Safar Month Meaning and the Hadith on Bad Omens

Safar is the second month of the Hijri calendar, coming after Muharram and before Rabi al-Awwal. Some pre-Islamic Arabs treated it as a month of bad luck. The Prophet ﷺ rejected that belief in a sahih hadith: "no Safar", listed alongside other omens and superstitions of the time. In Islamic teaching, Safar is an ordinary month. It has no special acts of worship, and it brings no special misfortune either. By the calculated Umm al-Qura calendar, the next Safar (1449 AH) runs from Monday 5 July to Monday 2 August 2027.

Key Takeaways

• Safar is the 2nd Hijri month. Its name is usually linked to the Arabic for "empty".
• In Sahih al-Bukhari 5707 and Sahih Muslim 2220, the Prophet ﷺ listed "no Safar" with "no omens" and similar pre-Islamic beliefs.
• Early explanations of "Safar" in the hadith differ: an unlucky month, the pre-Islamic shifting of a sacred month, or a belly ailment thought to be contagious. All of them describe a belief the hadith rejects.
• Taking bad omens is condemned in the hadith. Hearing a good word and feeling hopeful is not.
• Calculated dates: Safar 1449 is 5 July to 2 August 2027. Local announcements may differ by a day.

What the name Safar means

The word is usually connected with emptiness. Dr. Hanan A. Alqudah of Hamad Bin Khalifa University's College of Islamic Studies explains in a note on the Arabic month names that Safar means emptiness or void, and was named so because the Arabs would leave their homes empty. The usual account is that people set out to travel, trade or raid once the sacred month of Muharram had ended.

The name describes a custom, not a quality of the month. Safar is not one of the four sacred months. The Quran states in Surah At-Tawbah 9:36 that the number of months with Allah is twelve, of which four are sacred. In Sahih al-Bukhari 4662, the Prophet ﷺ names them: Dhul-Qa'da, Dhul-Hijja, Muharram and Rajab. The sister post on the four sacred months in Islam covers them in detail.

Because the Hijri year is about 11 days shorter than the solar year, Safar moves through every season over roughly 33 years. It is tied to no harvest, weather or travel season.

The hadith: "no Safar"

The core text appears in both of the most authoritative hadith collections, in several chains. In Sahih al-Bukhari 5707, narrated by Abu Huraira, the Prophet ﷺ lists four things that have no reality: 'adwa (contagion acting by itself), tiyara (taking omens from birds), hama, and Safar. The English translation on sunnah.com renders the last as "nor is there any bad omen in the month of Safar". The same hadith ends by telling people to keep away from someone with leprosy as they would from a lion.

The wording in Arabic is four short negations: la 'adwa wa la tiyara wa la hama wa la safar. Other versions shorten or extend the list:

In Bukhari 5717 and Muslim 2220a, a bedouin objects that his healthy camels catch mange when a sick camel mixes with them. The Prophet ﷺ answers with a question: who infected the first one? The note on sunnah.com summarises the majority scholarly reading of these narrations: these things do not cause harm in and of themselves through hidden means, Allah is ultimately in control, and fearful superstition around them is false. The instruction to keep away from a leper, in the same hadith, shows that ordinary precautions were not being forbidden.

What "Safar" meant in the hadith

The hadith does not explain the word, and early authorities understood it in more than one way. The main explanations recorded in the hadith collections are below. They are reports of how earlier generations explained the term, not further words of the Prophet ﷺ.

A month thought to be unlucky

In Sunan Abi Dawud 3915, the Syrian scholar Muhammad ibn Rashid is asked what Safar means. He answers that he had heard the pre-Islamic Arabs took evil omens from Safar, so the Prophet ﷺ said "there is no Safar". This is the reading behind the common English rendering "no bad omen in Safar". Sunnah.com grades the report Sahih Maqtu' (Al-Albani), which means it is an authentic statement of a later authority rather than a saying of the Prophet ﷺ.

A belly ailment thought to spread

In the same report, Muhammad ibn Rashid adds that he heard others say Safar was a pain in the belly that people believed was contagious. Sahih Muslim 2222c records a similar explanation: the narrator Abu az-Zubair says Safar means the belly, and that it was held to refer to worms of the belly. On this reading, "no Safar" sits naturally beside "no contagion".

The shifting of a sacred month

Imam Malik gave a calendar explanation. In Sunan Abi Dawud 3914, he says the pre-Islamic Arabs used to make Safar lawful one year and unlawful another, and the Prophet ﷺ said "there is no Safar". Sunnah.com gives this report the same grading, Sahih Maqtu' (Al-Albani).

This connects to a practice the Quran condemns. Surah At-Tawbah 9:37 criticises those who allowed a sacred month one year and forbade it in another, to keep the number of sacred months while breaking the months Allah made sacred. Sahih al-Bukhari 1564 shows the practice touching Safar directly: Ibn Abbas reports that the pre-Islamic Arabs used to treat Muharram as Safar, and said Umrah became permissible once "the month of Safar passes away". The sister post on nasi and the end of the leap month explains how this month-shifting worked.

Where the readings meet

The explanations differ on what the pre-Islamic belief was, but they agree on the result. Whether Safar meant an unlucky month, a contagious ailment or a sacred month moved at will, the hadith declares that belief void. None of the readings gives Safar a harmful quality of its own.

Omens in Islamic teaching

"No Safar" belongs to a wider teaching about omens. In Sunan Abi Dawud 3910, the Prophet ﷺ says "Taking omens is polytheism", three times. The narration continues that every one of us has some of this feeling, but Allah removes it through trust in Him. Sunnah.com grades it Sahih (Al-Albani). The text does not treat a passing feeling as a sin. It points to trust in Allah as the response.

Hope is treated differently. In Sahih al-Bukhari 5755, the Prophet ﷺ says there is no tiyara, and that the best omen is al-fal. Asked what al-fal is, he answers: "A good word that one of you hears". Sahih al-Bukhari 5756 adds that he liked the good fal. The difference is between expecting harm from a sign and taking heart from something good.

Applied to Safar, this means a marriage, a journey, a business deal or a move is judged on its own merits, whichever month it falls in. The calendar does not decide whether it will go well. Questions about particular customs that some communities attach to Safar are best taken to a qualified scholar or your local mosque.

Does Safar have special acts of worship?

No sahih hadith assigns a special prayer, fast or charity to Safar. The voluntary acts that apply in every month apply in Safar too: fasting Mondays and Thursdays, fasting the "white days" of 13, 14 and 15 of the month, and general charity and remembrance. The sister post on the white days fast explains that monthly practice.

Safar dates for the next few years

Safar moves about 11 days earlier against the Gregorian calendar each year. These dates come from the Umm al-Qura tables in the open-source hijri-converter library that this site uses. Each Islamic date begins at sunset on the evening before, and local announcements based on moon sighting may differ by a day.

Plan the month like any other

To see a full month of Hijri and Gregorian dates side by side, open the Safar 1448 calendar and step forward to later years. To check a single date, such as a wedding or travel date that falls in Safar, use the Hijri date converter. The list of Islamic months shows where Safar sits in the year.