RIYADH: The holy month of Ramadan will be witnessed twice by Muslims worldwide within a single Gregorian year in 2030, as per an ultra-rare event. As Saudi astronomer Khalid Al-Zaqaq expressed in words, such a heavenly event is an occurrence that takes place once every 30-33 years.
The cause of this is the varied nature of the Hijri calendar (lunar calendar) and the Gregorian calendar (solar calendar). Thus, Ramadan can appear to start at the beginning or latter end of the Gregorian year. Once digits of decades, there is alignment of the two calendars that leads to two Ramadans in a single year of the Gregorian calendar.
As a matter of fact, Ramadan 1 will be starting around January 5 in 2030 while Ramadan 2 will come along on December 26, 2030. Muslims will get a chance to fast for 36 days in the same year as a result of this rare event, thus, it will be a spiritually unique and memorable year in Islamic history.
The reason why these rare occurrences happen is that the Islamic year has 354 or 355 days and is about 11 days shorter than the solar-based Gregorian year. As a consequence, Ramadan shifts to the earlier date of the year by approximately 11 days annually and thus, every roughly 30 years, the month of fasting will be seen twice in the same Gregorian year.
Such an amazing alignment was here in 1997, and the following one will be in 2063.
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At the moment, the fasting month is observed in the summer season by Muslims, however, as the Islamic calendar goes on changing, the month of Ramadan will gradually be in the cold seasons. Experts say that Ramadan will mostly be in winter from 2028 to 2037. They also suggest that after 2037, the month will slowly be returning to the hotter months again.
If there were two Ramadans in a year, 2030 would be such a year which would be remembered as an event that was not only historic but also of great spiritual significance, as the occurrence of such a phenomenon had been so rare throughout the history of the Islamic calendar.
