Six days that carry a year's reward

Ramadan ends, Eid is celebrated, and fasting on that first day of Shawwal is actually not permitted at all — it's a day set aside entirely for celebration. But the door the month opened doesn't close there. The Prophet ﷺ pointed to six more days, sometime across the rest of Shawwal, worth fasting once Eid has passed.

"Whoever fasts Ramadan and then follows it with six days of Shawwal," he ﷺ said, "it is as if he fasted the entire year" (narrated by Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, recorded by Muslim). Scholars including An-Nawawi have laid out the arithmetic behind that statement: the Qur'an describes a good deed as rewarded tenfold, so Ramadan's thirty days count as ten months, and six further days count as two — thirty-six days of actual fasting, credited as an entire year.

The six days don't need to be consecutive, and they don't need to start the moment Eid ends — they can be spread across Shawwal however suits you. If you owe make-up days from Ramadan itself, from illness, travel, or anything else, it's worth asking someone knowledgeable about the order that fits your own situation, rather than assuming one rule applies to everyone.

There's something quietly telling about a form of worship where the described reward is a full year, earned by six mornings choosing to start again what most people are simply relieved to have finished. Not because Ramadan wasn't enough. Because some part of what it built is worth carrying a little further into the ordinary months that follow it.