The Islamic Eid al-Fitr will begin Friday, July 17, according to Egypt’s national astronomy body.
Abul Ela Mohamed, head of the National Research Institute for Astronomy and Geophysics, said in a statement on Sunday that astronomical calculations had predicted the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which began on June 18, to last for only 29 days.
The Islamic Eid al-Fitr (the feast to break the fast\ Lesser Bairam), comes at the end of Ramadan to end a 30-day obligatory ritual of fasting from sunrise to sunset.
The process of determining the beginning and end of the 12 lunar months in the 354-day Islamic calendar relies both on astronomical calculations and the traditional sighting of the moon.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
