The Virtues of the Month of Muharram

A look at muharram in Islamic teaching, drawn from the Quran and authentic hadith.

Muharram opens the Islamic lunar calendar, and Islamic teaching sets it apart from the other eleven months through a specific status the Quran assigns to it – one of four months held to be sacred, during which conflict was traditionally restrained and acts of worship carried heightened significance.

Muharram: One of Four Sacred Months

Surah at-Tawbah states that the number of months with Allah is twelve, four of which are sacred (9:36) – identified in hadith as Dhul-Qa’dah, Dhul-Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab. Classical exegetes describe these months as a period in which the pre-Islamic Arabs themselves had already observed a customary restraint from warfare, a practice Islam retained and reinforced with specific religious significance rather than discarding as pure pre-Islamic custom.

The Day of Ashura and the Fast of Musa (AS)

The tenth day of Muharram, Ashura, carries particular weight in Islamic teaching. A hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim describes the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ arriving in Medina to find the Jewish community fasting on this day, commemorating Allah’s rescue of Musa (AS) and the Israelites from Pharaoh. On learning this, the Prophet ﷺ said that he had more right to Musa (AS) than they did, and both fasted on the day himself and instructed his companions to do the same.

Expiation for an Entire Previous Year

A hadith recorded in Sahih Muslim describes the Prophet ﷺ teaching that fasting on the Day of Ashura expiates the sins of the preceding year – a reward scholars note is considerably larger in scope than most voluntary fasts, comparable in the hadith literature only to the reward described for fasting the Day of Arafah, which expiates both the preceding and the following year.

Fasting the Ninth Day Alongside It

A hadith recorded in Sahih Muslim describes the Prophet ﷺ expressing an intention, near the end of his life, to also fast the ninth of Muharram the following year alongside the tenth, specifically so that Muslim practice would be distinguished from that of the Jewish community, who fasted the tenth alone. This detail is why the recommended practice today generally involves fasting the ninth and tenth together, or the tenth and eleventh, rather than the tenth in isolation.

The Martyrdom of Husain (RA)

Muharram is also the month, in the year 61 AH, in which Husain ibn Ali (RA), grandson of the Prophet ﷺ through his daughter Fatima (RA), was killed at Karbala along with members of his family and companions, in a conflict over the leadership of the Muslim community following the death of Muawiyah. This event, occurring specifically on the tenth of Muharram, is commemorated across the Muslim world with varying degrees of mourning observance, and is cited by historians and scholars alike as one of the most consequential and sorrowful episodes of early Islamic history, its memory still shaping religious and political identity within the Muslim community today.

Why Fasting Ashura Predates Islam Itself in the Region

Classical scholars discussing the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ arriving in Medina and finding the Jewish community already fasting on Ashura have paid particular attention to a further detail preserved in the account: the Quraysh of Mecca, too, are recorded as having observed a fast on this day even before Islam, according to a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari describing Aisha (RA) explaining that Ashura was a day the pre-Islamic Quraysh used to fast, and that the Prophet ﷺ himself fasted it while still in Mecca, before it became obligatory and later, once Ramadan was prescribed, optional again. Scholars point to this layered history – observed by pre-Islamic Quraysh, observed by the Jewish community of Medina for a distinct historical reason tied to Musa (AS), and then adopted and reoriented by the Prophet ﷺ around the same underlying story of rescue from Pharaoh – as an example of how Islamic teaching sometimes retained an existing practice already familiar to a community while anchoring its meaning specifically to the Quranic account of prophetic history, rather than either rejecting the custom outright or leaving its significance unexplained.

Readers interested in this subject may also want to read about The Story of Prophet Ibrahim (AS) and His Trials. For further primary-source reading, Sunnah.com offers searchable access to the full text of the Quran and its major hadith collections.