A festival and a rite of passage

This lesson asks you to explain the origin and meaning of belief-related festivals. The museum serves a small Islamic part: the festival that closes Ramadan. Your class brings the festivals of other traditions and the rites of passage, which the museum does not cover here. ¹

A festival marks a time. For the record, ask what it marks, who takes part, and which teaching of the tradition you think it carries. State clearly where the record is silent.

Read how the Encyclopaedia of Islam describes the day, as the record of Eid al-Fitr gives it. The festival prayer is held by the community as a whole and is considered sunna, and the article says it preserves an older form than the daily or the Friday prayer; it has only two rak'as and more takbirs than an ordinary prayer, followed by a sermon in two parts, and no call to prayer and no iqama, the only summons being, as in the earliest times, a short call to the congregation; it should be held in the open air at the prayer ground ². On both festivals, the article says, people put on new clothes or at least their best, visit and congratulate one another and exchange presents, and cemeteries are visited, people sometimes staying in them for hours ². It notes that these customs are more usual at Eid al-Fitr than at Eid al-Adha, and that the minor festival has in practice become, in its words, of much greater importance than the major one ^{2 3}.

The Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh says 'eid is from 'awd, returning, for it recurs ⁴. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the Arab lexicographers derive the word for festival 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 ². The first is a jurists' definition and the second an academic judgement by the article's author, and the record gives no verdict between them.

The record takes the word's derivation, the two festivals and the jurists' rulings on the prayer and the takbir from the Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh ^{4 5}, and the customs and the form of the prayer from the Encyclopaedia of Islam ². The article's statement that the minor festival has become much more important than the major one is its own judgement, in its words, and not a count. The sections of the record that cite a source do not say how or when the festival was first instituted.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia derives the word 'eid from 'awd, returning, because it recurs ⁴, while the Encyclopaedia of Islam says it is in fact an Aramaic loanword ². Take a position: does the origin of a word tell a researcher what a festival means to those who keep it, and what is the strongest objection to your position?

• Eid al-Fitr: what the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia and the Encyclopaedia of Islam say of its name, its prayer and its customs.
• Eid al-Adha: the other festival, the rulings on its prayer, and what the Encyclopaedia of Islam says of the sacrifice.
• Zakat al-fitr: how the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia explains the name of the alms owed at the breaking of Ramadan.

Read Eid al-Fitr. Write what the record tells you about the name and the date, and add one question the record does not answer that your class could research.