reflection, and community. It is also the month in which the Quran is believed ...

and before Dhu al-Qa'da. ''Shawwāl'' stems from the Arabic verb ''shāla'' (), which means to 'lift or carry', generally to take or move things from one place to another.

Fasting during Shawwāl

The first day of Shawwāl is

Eid al-Fitr Eid al-Fitr () is the first of the two main Islamic holidays, festivals in Islam, the other being Eid al-Adha. It falls on the first day of Shawwal, the tenth month of the Islamic calendar. Eid al-Fitr is celebrated by Muslims worldwide becaus ...

; fasting is prohibited. Some

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

s observe six days of optional

fasting Fasting is the act of refraining from eating, and sometimes drinking. However, from a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (before "breakfast"), or to the metabolic sta ...

during Shawwāl beginning the day after Eid al-Fitr since fasting is prohibited on this day. These six days of fasting together with the

fasts are equivalent to fasting all year round. The reasoning behind this tradition is that a good deed in Islam is rewarded 10 times, hence fasting 30 days during Ramadan and 6 days during Shawwāl is equivalent to fasting the whole

year A year is a unit of time based on how long it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun. In scientific use, the tropical year (approximately 365 Synodic day, solar days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds) and the sidereal year (about 20 minutes longer) ...

in fulfillment of this obligation. The Shia scholars of the

Ja'fari school The Jaʿfarī school, also known as the Jafarite school, Jaʿfarī fiqh () or Ja'fari jurisprudence, is a prominent school of jurisprudence (''fiqh'') within Twelver and Ismaili (including Nizari) Shia Islam, named after the sixth Imam, Ja'fa ...

do not place any emphasis on the six days being consecutive, while among the Sunnis, the majority of Shafi`i scholars consider it recommended to fast these days consecutively. They based this on a hadith related by Tabarani and others, wherein

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

is reported to have said, "Fasting six consecutive days after Eid al-Fitr is like fasting the entire year." Other traditional scholarly sources among the

Hanafi The Hanafi school or Hanafism is the oldest and largest Madhhab, school of Islamic jurisprudence out of the four schools within Sunni Islam. It developed from the teachings of the Faqīh, jurist and theologian Abu Hanifa (), who systemised the ...

yya and

Hanbali The Hanbali school or Hanbalism is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, belonging to the Ahl al-Hadith tradition within Sunni Islam. It is named after and based on the teachings of the 9th-century scholar, jurist and tradit ...

yya do not place an emphasis on consecutive days, while the strongest opinion of the

Maliki The Maliki school or Malikism is one of the four major madhhab, schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It was founded by Malik ibn Anas () in the 8th century. In contrast to the Ahl al-Hadith and Ahl al-Ra'y schools of thought, the ...

yya prefers any six days of the month, consecutively or otherwise.

Timing

The

is a purely

lunar calendar A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon's phases ( synodic months, lunations), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based on the solar year, and lunisolar calendars, whose lunar months are br ...

, and its months begin when the first

crescent A crescent shape (, ) is a symbol or emblem used to represent the lunar phase (as it appears in the northern hemisphere) in the first quarter (the "sickle moon"), or by extension a symbol representing the Moon itself. In Hindu iconography, Hind ...

of a new moon is sighted. Since the Islamic lunar year is 11 to 12 days shorter than the solar year, Shawwāl migrates throughout the seasons. The estimated start and end dates for Shawwāl, based on the Umm al-Qura calendar of Saudi Arabia, are:Umm al-Qura calendar of Saudi Arabia
/ref>

Islamic events

Shawwāl begins with Eid al-Fitr and includes a number of significant historical and religious events observed by Muslims around the world. * Every 1st day of Shawwāl,

is celebrated throughout the

Muslim World The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

for one day of this month * 07 Shawwāl 3 AH, early Muslims took part in the Battle of Uhud. *10 Shawwal, birth of Ahmed Raza Khan. * 13 Shawwāl, primary traditionist of the Sunni Muslims,

Muhammad al-Bukhari Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī (; 21 July 810 – 1 September 870) was a 9th-century Persian Muslim '' muhaddith'' who is widely regarded as the most important ''hadith'' scholar in the histor ...

, was born in 194 AH. * 18 Shawwal,

urs Urs (from ''‘Urs'') or Urus (literal meaning wedding), is the death anniversary of a Sufi saint, usually held at the saint's dargah (shrine or tomb). In most Sufi orders such as Naqshbandiyyah, Suhrawardiyya, Chishtiyya, Qadiriyya, etc. ...

of Sufi Mystic And Poet

Amir Khusro Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253 – 1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau, sometimes spelled as, Amir Khusrow or Amir Khusro, was an Indo-Persian culture, Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar, who lived during the per ...

. * 22 Shawwāl 1284 AH, death of Haji Dost Muhammad Qandhari, an Afghan Sufi master of Naqshbandi tradition. * 25 Shawwāl 148 AH, martyrdom of Imām Ja‘far as-Sādiq.

Notes

External links

Islamic-Western Calendar Converter (Based on the Arithmetical or Tabular Calendar)
{{Authority control 91 Islamic terminology