Jumada al-Awwal and Jumada al-Thani: Meaning and Dates

Jumada al-Awwal and Jumada al-Thani are the fifth and sixth months of the Hijri (Islamic lunar) calendar. "Jumada" comes from an Arabic root meaning to freeze or to become hard and dry, and "al-Awwal" and "al-Thani" mean "the first" and "the second". The two months are also called Jumada al-Ula and Jumada al-Akhirah, which are the older, grammatically feminine forms of the same names. In 1448 AH, Jumada al-Awwal runs from 12 October to 10 November 2026 and Jumada al-Thani from 11 November to 9 December 2026 on the calculated Umm al-Qura calendar.

Key Takeaways

• Jumada al-Awwal (month 5) and Jumada al-Thani (month 6) are a pair, like Rabi al-Awwal and Rabi al-Thani before them.
• Classical Arabic treats "Jumada" as feminine, so the traditional names are Jumada al-Ula and Jumada al-Akhirah. Al-Awwal and al-Thani are common masculine forms of the same names.
• The usual explanation links the name to freezing water. Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon doubts this and prefers a link to dry, hard ground.
• Neither month is one of the four sacred months. Rajab, the seventh month, comes straight after Jumada al-Thani.
• Like every Hijri month, each Jumada has 29 or 30 days and moves about 11 days earlier against the Gregorian calendar each year.

What does Jumada mean?

The word comes from the Arabic root j-m-d. In Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (Book I, p. 451), the verb jamada is defined first as water or another liquid congealing, becoming solid or freezing. Related words in the same entry describe frozen water, ice, and land on which no rain has fallen.

Lane records the traditional explanation from the classical Arabic dictionaries: the two months got their name because, when the months were named, they fell in the season when water froze.

Lane then questions that story. He argues that when the names were given, the first Jumada began around March and the second ended around May, so a link to freezing looks like a later explanation, invented after the months had drifted into winter. He sides with the French orientalist Caussin de Perceval, who connected the name to jamad, land that has become dry and hard for lack of rain. Lane notes that this reading fits other month names that seem to describe seasons, such as Safar, Rabi, Ramadan and Shawwal.

Both explanations point to the season the months once fell in. Neither describes the months as they fall in a given year now, because a lunar month does not stay in one season.

Why the season no longer matches

A Hijri year of 12 lunar months is about 11 days shorter than a solar year, so each month starts about 11 days earlier in the Gregorian calendar every year. Over roughly 33 years, Jumada al-Awwal passes through every season. In 1448 AH it falls in the northern autumn (October to November 2026). In the southern hemisphere the same dates are spring. The name has nothing to say about the weather where you live.

Al-Awwal and al-Thani, or al-Ula and al-Akhirah?

Both pairs of names are correct and refer to the same months. The difference is grammar, plus local habit.

Lane's entry continues on the next page of the lexicon (p. 452). It states that Jumada is a proper name of feminine gender, and that when it is found treated as masculine, this is because it is made to agree with shahr ("month"). All the other month names, Lane adds, are masculine.

That is why the two forms exist:

Some other spellings and names you may see:

• Jumada al-Thaniyah, the feminine of al-Thani, as in some English hadith translations.
• Jumada I and Jumada II, used for example by the US Naval Observatory's Islamic calendar page.
• Jumada al-Akhira, the same name spelled without the final "h".

Lane also records older labels for the pair: Jumada "the fifth" and Jumada "the sixth", counted from the start of the year. The pair as a whole was called al-Jumadayan, "the two Jumadas".

Whichever form a calendar or document uses, the dates are the same.

Where the two months sit in the year

Jumada al-Thani is the month directly before Rajab. That placement appears in a well-known hadith about the sacred months.

In a translation of the meaning of Surah At-Tawbah 9:36 (Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, on quran.com), "the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve", of which four are sacred. The Quran does not name the four. The Prophet ﷺ named them in Sahih al-Bukhari 3197, narrated by Abu Bakra: three in succession, Dhul-Qa'da, Dhul-Hijja and Muharram, and Rajab of Mudar, which comes between Jumada and Sha'ban.

The Arabic of that narration says only "between Jumada and Sha'ban" (بين جمادى وشعبان). The sunnah.com English translation adds "ath-Thaniyah", since the Jumada that comes right before Rajab is the second one.

Two points follow:

• Neither Jumada is a sacred month. They are ordinary months between the sacred Muharram and the sacred Rajab. The four sacred months are Muharram, Rajab, Dhu al-Qi'dah and Dhu al-Hijjah.
• Neither month has a fixed annual observance, such as the fast of Ramadan or the Hajj. The regular voluntary practices that apply in any month, such as fasting the White Days on the 13th, 14th and 15th, apply in both Jumadas too.

Jumada dates from 1447 to 1450 AH

The table below gives the first and last day of each month on the calculated Umm al-Qura calendar. Dates are calculated from the Umm al-Qura tables in the open-source hijri-converter library that this site uses. Each Hijri date begins at sunset on the evening before the Gregorian date shown.

Notice that the lengths change from year to year. Jumada al-Awwal has 30 days in 1448 but 29 in 1450. A calendar based on the Moon cannot fix a month's length in advance the way the Gregorian calendar does, which is explained further in the post on why an Islamic month has 29 or 30 days.

The simpler tabular Islamic calendar does fix the lengths. The USNO page linked above lists Jumada I as 30 days and Jumada II as 29 days in that scheme, with lengths alternating through the year. Calendars built on that rule can differ from Umm al-Qura by a day.

Local announcements based on moon sighting can also differ from the calculated dates by a day. For anything where the exact date matters to you, confirm with your local mosque or the authority your community follows.

A worked example in 1448 AH

On Monday 9 November 2026, the calculated date is 29 Jumada al-Awwal 1448. The following day, Tuesday 10 November, is 30 Jumada al-Awwal, the last day of the month on this calendar.

Jumada al-Thani 1448 then begins at sunset on Tuesday 10 November, and its first full daytime is Wednesday 11 November. Counting forward from there:

• 13, 14 and 15 Jumada al-Thani 1448 fall on Monday 23, Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 November 2026.
• 29 Jumada al-Thani 1448 falls on Wednesday 9 December 2026, the last day of the month in the Umm al-Qura calendar.
• 1 Rajab 1448 falls on Thursday 10 December 2026, so the sacred month of Rajab begins at sunset on Wednesday 9 December.

Common questions

Is Jumada al-Thani the same as Jumada al-Akhirah?

Yes. They are two names for the sixth month. "Al-Thani" means "the second" and "al-Akhirah" means "the last" or "the later". The second form is the classical feminine one, because Arabic treats the word Jumada as feminine.

Does Jumada mean winter?

Not exactly. Jumada comes from a root meaning to freeze or to become hard and dry. Lane's lexicon reports that some early Arabs used Jumada for the whole winter season, but it also argues that the months were probably named for dry, rainless ground rather than for frost. Because the months move through the seasons, they fall in every season over about 33 years.

Find the Jumada dates you need

To see every day of the two months, open the Jumada al-Awwal 1448 calendar and the Jumada al-Thani 1448 calendar. For a date in another year, such as a birthday or a document date written as "Jumada al-Ula" or "Jumada al-Akhirah", enter it in the Hijri date converter. The list of Islamic months shows where both Jumadas sit among all twelve.