A month of fasting and two festivals

This lesson asks you to explain why major festivals matter, to describe what people do on them, and to describe the role of fasts and feasts. The museum offers the Islamic month of fasting and its two festivals; your class adds the festivals of the other traditions. ¹

Read the month and the festival side by side. Ask what the community does before the festival, what it does on the day, and how the day looks back at what came before it.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence says the day of adha is the tenth of Dhu'l-Hijja, named for the udhiyya slaughtered on it ². The Encyclopaedia of Islam describes the old Arab custom of sacrificing at Mina as adopted by Islam, for all Muslims and not only for pilgrims, as a sunna; it becomes a necessary duty only through a vow ³. As the article gives it, a sheep is offered for one person, while a camel or a head of cattle serves one to ten persons, and the animals must be of a fixed age and free of certain defects. The period of the sacrifice opens with the festival prayer and closes at sunset on the third of the tashriq days ³. On the meat, it separates two cases. After a vow, the one who vowed eats none of it. After a freewill offering, the sacrificer keeps a portion, given as a third, and gives the rest away ³.

The jurists come first. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia records that the Eid prayer is an emphatic sunna for the Malikis and Shafi'is, obligatory on the operative Hanafi view, and a communal obligation for the Hanbalis ². It records that the jurists agree the udhiyya is prescribed and differ on its ruling: sunna for the majority, obligatory for the Hanafis ⁴. Then the academic account of the Ramadan fast. The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives a résumé of the law of fasting in the Shafi'i school and says the three other schools differ from it on minor questions only ^{5 6}. It says Shi'i prescriptions differ on some points of detail: the intention is not counted as a pillar of the fast, and smoking is not counted among the things that break it ⁶. The museum decides none of these.

The word eid is often explained as coming from returning, because the day recurs. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia gives that explanation ². The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the Arab lexicographers derive the word from a root meaning "returning periodically", but that it is in fact an Aramaic loanword, like many religious terms, and it points to the Syriac word for a festival or holiday ³. So the two sources give two accounts of the word, and the museum prefers neither.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia is a jurists' encyclopaedia: it states rulings and names the school that holds each. The Encyclopaedia of Islam is a modern academic encyclopaedia. Its article on fasting follows a treatise of the fifth Islamic century, the Mukhtasar of Abu Shuja al-Isfahani, for the Shafi'i law ⁵, and the museum's record says it reports this as the article does and rules on nothing. The record also says that reports and jurisprudence differ on the details of sighting and confirming the month, so each detail needs a source. The record holds recorded talks by preachers too; this lesson does not use them for what is done.

Put the month and Eid al-Adha side by side as the records describe them. Which observances could a visitor to a Muslim neighbourhood see from outside, and which could be learned only from a source such as the jurists' encyclopaedia, and why?

• Fasting in Ramadan: the Shafi'i law of fasting in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and the Shi'i prescriptions.
• Eid al-Fitr: the festival prayer as the article describes it, and the schools' rulings on it.
• Eid al-Adha: the sacrifice, its rulings and what is recommended to the sacrificer.
• The hajj: the day on which the pilgrims sacrifice at Mina.

Read Fasting in Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Make a calendar strip with the month and the two days, and under each write the practices the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia names.