Ritual Time, Civil Time, and Cosmic Time: Three Co-Existing Temporalities in Premodern Islamic Society

Most studies on time in the premodern Islamic world have focused on philosophical and theological aspects of time. The present article concentrates on time practices in daily life. Iconic for Muslim time practices are the five daily prayers, the weekly Friday prayer, the yearly fasting in the month of Ramaḍān, and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. They all have the character of a time-out from everyday routine and are well characterized by the term “ritual time.” For work, business and administration, the day and night are divided into twelve hours each, the seasonal hours. It is appropriate to call that “civil time.” Besides these two forms of time practices, a third is based on astrological concepts. The daily changing aspects which the moon forms with the sun and the planets are taken as favorable or unfavorable signs for particular actions, and enabled the individual to organize his or her life in accordance with the heavenly bodies. It seems apt to call that “cosmic time.”