What It Means - Day 68

"It is necessary here to say something about the Islamic lunar calendar, which determines the period of fasting as well as other religious rites and ceremonies. In Islam all religious events are based on the lunar calendar, although the solar calendar is used for agricultural and other matters. In fact, the most accurate solar calendar ever devised, more accurate than the Julian or Gregorian calendars, is the Jalali calendar, devised by the famous mathematician-poet Umar Khayyam and others in the twelfth century and still in use in Iran and Afghanistan. This solar calendar divides the year into twelve months, the first six of which have thirty-one, the next five, thirty days, and the twelfth month, twenty-nine days, except on leap year when it has thirty days. It therefore makes it easier to keep count of how many days are in each month as compared with the Western calendar and is also astronomically more precise. But Islam explicitly bans intercalation, which means adding a number of days to the lunar year to make it the equivalent of the solar year. Consequently, the Islamic lunar calendar moves through the solar calendar completing one cycle every thirty-three years. As a result, Ramadan is sometimes in the winter and sometimes in the summer, sometimes during long and hot days and sometimes during short and cool ones. Since Islam is a global community, this injuction banning intercalation, as foreseen in the Quran, guarantees fairness and justice as far as condition go for fasting, the hajj, and early morning prayers for people living in different geographical latitudes and in the two different hemispheres of the globe."
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam, pp. 133-134

And since we were talking about Ramadan moving throughout the year I thought it's be a good idea to bring in Nasr's description of the Islamic lunar calendar. And here's a sense of how Ramadan moves throughout the calendar.

2013
9 July - 7 August

2014
23 June - 27 July

2015
13 June - 17 July

2016
7 June - 6 July

2017
27 May - 25 June

2018
16 May - 14 June

2019
6 May - 4 June

2020
24 April - 23 May

2021
13 April - 12 May

2022
3 April - 2 May

2023
23 March - 21 April

2024
11 March - 9 April

2025
1 March - 30 March

2026
18 February - 19 March

2027
8 February - 9 March

2028
28 January - 26 February

2029
16 January - 14 February

2030
6 January - 4 February

2030*
26 December - 24 January (2031)

2031*
15 December - 13 January (2032)

2032*
4 December - 2 January (2033)