Question: A saying about bidding farewell to the month of Ramadan is spreading, namely: “Do not say ‘Farewell, Ramadan’; rather, pray to Allah and say: O Allah, bring it back to us with goodness for many years, with us neither bereaved nor lost.”
Is it a correct saying, when we hear that at the end of the month of Ramadan there is a farewell supplication?
In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful
The saying mentioned contains a fallacy, namely forbidding farewell on the grounds that it contradicts supplication. This is inaccurate, and it is alien to the culture of the Ahl al-Bayt (a). Farewell (wadaʿ) is leaving; it is said of a traveler that he bade farewell to his family when the moment of parting came. Its origin, according to the statements of the lexicographers, is that they bid him farewell as a good omen of the ease and tranquility (daʿa) in which he hopes to be, or they hope to be, at the parting.
From this we know that farewell is not a negative word; rather, it refers to one of the moments at which the various parties part, and it contains an aspect of optimism that the parties hope for.
Bidding farewell to the month of Ramadan is an expression that has come in the noble narrations from the Prophet (s) and from his pure Household (a), to acquaint us with the content of those moments in which we part from the blessed month of Ramadan after its days and nights have passed away. We are before the month of Allah; we stand before one of the great divine blessings upon us, and the moments of parting should not pass like any ordinary moment. That is why the narrations have come to indicate that the believer ought to bid farewell to the month of Ramadan with the knowledge and insight whose contents the Ahl al-Bayt (a) have bestowed upon us in the supplications and narrations transmitted from them.
It has come in Fadaʾil al-Ashhur al-Thalatha: From Jabir ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Ansari, who said: I entered upon the Messenger of Allah (s) on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan, and when he saw me he said to me: O Jabir, this is the last Friday of the month of Ramadan, so bid it farewell and say…).
Regarding some of the general contents of the farewell, it has come in the supplication of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya for bidding farewell to the blessed month of Ramadan, from Imam Zayn al-ʿAbidin (a): So we bid it farewell as one bids farewell to one whose parting is hard on us, whose departure from us grieves us and leaves us desolate, and toward whom we are bound by a guarded pledge, an observed sanctity and a right to be fulfilled…
Through reading the totality of the narrations transmitted from the Ahl al-Bayt (a), we find that bidding farewell to the month of Ramadan includes several aims that serve to set right the relationship between the believer and the noble month of Ramadan as it departs and parts from him; among them is that the farewell contains several pauses:
1 - A pause of making amends. This is the moment in which a person takes stock of himself and strives to make up for the good of the virtuous month that he has missed.
2 - A pause of thanksgiving. This is the moment in which a person remembers the greatness and vastness of the blessing that reached him in this noble month.
3 - A pause of preservation. This is the moment in which the servant resolves that he will carry the blessings of the month of Ramadan and its personal benefits with him into the rest of the months.
4 - A pause of hope. This is the moment in which he looks forward and prays to Allah the Exalted to let him attain the blessing of the blessed month of Ramadan in the coming years.
All these contents and others we find in the supplications transmitted for bidding farewell to the blessed month of Ramadan, among them what is narrated from Imam al-Sadiq (a), and among them the supplication mentioned in al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya of Imam Zayn al-ʿAbidin (a).
For example, on making amends: In al-Kafi, from Abu Basir, from Abu ʿAbd Allah (a), on bidding farewell to the month of Ramadan: O Allah, You have said in Your revealed Book: (“The month of Ramadan is one in which the Quran was sent down” (Qurʾan 2:185)), and this is the month of Ramadan, and it has passed away. So I ask You by Your noble Face and Your perfect words: if there remains upon me a sin that You have not forgiven me, or for which You wish to punish me or to hold me to account, that the dawn of this night not break, nor this month pass away, except that You have forgiven it for me, O Most Merciful of the merciful.
On thanksgiving, in the same supplication: O Allah, to You belongs praise, with all Your praises, for all Your blessings, the first of them and the last of them—those of them that You have uttered for Yourself and those uttered by the creatures who praise You and strive in remembering You and thanking You—up to his words—for Your having brought us to the month of Ramadan, while upon us are Your blessings, and with us, of Your apportionment, Your beneficence and the abundance of Your favors, what we cannot count. So to You belongs praise—everlasting, perpetual, increasing, eternalized, unending—which does not run out for the length of eternity. Majestic is Your praise! You helped us in it until You accomplished for us its fasting and its standing in prayer; so whatever there was from us in it of righteousness, thanks or remembrance.
On hope: Do not make this farewell of mine to it a farewell of extinction, nor the last of my encounters with it, until You show it to me next year in the most ample of blessings and the best of hope, while I am toward You in the best of faithfulness; indeed You hear all supplications.
In another supplication from the Prophet (s): O Allah, do not make it the last time of our fasting it; and if You do make it so, then make me one who is shown mercy and do not make me one who is deprived. For whoever says that will attain one of the two excellent things: either reaching the month of Ramadan or Allah’s forgiveness and His mercy.
And all praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.
Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi