Doha: The holy month of Ramadan is an annually-occurring month in the Islamic Hijri calendar during which the entire Islamic Ummah – mainly those of age and whose health permits – must observe fasting.
Fasting for Ramadan is one of the five main pillars of Islam. It is not just limited to abstaining from food and drink, but also from desires, hatred, rage, profanity, and other things.
“Hijri” is derived from the Arabic word for migration “hijra”. This particular migration refers to the one Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) took from the city of Makkah to Madinah over 1400 years ago.
The Hijri calendar year is 354 days long, while the Gregorian one is 365 days long. Subtracting the number of Gregorian days from the number of Hijri days yields an 11-day difference in total days, depending on whether it is a leap year or not.
Ramadan is a month that exists only in the Hijri calendar and not in the Gregorian calendar. The months in the Hijri calendar are lunar months that require the moon to determine the shape of one Hijri year.
According to Dr. Bashir Marzouk, an astronomy expert at the Qatari Calendar House, the appearance of the “Ramadan moon” is determined by a series of “cosmological calculations.”
Dr. Bashir Marzouk, Astronomy expert at Qatar Calendar House.
The markings of the days of the Hijri calendar are based on calculations made concerning the movement of three celestial bodies: the earth, the sun, and the moon.
These movements are in particular concerned with one major cosmic event: the moon crossing the Earth-Sun direction in what is known astronomically as “conjunction".
Conjunction, according to Dr. Bashir, occurs “when the three astronomical objects — the sun, the moon, and the earth — can be seen along the same longitude.”
“It is the moment that directly precedes the birth of the new moon.”
Dr. Bashir further noted that after confirming conjunction, one must investigate the setting of both the sun and the moon, and calculate a time period between the birth of the new crescent moon (pre-sundown) and the setting of the new moon after sundown.
If certain conditions are met, then it is safe to say that the day after will mark the beginning of the new month, and thus a new Hijri month is born. However, Islamically, the arrival of the month can only be confirmed by the sight of the naked eye.
The moment of conjunction signals the birth of a new moon, seen as a crescent moon that would appear before the sun sets. This new moon signals the completion of one moon cycle— the end of one lunar month and the beginning of the other.
This is why, on the 29th of every month, scholars will go out to try and sight the crescent moon in the sky.
If sighted on the 29th, this marks the end of the month and the beginning of the new month. If not, then the month is a 30-day month, with the day after it being called the “completer” (Mutamim) of the current month.
Ramadan's position in the Gregorian calendar is constantly changing due to the "unfixed" manner in which the days and months of the year are drawn out.
Islamic scholars have developed a “world” Hijri calendar, which was agreed upon during the second Islamic Astronomical Conference held in the Jordanian capital Amman in 2001, with the goal of reducing the days’ differences between different countries worldwide.
However, the absence of an arithmetic calendar – a calendar whose dates can be calculated arithmetically without the need for astronomical observations – is what causes the Hijri calendar to shift back by approximately 11 days every new Gregorian year.
