This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Sacred Months gathers the four months the Quran names as months in which warfare was forbidden among pre-Islamic Arabs, an injunction Islamic teaching carried forward, three of them consecutive and one standing alone.
Dhu al-Qadah, Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram close and open the Hijri year in an unbroken run, the only such run of three sacred months in the calendar. Dhu al-Qadah, master of sitting, is explained by the old Arab custom of sitting out from warfare and travel, and carries no major festival of its own, serving as a quiet lead in to the pilgrimage month after it. Dhu al-Hijjah, master of the pilgrimage, is the year's final month and the month of the Hajj, performed in its first ten to thirteen days, with Eid al-Adha falling on its tenth day. Muharram then opens the new year, its tenth day, Ashura, marked by voluntary fasting among Sunni Muslims and by mourning the death of Hussein ibn Ali at Karbala among Shia Muslims.
Rajab stands apart from the other three, the seventh month rather than adjoining them, its name meaning respect or honour, traditionally associated with the Isra and Mi'raj, the Prophet Muhammad's night journey and ascension. Ramadan, the calendar's holiest month, is deliberately not among these four; sanctity and sacred-month status are not the same claim in this reckoning, and the atlas keeps the two distinct rather than treating one as a stand-in for the other.