For one lunar month, no one eats, drinks or smokes between dawn and sunset. The country rearranges itself around that: working hours are shortened by law, schools and offices start late, many restaurants close during the day, and licensed venues suspend or curtail service. At sunset the fast is broken at iftar — in homes, in hotel majlis tents seating hundreds, and at free public tables — and the city comes alive again until suhoor before dawn.
For a visitor, Ramadan is neither an obstacle nor a spectacle; it is a different country. Malls and hotels operate normally and a great deal of hospitality is at its most generous. But daytime eating in public is restricted, live music is largely suspended, and the rhythm of every day is inverted.
No attendance figure applies to a month observed by a population.
This entry exists because the partner calendar does not have one. A page organised by Gregorian month cannot hold an event that moves eleven days a year and passes through every month over a 33-year cycle — and a UAE calendar that omits Ramadan omits the fact that governs every other entry on it.
PlanningThe single most consequential date in the UAE year and the one a Gregorian calendar cannot hold: it drifts about eleven days earlier annually and passes through every season over a 33-year cycle.
Dates
calendar conversion — may move a day
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.