Islamic Holidays and Festivals: Difference between revisions

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[[Islam]] is something of a peculiar religion when it comes to festivals in two ways. One, it doesn't have a whole lot of them. Two, they are linked to the [[Alternative Calendar|Islamic calendar]], which is purely lunar: it is only 354 days long, or about 11 days shorter than the solar year. These two peculiarities are related: because of the length of the Islamic year, the months move through the seasons. Since so many festivals are linked to seasons and seasonal events (like planting or the harvest or the solstice), it would be very difficult to link them to the Islamic calendar. As a result, while seasonal festivals exist in many if not most Muslim countries, they tend to be culturally-based and linked to local solar or lunisolar calendars, many of which date from pre-Islamic times. For instance, the [[Egypt|Egyptian]] spring festival, Sham el-Nessim, is linked to the Egyptian calendar, which is more or less the same as the old Roman Julian calendar (it falls on [[Orthodox Christianity|Orthodox]] Easter Monday for historical reasons). By the same token, the [[Iran|Iranian]] spring festival, Nourouz, falls on the first day of the Iranian calendar, which is based on the Islamic calendar and the pre-Islamic Persian and Hindu ones.