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Hijri Year: — AH · Month — of 12
What Islamic Month Is It Today?
The current Islamic month is shown above, updated from today’s date. The Islamic (Hijri) calendar has 12 lunar months, and the month you’re in right now sits at the position shown. Below is what this month means, the full list of all twelve, and how the Islamic calendar works.
How the month is worked out
The month above is calculated from today’s Gregorian date using the standard astronomical conversion. Islamic months begin when the new crescent moon is sighted, so the exact day a month starts can differ by one or two days between countries. The figure here follows the widely used calculated calendar, which is accurate to within a day for most places.
Why it matters
Knowing the current Hijri month tells you what’s near. Ramadan, the two Eids, Hajj, Ashura, and the blessed nights all fall in fixed Islamic months, so the month you’re in is the first clue to what worship is coming up. Many Muslims also use the Hijri month to time voluntary fasts, like the three white days in the middle of every month.
The 12 months of the Islamic calendar
The Islamic calendar has 12 lunar months totalling 354 or 355 days. The four sacred months, shown in gold below, are Dhul Qaʼdah, Dhul Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab. The current month is highlighted.
| # | Month | Meaning / Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Muharram ✦ | Sacred month. Holds Ashura on the 10th. Opens the Hijri year. |
| 2 | Safar | The second month. No special observances are prescribed in it. |
| 3 | Rabiʼ al-Awwal | The month of the Prophet’s ﷺ birth (Mawlid), on the 12th. |
| 4 | Rabiʼ al-Thani | Also called Rabiʼ al-Akhir, the second Rabiʼ. |
| 5 | Jumada al-Awwal | The first Jumada. Named from a word for dry, frozen land. |
| 6 | Jumada al-Thani | The second Jumada, also called Jumada al-Akhirah. |
| 7 | Rajab ✦ | Sacred month. Holds Shab-e-Meraj on the 27th night. |
| 8 | Shaʼban | The Prophet ﷺ fasted most in it. Holds Shab-e-Barat on the 15th. |
| 9 | Ramadan | The month of fasting. Holds Laylat al-Qadr in its last 10 nights. |
| 10 | Shawwal | Opens with Eid ul-Fitr on the 1st. Six voluntary fasts are encouraged. |
| 11 | Dhul Qaʼdah ✦ | Sacred month. One of the months of Hajj. |
| 12 | Dhul Hijjah ✦ | Sacred month. Holds Hajj, Day of Arafah, and Eid ul-Adha. |
Why the Islamic month moves each year
Each Islamic month falls about 11 days earlier in the Gregorian calendar every year. The reason is simple: the Islamic year is lunar, around 354 days, while the Gregorian year is solar at 365.
That 11-day gap adds up. Over about 33 years, every Islamic month rotates through all four seasons. It’s why Ramadan can be a long, hot summer fast in one decade and a short winter one in another. The calendar isn’t drifting by mistake. It tracks the moon exactly as the Quran describes, so it never locks to a fixed season the way Gregorian dates do.
What year is it in the Islamic calendar?
The current Hijri year is shown at the top of this page, written with AH after it. AH stands for After Hijra, the migration of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ from Makkah to Madinah in 622 CE, which is the event the whole calendar counts from.
The calendar wasn’t numbered in the Prophet’s lifetime. It was set up about 17 years later under Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA), who chose the Hijra as year one because that migration marked the start of the first Muslim community. For the full history, see our Islamic New Year page.
The four sacred months
Four of the twelve months are sacred: Dhul Qaʼdah, Dhul Hijjah, and Muharram fall in a row, and Rajab stands on its own. The Quran refers to them in Surah at-Tawbah (9:36).
In these months, fighting was traditionally forbidden, and good deeds and worship carry extra reward. If the month shown above is one of the four, it’s a natural time to increase voluntary fasting, charity, and duʿa. The gold marks in the table show which months these are.
Voluntary fasts that follow the month
Once you know the Islamic month and day, you can time the recurring voluntary fasts the Prophet ﷺ kept. The most regular are the three “white days,” the 13th, 14th, and 15th of every Hijri month, named for the bright full moon on those nights.
Mondays and Thursdays are recommended for fasting in any month, and those don’t depend on the Hijri date at all. Some months carry extra fasts on top: Ashura on the 10th of Muharram, the day of Arafah on the 9th of Dhul Hijjah, and six days of Shawwal after Eid ul-Fitr. Knowing which month you’re in tells you which of these is near, which is part of why the current month is worth checking.
How to track the Islamic month accurately
For everyday purposes, the calculated month shown here is reliable. For acts that depend on the exact day, like the start of Ramadan, the two Eids, or the Day of Arafah, follow your local moon-sighting authority, since the official start can shift the calculated date by a day.
This matters most around the start and end of a month. In the middle of a month, the calculated and sighted dates almost always agree. If you want to convert a specific Gregorian date to its Hijri equivalent, or check today’s exact date, use the Islamic date today tool on our homepage.
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