From The Desk Of Sheikh Bilal
Dahwul Ard:
The Day the Earth Was Spread
Tuesday May 12th, 2026 | 23rd Zilqad, 1447AH
Issue #02
The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah coincides with Wednesday May 13, 2026 and its significance invites us to fast, pray and worship Allah.
In the rhythm of human life, certain places and certain times carry a weight that others do not. An old school visited decades later, a childhood home, a city where something irreversible happened — these places hold memory, meaning, and a kind of gravity that ordinary geography does not. The same is true of time: birthdays, anniversaries, the anniversary of a loss — we move through these days differently, more slowly, more awake to what they contain.
This is not a weakness of sentiment. It is a natural human recognition that existence is not uniform — that some coordinates in the fabric of space and time are charged with significance in a way that others are not. And Islam, far from dismissing this tendency, ratifies it. The divine wisdom encoded in Islamic practice acknowledges that human beings need sacred geography and sacred time — places and moments that pull them out of the ordinary and reconnect them to something greater.
This is why we have the Kaʿbah and Madinah, Karbala and Mashhad. This is why we have the month of Ramaḍān and the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ. These are not arbitrary designations — they are coordinates of divine attention, places and times where the membrane between the human and the sacred becomes thinner.
Among these special times, some are universally known and others remain hidden gems in the Islamic calendar — known to those who seek, quietly extraordinary to those who observe them. The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah is one of these.
Dahwul Ard — When the Earth Was Born for Habitation
The Arabic word dahw means to spread, to stretch, to unfold. It appears in the Noble Quran in a verse of breathtaking cosmic scope:
وَالْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ دَحَاهَا “And after that He spread forth the Earth.” — النازعات: ٣٠
From this verse, and from the traditions of the Ahl ul-Bayt, the 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah is identified as the day known as Dahwul Ard — the day the Earth was spread. But what does this spreading mean, and how does it relate to what we understand about the physical history of our planet?
The Earth, according to modern science, was born as a fragment of the primordial solar system — a mass separated from the Sun, initially nothing but a churning ball of fire and molten rock. Over vast stretches of time, the intense heat caused water to evaporate into the atmosphere; that atmosphere produced pressure; that pressure brought rain — torrential, unceasing rain that covered the entire surface of the planet in water. The Earth was not yet a place where life could take hold. It was a world entirely submerged.
Then, gradually, the waters receded. Dry land began to emerge from beneath the surface of the global ocean. Ground that had been invisible beneath the waters became, for the first time, exposed to sky. The Earth became habitable.
This is what Dahwul Ard describes. It is not the creation of the Earth in the astronomical sense — it is the moment when the dry land was brought forth from the waters, when the planet crossed the threshold from inhospitable rock to a place capable of sustaining life. And according to the traditions, this unfolding began from the most blessed point on Earth — the site of the House of Allah in Makkah, the Kaʿbah — the first point of dry land to emerge, the navel from which the Earth was spread in all directions. Hence one of the other names for Makkah is Umm al-Kurra – the source (mother) of the earth.
Modern science has not disproved this. The sequence it describes — fire, then water covering all, then the gradual emergence of dry land — maps with striking coherence onto what our traditions have preserved. The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah marks the moment this planet became a home. It is, in the truest sense, a day of divine blessing — the day Allah (SwT) made this world fit for us.
The Journey of Imam al-Riḍā — A Second Spreading of Blessing
The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah carries a second layer of sacred significance, one that speaks not to geological history but to spiritual geography.
It was on this day that Imam ʿAlī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā (ع) — the eighth Imam of the Ahl ul-Bayt — began his journey from the city of the Prophet ﷺ in Madinah toward Ṭūs. This journey was not undertaken by choice. The Abbasid Caliph al-Maʾmūn had summoned him, seeking to use the Imam’s immense spiritual authority and popular reverence for political purposes — compelling him to accept the role of crown prince in a calculated move to stabilise his own crumbling legitimacy. Instead, his name has faded in time and the brightness of Imam Rida and the teachings of Ahl ul-Bayt changed the world.
There is a parallel worth sitting with: just as Dahwul Ard marks the day dry land emerged from the waters to make the Earth habitable, the journey of Imam al-Riḍā (ع) marks the day a spiritual light began its movement toward a land that would be transformed by his presence. Both events are, in their own way, a spreading of mercy — one geological, one spiritual. Both begin on the same day of the same month. This is not a coincidence. In the economy of divine wisdom, such convergences carry meaning.
The Four Greatest Recommended Fasts of the Year
In a narration transmitted through Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, a group of the descendants of the Prophet ﷺ came to Imam ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Hādī (ع) — the tenth Imam — while he was residing at Ṣiryā. They had disagreed among themselves about which four days of the year carry the highest recommendation for fasting. The Imam (ع) resolved their disagreement with characteristic precision, naming four days:
The 17th of Rabīʿ al-Awwal — the day the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born into the world, bringing with him the final and most complete message of divine guidance.
The 27th of Rajab — the day Allah (SwT) proclaimed the Prophethood of the Messenger ﷺ, the night of the Mabʿath, when revelation first descended and the mission began.
The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah — the day the Earth was spread and the ship of Prophet Nūḥ (ع) came to rest upon Mount Jūdī after the great flood. The Imam (ع) declared that fasting on this day is an atonement for the sins of seventy years.
The 18th of Dhul Ḥijjah — the day of Ghadīr Khumm, when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, by divine command, established Amīr al-Muʾminīn Imam ʿAlī (ع) as the leader and guide of the community. Fasting on this day is an atonement for the sins of sixty years.
That the 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah sits among these four — alongside the birth of the Prophet ﷺ, the beginning of his mission, and the declaration of Ghadīr — is a measure of its true weight in the sacred calendar.
How to Honour This Day
The traditions of Ahl ul-Bayt outline specific acts of worship for the 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah:
Fasting is the central and most strongly recommended act. It is counted among the four most important voluntary fasts of the entire year. According to the narration of Imam al-Hādī (ع), fasting on this day carries an expiation equivalent to seventy years — a mercy of extraordinary proportion extended to those who honour this day with sincere intention.
Ghusl — the ritual bath of purification — is recommended on this day, as it is on other days of heightened spiritual significance in the Islamic calendar.
A Special Ṣalāh is to be offered in the morning, after the sun has risen to the Chast time (mid-morning). It consists of two units (rakʿāt), in each of which Surah al-Fātiḥah is recited once and Surah al-Shams (91) is recited five times. Upon completing the prayer, the following is said:
لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللهِ الْعَلِيِّ الْعَظِيمِ “There is no power and no strength except with Allah, the Most High, the All-Great.”
Wednesday May 13, 2026 – Benefit from this day
The 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah coincides this year with Wednesday 13th of May, 2026.
We live in an age that has forgotten how to be awake to sacred time. The days blur together — notifications and deadlines replacing the rhythm of the lunar calendar. Days like the 25th of Dhul Qaʿdah are an invitation to recover something: the ancient human knowledge that not all moments are equal, that some days the veil is thinner, that some days Allah (SwT) has made the ground particularly fertile for remembrance, repentance, and return.
May Allah (SwT) grant us all the tawfīq to make use of the divine blessings that accompany this blessed day.