Fajr prayer in the context of "Rak'a"

In Islam, fasting (called ṣawm in Arabic: صَوم [sˤɑwm], or ṣiyām صيام [sˤɪˈjæːm]) is the practice of abstaining from food, drink, sexual activity, and anything that substitutes food and drink. During the holy month of Ramadan, fasting is observed between dawn and sunset when the prayer call of the dawn prayer and the sunset prayer is called. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar and fasting is a requirement for able Muslims as it is the fourth of the five pillars of Islam.

Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Rashidun caliph (r. 656–661) and the first Shia Imam, was assassinated during the morning prayer on 28 January 661 CE, equivalent to 19 Ramadan 40 AH. He died of his wounds about two days after the Kharijite dissident Ibn Muljim struck him over his head with a poison-coated sword at the Great Mosque of Kufa, located in Kufa, in present-day Iraq. He was about sixty-two years of age at the time of his death.

Ibn Muljim had entered Kufa with the intention of killing Ali, probably in revenge for the Kharijites' defeat in the Battle of Nahrawan in 658. He found two accomplices in Kufa, namely, Shabib ibn Bujra and Wardan ibn al-Mujalid. Unlike Ibn Muljim, the swords of these two missed Ali and they fled, but were later caught and killed. Before his death, Ali requested either a meticulous application of lex talionis to Ibn Muljim or his pardon, and he was later executed by Hasan, the eldest son of Ali. By most accounts, also involved in the assassination was al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, the influential Kufan tribal leader whose loyalty to Ali is often questioned in the early sources. The assassination of Ali paved the way for his rival Mu'awiya to found the Umayyad Caliphate. The shrine of Ali in Najaf, near Kufa, is a major destination for Shia pilgrims.

Suhur or Sahur (UK: /səˈhɜːr/; Arabic: سَحُورٌ, romanized: saḥūr, lit. 'of the dawn', 'pre-dawn meal'), also called sahari, sahri, or sehri (Persian: سَحَری, romanized: sahari), is the meal consumed early in the morning by Muslims before fasting (sawm), before dawn during or outside the Islamic month of Ramadan. The meal is eaten before Fajr prayer. Suhur corresponds to iftar, the evening meal during Ramadan, replacing the traditional three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), although in some places dinner is also consumed after iftar later during the night.

Being the last meal eaten by Muslims before fasting from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan, suhur is regarded by Islamic traditions as a benefit of the blessings in that it allows the person fasting to avoid the crankiness or the weakness caused by the fast. According to a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari, Anas ibn Malik narrated, "The Prophet said, 'take suhur, as there is a blessing in it.

The muezzin (/m(j)uˈɛzɪn/; Arabic: مُؤَذِّن, romanized: Muʾaḏḏin), also spelled mu'azzin, is the person who proclaims the call to the daily prayer (ṣalāt) five times a day (Fajr prayer, Zuhr prayer, Asr prayer, Maghrib prayer and Isha prayer) at a mosque from the minaret. The muezzin plays an important role in ensuring an accurate prayer schedule for the Muslim community.

In early Islam, a qāṣṣ (plural quṣṣāṣ) was a preacher or "sermoniser" who told stories ostensibly to edify the faithful. The term comes from the Arabic verb qaṣṣa, meaning "to recount". The qāṣṣ was essentially a popular storyteller and the reputation among Islamic scholars of the early quṣṣāṣ has generally been that of "second-rate religious figures lingering on the fringes of Islamic orthodoxy and even, at times, contributing directly to the corruption of the faith". In actuality, the quṣṣāṣ varied on a spectrum from serious Qurʾānic exegetes to outright charlatans.

According to al-Maqrīzī, writing in the fifteenth century, there was a distinction between the private qāṣṣ and the official qāṣṣ. The office was instituted by the Caliph Muʿāwiya I. So far the only traces found of these official quṣṣāṣ come from Egypt. There the office was typically held by a qāḍī (judge). His job was to denounce the enemies of Islam after the morning prayer each day and to explain the Qurʾān after the khuṭba on Fridays. The official qāṣṣ was replaced in the tenth century by the wāʿiẓ and the mudhakkir.