Jumada al-Akhirah

Jumada al-Akhirah is the sixth month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar, the second of the Jumada pair, its name meaning the last Jumada, again from the sense of a dry or parched season when the lunar names were set. It is not among the four sacred months and carries no major prescribed festival, though some communities keep commemorations within it. The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, its twelve months following the phases of the moon and its year of about 354 days making no adjustment to the solar year, so the months drift steadily earlier through the solar seasons. These are the features of the Islamic calendar tradition, in which Jumada al-Akhirah completes the pair of Jumada months and leads toward Rajab, the next of the sacred months of the year.

Jumada al-Akhirah, also called Jumada al-Thani, the second month of Jumada, completes the pair of "dry" or "freezing" months whose name, like those of the two Rabi months, preserves a seasonal reference from the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar rather than describing this month's actual season under the fixed, purely lunar Islamic calendar. With Jumada al-Akhirah's close, the calendar reaches its midpoint for the year and moves into Rajab, the first of the sacred months to fall consecutively with two more, Dhu al-Qadah and Dhu al-Hijjah, later in the year, a run distinct from Muharram, the fourth sacred month, which stands alone at the calendar's start.

The name is glossed as the last of the dry or frozen months. It is not one of the four sacred months. The twelve month names are Arabic and predate Islam, retained from the calendar of the Arabian peninsula when the Hijri reckoning was established.

Four of the twelve are the sacred months, al-ashhur al-hurum, in which warfare was forbidden in pre-Islamic Arabia and which the Quran confirms at sura 9 verse 36: Dhu al-Qadah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab. Three run consecutively and the fourth stands alone in the middle of the year, an arrangement that fitted the pilgrimage season and the trading truces that went with it.

The Hijri calendar admits no intercalation. The verse immediately following the one that names the twelve months condemns nasi, the pre-Islamic practice of postponing or adding a month, and the calendar has run as a strict lunar reckoning since. The consequence is a year of 354 or 355 days that moves against the seasons by about eleven days annually, so any month passes through the whole solar year in roughly thirty-three years.

Jumada al-Akhirah closes the second pair and stands immediately before Rajab, so the two seasonal pairs occupy the four months between the sacred month of Muharram and the isolated sacred month in the middle of the year.