Ramadan is a lunar month of dawn-to-sunset fasting, prayer and reflection

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Ramadan is a lunar month of dawn-to-sunset fasting, prayer and reflection

the gist

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, communal prayer, Quran study, charity and reflection. Fasting from dawn to sunset is one of the five pillars of Islam and is obligatory for adults who are healthy, not travelling, and not pregnant, breastfeeding or menstruating. Muslims also refrain from behaviour considered sinful during fasting hours, since the spiritual rewards are believed to be multiplied this month. It is the month in which the Quran is believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, and the night of Laylat al-Qadr is especially revered. Each day begins with a predawn meal called suhur and ends with the nightly feast iftar, and the month lasts 29 or 30 days, from one sighting of the crescent moon to the next.

how it works

The Islamic calendar is lunar, with months beginning at each new crescent moon, so a year is about 354 days and drifts against the solar year. Fasting is timed to dawn and sunset, so in summer the daily fast is longest. Families and communities break it together at iftar, which makes the month strongly social.

so what

Ramadan shapes daily life for a very large part of the world's population, influencing when people eat, work, pray and gather. Its timing reflects the Islamic lunar calendar, which keeps it moving through the solar year.

fun fact

Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan falls about eleven days earlier each year, cycling through all the seasons over about 33 years.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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from ABC News In-depth

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