Kitab al-Sawm: Eid Crescent Sighting and Testimony

1. How is the end of Ramadan established?

The start of Ramadan depends on establishing its crescent, while ending the month for Eid depends on establishing the Shawwal crescent. Classical Hanafi law does not set identical evidentiary thresholds for both situations.

The passage distinguishes a lone sighting, obstructed sky, and clear sky. Each needs its own legal analysis.

2. The complete original passage

وَمَنْ رَأَى هِلَالَ الْفِطْرِ وَحْدَهُ: لَمْ يُفْطِرْ.
وَإِنْ كَانَتْ بِالسَّمَاءِ عِلَّةٌ: لَمْ تُقْبَلْ فِي هِلَالِ الْفِطْرِ إِلَّا شَهَادَةُ رَجُلَيْنِ، أَوْ رَجُلٍ وَامْرَأَتَيْنِ.
وَإِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ بِالسَّمَاءِ عِلَّةٌ: لَمْ تُقْبَلْ إِلَّا شَهَادَةُ جَمْعٍ كَثِيرٍ يَقَعُ الْعِلْمُ بِخَبَرِهِمْ.
Translation: Whoever alone sees the Eid crescent does not break the fast. If the sky is obstructed, testimony for the Eid crescent is accepted only from two men or from one man and two women. If the sky is unobstructed, only the testimony of a sufficiently large group whose report establishes certainty is accepted.

The three consecutive sentences establish (1) the ruling for a lone Shawwal sighting, (2) the witness configuration when the sky is obscured, and (3) the threshold when the sky is clear.

The following slides examine these sentences in order. The full passage is reproduced here before extracting its clauses.

3. Seeing the Eid crescent alone

وَمَنْ رَأَى هِلَالَ الْفِطْرِ وَحْدَهُ: لَمْ يُفْطِرْ.
Translation: Whoever sees the Eid crescent alone does not break the fast.

Waḥdahu means seeing the crescent alone, without the testimony needed to establish Eid. In Quduri’s Hanafi ruling, that sighting alone does not authorize the person to end the fast.

The distinction is between a personal observation and the legally established start of Shawwal for the community.

4. Meaning of Hilal al-Fitr

Hilāl is the newly sighted crescent marking a lunar month. Al-fiṭr here refers to the end of Ramadan fasting.

Thus hilāl al-fiṭr is the Shawwal crescent, not the Ramadan crescent. This matters because the two sightings have distinct testimony standards in the text.

5. Personal sighting and public confirmation

An individual’s observation and the legal establishment of Eid for others are distinct questions. Not every lone claim fulfils the classical rules for an accepted public determination.

The order of the passage—first the lone observer, then accepted testimony—makes this distinction clear.

6. Worked case: lone observation

On the twenty-ninth evening of Ramadan, a person believes they have seen the Shawwal crescent, but the requisite accepted testimony has not been established.

Under the rule stated in this text, their sighting alone is not a basis for personally treating the following day as Eid and ending the fast.

7. Two conditions affecting testimony

Quduri’s next two clauses distinguish the condition of the sky.

First, clouds, haze, or an equivalent obstruction may explain why most observers cannot see the crescent.

Second, a clear sky removes that explanation, and the classical evidentiary standard becomes more demanding.

8. Testimony when the sky is obscured

وَإِنْ كَانَتْ بِالسَّمَاءِ عِلَّةٌ: لَمْ تُقْبَلْ فِي هِلَالِ الْفِطْرِ إِلَّا شَهَادَةُ رَجُلَيْنِ، أَوْ رَجُلٍ وَامْرَأَتَيْنِ.
Translation: If there is an obstruction in the sky, testimony for the Eid crescent is accepted only from two men, or from one man and two women.

ʿIllah here refers to an obstruction that makes crescent-sighting difficult. With such an obstruction, Quduri specifies two accepted configurations: two male witnesses, or one male witness together with two female witnesses.

These are the classical Hanafi testimony configurations for this particular legal issue; a single report does not fulfil them.

9. Meaning of ʿillah in this context

The word ʿillah does not mean a person’s illness here. It means an impediment in the sky, such as dense cloud or heavy haze, that affects visibility.

The expression bi-l-samāʾ identifies where that impediment exists. It is relevant to the conditions under which crescent testimony is evaluated.

10. Testimony of two men

The first configuration is shahādat rajulayn: testimony of two men concerning the actual crescent sighting.

The text is about formal testimony, not two people merely guessing that the month has ended. Quduri specifies the configuration here; general legal conditions for credible witnesses remain a separate question.

11. Testimony of one man and two women

The second configuration is one man and two women testifying to the sighting.

This is a rule for this particular classical Hanafi crescent-evidence context; it should not be generalized to every type of testimony. The specified sky condition remains part of the ruling.

12. Why a single testimony is insufficient here

Under this particular rule, a single man or a single woman giving the report does not meet the listed Shawwal-evidence configurations, even when the sky is obscured.

The question is legal sufficiency of testimony, not an assertion that one person could never observe the crescent.

13. Contrast with the Ramadan crescent

The earlier Ramadan-crescent passage allowed the testimony of one upright person when the sky was obstructed.

The present Shawwal-crescent passage specifies two men or one man with two women. A learner must not transplant the Ramadan threshold into the Shawwal case.

14. Special rule for a clear sky

وَإِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ بِالسَّمَاءِ عِلَّةٌ: لَمْ تُقْبَلْ إِلَّا شَهَادَةُ جَمْعٍ كَثِيرٍ يَقَعُ الْعِلْمُ بِخَبَرِهِمْ.
Translation: If there is no obstruction in the sky, only testimony from a large group whose report yields knowledge is accepted.

With no material sky obstruction, Quduri requires testimony from a large group whose report establishes knowledge of the sighting.

This is deliberately more demanding than the obscured-sky configurations; it does not simply repeat the two-men or one-man-plus-two-women rule.

15. What is a sufficiently large group?

Jamʿ kathīr means a large group. The Quduri sentence does not assign a fixed count such as ten or twenty.

Instead it adds the substantive requirement: yaqāʿ al-ʿilm bi-khabarihim, that their report results in reliable knowledge of the event.

16. Knowledge from reports is not a fixed headcount

The statement makes sufficient knowledge from a group report the standard. A small fixed number cannot simply be assumed to suffice under a clear sky.

Conversely, assigning an exact numerical threshold to Quduri is not justified by the words of this passage, which specifies no number.

17. Why the clear-sky threshold differs

With a clear sky, cloud cover does not explain why a crescent was invisible to most potential observers. This is one rationale given in juristic commentary for expecting stronger collective testimony.

It is an explanation of the legal standard, not a new independent Arabic sentence in the primary text.

18. Case study: clouded sky

Suppose dense clouds cover the sky on the relevant evening. Two legally qualified male witnesses testify to having seen the Shawwal crescent. Their configuration matches one of the two listed in Quduri.

A single witness, even strongly convinced, does not satisfy that listed Shawwal configuration.

19. Clouded sky: the alternate configuration

Under the same obstructed-sky condition, testimony from one man and two women matches the second configuration in the text.

The particular witness composition matters. Three people in any arbitrary composition are not automatically the listed combination.

20. Case study: clear sky

If the sky is clear and only two people report seeing the crescent, applying the clouded-sky two-witness rule without qualification would erase Quduri’s distinction.

His clear-sky clause calls for a sufficiently large group whose testimony establishes knowledge; no fixed number appears in the sentence.

21. Which month is the crescent establishing?

For the Ramadan crescent, the legal question is when obligatory fasting begins. For the Shawwal crescent, it is when Ramadan ends and Eid begins.

Both consider sky conditions, but the permitted witness configurations differ in the two texts. The month cannot be ignored when applying the rule.

22. Morphology and syntax of man raʾā

Man introduces the conditional person; raʾā is a past-tense verb from the root r-ʾ-y, “to see.” Hilāla is the accusative object, and al-fiṭri is its genitive complement.

Waḥdahu functions adverbially, indicating that the sighting occurred alone. Together these elements delimit the case precisely.

23. Syntax of lam yufṭir

Lam negates the imperfect and puts it in the jussive mood. Yufṭir comes from Form IV afṭara, to break a fast; the final sukūn reflects jussive inflection.

In the legal context, this negative construction states that the lone sighting does not license ending the fast.

24. Syntax of kānat bi-l-samāʾ ʿillah

Kānat is a past defective verb. Bi-l-samāʾ serves as the preposed predicate of kāna, while ʿillatun is its postponed nominative subject.

In introduces the condition, and in lam takun in the following sentence negates it, producing the contrasting clear-sky case.

25. Grammatical structure of the witness phrases

Shahādat is the testimony being accepted; rajulayn is a dual genitive governed by the iḍāfa structure, hence the yāʾ ending.

Imraʾatayn is the feminine dual in the genitive, conjoined with rajul in the alternate witness configuration. The Arabic grammar preserves both the count and the composition of the witnesses.

26. Syntax of jamʿ kathīr and its qualifying clause

Jamʿin is genitive, and kathīrin is its matching genitive adjective. Yaqaʿu is an imperfect verb, al-ʿilmu its nominative subject, and bi-khabarihim a prepositional complement.

The verbal clause qualifies the group: its report must be such that knowledge of the sighting results.

27. Consolidated decision framework

One person sighting Shawwal alone does not break the fast on that basis. Under an obstructed sky, the listed configurations are two men, or one man and two women. Under a clear sky, a sufficiently large group whose report generates knowledge is required; this sentence gives no exact headcount.

The next primary-text section is Bāb al-Iʿtikāf.