The Six Fasts of Shawwal

Ramadan ends, the crescent of Shawwal appears, and Eid is celebrated — and for many believers, something feels unfinished. For a whole month their days were shaped by fasting: the pre-dawn meal, the long hours of restraint, the breaking of the fast at sunset. Then, almost suddenly, the routine is gone. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ pointed to a beautiful way of carrying that month forward: six more days of fasting in Shawwal, the month that follows Ramadan. These six fasts of Shawwal are among the best-known voluntary fasts in Islam, and the promise attached to them is astonishing — whoever completes Ramadan and then adds these six days is rewarded as though he had fasted the entire year. This article looks at exactly what the Quran and the authentic hadith say about these six days: the promise itself, the divine arithmetic behind it, the one day on which the six must not begin, and how the six days are kept within the month.

1. Ramadan First: The Month in Which the Quran Was Sent Down

The six fasts of Shawwal only make sense standing on the foundation of Ramadan, because the hadith that promises their reward begins with the fast of Ramadan itself. And Ramadan’s honour begins with the Quran. Allah says:

“The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur’ān was revealed as guidance for mankind, and as clear signs that show the right way and distinguish between right and wrong.” (Quran 2:185)

This is the month Allah chose for His final revelation. It is also the month in which fasting is prescribed, as the same verse continues:

“So those of you who witness the month must fast in it. But the one who is sick, or is on a journey (should fast) as much from other days (as he missed).” (Quran 2:185)

The fast of Ramadan is the pillar; everything in this article is built on having completed it. The verse also shows the spirit in which Allah legislates: the sick person and the traveller are given other days in place of what they missed, because the purpose is worship, not hardship:

“Allah intends (to provide) ease for you and does not intend (to create) hardship for you. All this is so that you may complete the number (of fasts as prescribed) and proclaim the Takbīr of Allah for having guided you, and (so) that you may be grateful.” (Quran 2:185)

Notice the two purposes the verse names at its end: completing the number, and gratitude. Ramadan is a counted month — thirty days or twenty-nine — and the believer who completes it has finished something definite and precious. It is a month crowded with extra worship, from the night prayers described in our guide to Taraweeh prayers in Ramadan to the blessed nights sought in our article on Laylatul Qadr. When such a month ends, the question naturally arises: is there a way to seal it, to follow it up so that its reward is completed and carried across the whole year? The answer comes in the words of the Prophet ﷺ himself.

2. The Promise: “As If He Fasted Perpetually”

Abu Ayyub al-Ansari (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:

“He who observed the fast of Ramadan and then followed it with six (fasts) of Shawwal. it would be as if he fasted perpetually.” (Sahih Muslim 1164a — Sahih)

The wording deserves slow reading. First comes the condition: “He who observed the fast of Ramadan” — the full month, completed. Then comes the addition: “and then followed it with six (fasts) of Shawwal.” The six days are a following, an addition joined to Ramadan after it. Then comes the result: “it would be as if he fasted perpetually” — as if he fasted without pause, the whole stretch of time, an entire year of fasting in reward.

The narration is not a lone report. It reached us through more than one route from the same Companion. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari also reported, through another chain of transmitters:

“I heard Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) saying like this.” (Sahih Muslim 1164b — Sahih)

That second route, recorded separately in Sahih Muslim, confirms that the words were heard from the Prophet ﷺ and preserved carefully: the same saying, carried by another chain, with the same meaning. The Companion who carried this promise to us is Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, the well-known Companion of Madinah, and the report sits in the most authentic collections of hadith.

So the structure of the promise is simple and complete: one month of obligatory fasting, six days of voluntary fasting after it, and a reward described as fasting perpetually — fasting the whole year through. The next question is obvious: how do thirty-six days become a year? The Quran itself supplies the scale.

3. The Arithmetic of Mercy: Ten for One

Allah states a universal rule about how He rewards good deeds:

“Whoever comes with a good deed will receive ten times as much, and whoever comes with an evil deed will be requited with no more than the like of it, and they shall not be wronged.” (Quran 6:160)

A good deed is multiplied tenfold; an evil deed is counted only once. That is the scale of divine generosity: rewards are multiplied, sins are not. Now place the fasts on that scale — this is simple arithmetic on the quoted texts, and it explains the Prophet’s ﷺ words precisely.

Ramadan is a month of thirty days. Thirty days of fasting, each rewarded ten times over, give three hundred days of reward: 30 × 10 = 300. The six days of Shawwal, each likewise rewarded ten times over, give sixty more: 6 × 10 = 60. Add them together — 300 + 60 — and the total is three hundred and sixty days: a full year of fasting in reward. The man who fasted thirty-six actual days has, on Allah’s own scale of multiplication, the reward of one who fasted the entire year. That is why the Prophet ﷺ could say of him that “it would be as if he fasted perpetually” (Sahih Muslim 1164a — Sahih).

This is worth pausing over. The promise is not a vague encouragement; it rests on a stated Quranic principle. Allah is not wronging anyone — the verse ends by assuring us of that — rather, He is giving far beyond the measure of the deed. A believer who could never physically fast every day of his life is handed, through one month and six days, the reward of a lifetime habit of fasting. The door is opened wide precisely because the multiplication belongs to Allah’s generosity, not to our capacity.

It also reframes what the six days are. They are not a small, optional extra tacked onto the year. On the ten-for-one scale, those six days are the sixty days that complete the year — the difference between three hundred days of reward and a full three hundred and sixty. Whoever leaves them has still fasted Ramadan and lost nothing of its reward; whoever adds them completes the count, the same “completing of the number” that the Ramadan verse itself celebrates.

4. Where the Six Begin: Not on the Day of Eid

If the six days follow Ramadan, a practical question arises at once: may they begin immediately, on the very first day of Shawwal? The first day of Shawwal is Eid al-Fitr — and the authentic hadith is explicit that it is not a day of fasting. Abu Ubaid, the freed slave of Ibn Azhar, reported that he observed Id along with Umar b. al-Khattab (Allah be pleased with him), who prayed and then addressed the people and said:

“The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) has forbidden the observing of fast on these two days. One is the day of Fitr (at the end of your fasts), and the second one, the day when you eat (the meat) of your sacrifices.” (Sahih Muslim 1137 — Sahih)

Two days of the year are closed to fasting: the day of Fitr, which is the first of Shawwal, and the day of sacrifice, the day of Eid al-Adha when people eat of their offerings. The day of Fitr is, as the narration describes it, “the day of Fitr (at the end of your fasts)” — the festival that breaks the fast, a day of eating, gratitude and celebration. It is not to be turned back into a day of fasting.

So the six fasts of Shawwal begin from the second day of Shawwal onwards. The sequence the Prophet ﷺ described is preserved exactly: the fast of Ramadan ends, Eid is celebrated as Eid, and then, within the remainder of Shawwal, the six days are fasted. The one-day pause costs nothing — Shawwal still has twenty-eight or twenty-nine days remaining after Eid, far more than the six that are needed. And there is a quiet wisdom in it: the festival is honoured as a festival, and the voluntary fasts that follow it are a deliberate, separate act of devotion rather than an attempt to extend Ramadan past the limit Allah set for it.

5. How the Six Days Are Kept: Consecutive or Spread Out

How, then, should the six days be arranged inside Shawwal? The guidance is straightforward: the six days may be fasted consecutively, one after another, or spread out across the month of Shawwal — some at its beginning, some in its middle, some towards its end. What matters is completing six fasts within Shawwal, after the day of Eid has passed. A person who finds it easier to fast the six in one stretch may do so; a person whose work, health or family duties make that difficult may divide them — two days here, a day there — until the six are complete before the month ends. Both ways fulfil the description in the hadith, for the Prophet ﷺ simply said that the one who fasted Ramadan “then followed it with six (fasts) of Shawwal” (Sahih Muslim 1164a — Sahih).

Two boundaries, then, define the practice, and both come straight from the texts quoted in this article. The first boundary is the start: not on the day of Eid, which the Prophet ﷺ forbade for fasting, but from the second of Shawwal. The second boundary is the end: the six belong to Shawwal, so they are completed within Shawwal. Within those two boundaries, there is room and ease — and ease, as the Ramadan verse told us, is what Allah intends for His servants: “Allah intends (to provide) ease for you and does not intend (to create) hardship for you” (Quran 2:185).

One more point of framing matters here. These six fasts are voluntary. The fast that Allah prescribed, the one whose omission must be made up from other days, is Ramadan: “those of you who witness the month must fast in it” (Quran 2:185). The six of Shawwal are presented by the Prophet ﷺ purely as a promise — “He who observed the fast of Ramadan and then followed it with six (fasts) of Shawwal” is the one who earns the year’s reward. Nothing in the texts makes the six a duty, and no one who leaves them has neglected an obligation. They are an open door of reward standing next to a completed obligation, and the believer walks through it out of hope in Allah’s generosity, not out of compulsion.

6. Carrying Ramadan’s Spirit Into the Rest of the Year

There is a final dimension to these six days that the texts invite us to notice. Ramadan trains a person: for a month he restrains himself from food, drink and desire from dawn to sunset, purely because Allah commanded it. When the month ends, that training can dissolve within days — or it can be carried forward. The six fasts of Shawwal are the bridge. Fasting again so soon after Eid, while the habits of Ramadan are still fresh, tells the soul that its obedience was never only about a calendar month; it was about Allah, and Allah is worshipped in Shawwal just as He is worshipped in Ramadan.

The reward language of the hadith points in the same direction. To fast “perpetually” — the whole year — is the description of a life in which fasting never really stops, in which devotion is not a season but a state. The believer cannot literally fast every day; indeed, the day of Eid itself is forbidden for fasting. But through Ramadan and six days, Allah credits him with the perpetual faster’s reward. The six days are thus both a completion and a sign: a completion of the year’s count on the ten-for-one scale, and a sign that the one who fasted them has not put Ramadan down like a finished task but has followed it, in the hadith’s own word, with more.

Gratitude runs through all of this. The Ramadan verse ended with the hope “that you may be grateful” (Quran 2:185). What better expression of gratitude for a completed month than to add six days voluntarily, asking Allah to accept the whole? And for the believer whose Ramadan was heavy with seeking forgiveness, these days continue that same spirit — our article on the dua for forgiveness gathers the Prophet’s ﷺ own words for that seeking. Prayer, likewise, does not end with Ramadan: the virtues of Salah continue through every month of the year. The six fasts take their place inside that wider life of worship — a small, defined, achievable act with a reward out of all proportion to its size, because the One who multiplies the reward is Allah.

If Ramadan has just passed, the opportunity is present and the month is open. Six days: after Eid, within Shawwal, consecutive or spread out — and the promise attached to them is the reward of fasting the entire year.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What are the six fasts of Shawwal? They are six voluntary fasts kept in Shawwal, the month after Ramadan, by one who has completed the fast of Ramadan. The Prophet ﷺ said: “He who observed the fast of Ramadan and then followed it with six (fasts) of Shawwal. it would be as if he fasted perpetually” (Sahih Muslim 1164a — Sahih).

Q2: How do six days become the reward of a whole year of fasting? By Allah’s own scale of reward: “Whoever comes with a good deed will receive ten times as much” (Quran 6:160). Thirty days of Ramadan multiplied by ten make three hundred, and six days of Shawwal multiplied by ten make sixty — together, a full year’s fasting in reward.

Q3: Can the six fasts begin on Eid day itself? No. The first day of Shawwal is the day of Fitr, and the Prophet ﷺ “has forbidden the observing of fast on these two days. One is the day of Fitr (at the end of your fasts), and the second one, the day when you eat (the meat) of your sacrifices” (Sahih Muslim 1137 — Sahih). The six begin from the second day of Shawwal.

Q4: Must the six days be fasted consecutively? No. They may be fasted consecutively or spread out across the month. What matters is completing six fasts within Shawwal, after the day of Eid — fast them in one stretch if that is easier, or divide them through the month if that suits your circumstances better.

Q5: Are the six fasts of Shawwal obligatory? No. The prescribed fast is Ramadan, of which Allah said, “those of you who witness the month must fast in it” (Quran 2:185). The six of Shawwal are voluntary: the hadith attaches a tremendous reward to them for whoever does them, but they are not a duty, and leaving them is not neglecting an obligation.