Fiwanees: Ramadan Lanterns

The year is 969 AD (358 AH). The ruler is an older man shuffling along with his cane clicking on the stones of his newly founded capital. His white robe rustles in the hot July breeze.

He walks the streets of his people without fear of attack or death. After all, his subjects revere him for his military might and tolerant rule. Perhaps he feels he is too old for that to matter anyway. He just wants—despite, maybe, the disapproval of his trusty advisors—to be out with the moon and the night in his city and to enjoy the solitude of being an old person surrounded by youths still indifferent to time’s passing. The children scramble about him, playing and singing like they wanted to in the first place,but they make sure to keep his path lit. Some, the older ones, know who he is, but some are just moved by that unknown generosity born of youth and innocence.

Maybe at first the parents were irked when the king insisted they let their children tramp about at night outside their supervision—and with the good festival lamps no less! They had been telling the children not to play outside at night all year, and then the new caliph had come in and told them he liked it when the children lit his way just because some irresponsible parents' child had done it for him once.

Then again, a king—and a divinely inspired one at that—is obviously not to be countermanded.

But nothing ever goes wrong with the children, and soon enough the parents find themselves smiling at the sight of the serene old monarch strolling about, looking up at the moon quietly, surrounded by these jubilant lights, bouncing, hopping, climbing, jumping and traipsing about him as he takes his walk. The city is young and still small, so the parents can follow the king’s path from the tops of their buildings, watching him and his youthful entourage like a cloud of fireflies making its way through the streets.

And without anyone knowing how or when, the lights the children carried became part of the holy month tradition in the City of the Caliph's Victory. Each year the parents start hanging their children’s lights on their doorways when the king starts making his pre-Ramadan nightly sojourns. They begin to associate the month with light and youthful expression, so that after the king dies, they keep up the habit.

Muslims traveling to the new capital city observe the festive lights of Ramadan in the City of the Caliph's Victory, and soon the tradition spreads. And though so much of it takes place in the dark, after the hot hours of fasting, Ramadan becomes a festival of lights. Long after the ruler's walks ended the lanterns of generous children come to light the way for all the faithful into the holy month.

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A fanoos.

I recently had cause to buy a Ramadan lantern for a friend who is getting married.  Around the same time, I was offered a job writing articles related to Egyptian history and culture, and so with the lanterns on my mind, I chose to write about them for the project.  In my attempt to make a slightly more interesting article, I wrote a kind of historically plausible story which may or may not end up fitting into my work, but seeing as how it is the first day of Ramadan today, I thought I would post here what I wrote.

In the weeks before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, travelers will see distinctive lanterns, called fiwanees, adorning the streets, stores and homes in most every city in the Muslim world.  Ramadan is a month for increased meditations on faith, family and charity, and because the people fast during the day and then sort of feast and party all night, lights are an important part of the tradition.  The traditional fanoos lanterns usually consist of a highly stylized bronze or tin metal cage with colored glass surrounding a light. As the symbol of Ramadan, these lanterns play a big part of in the imagery of one of the Muslim world's most important traditions, but their origin lies further back in older Egyptian customs.

Lighting in the Mohammad Ali Mosque. These are not
fiwanees, I just like this picture.

Historically, they say that fiwanees (the plural of fanoos) are the modern, more elaborate versions of the torches Egyptians lit during pharaonic times to celebrate the birthdays of their ancient gods, and of the Egyptian Coptic Christians community’s Christmas lanterns after that. How the lanterns then were passed on to become symbols of Ramadan is a classic tale in the Muslim world today.

The story holds that Muslims began adopting the lanterns when a 10th century Fatimid caliph (khalif), Al-Muizz Lideenillah, developed a habit of nightly walks through his newly-established capitol city, named in honor of his victory over Egypt, al-Qahira, or "The Victorious,"—or Cairo. His walks always happened in the nights leading up to Ramadan because the month begins with the sighting of the first crescent moon of the ninth lunar month. Every night the caliph would descend from his palace and walk the streets, looking for the crescent moon following the new moon. Because the streets of the city were mostly new and unlit, legend has it that the children would walk with him, carrying the same kinds of celebration lanterns used by their people for millennia before them to light the king’s way.  I thought of that story and the above is what came out.  The parts that seem like facts, the dates, some of the city details, etc. those are all verified, and then I just filled in the rest with a little bit of poetic license.

These days you see the lamps everywhere in the Middle East before and during Ramadan, but nowhere more so than in Cairo. Today they’re more often than not gaudy abominations of plastic gold and green made in China, but you can still find the real ones to buy in the sprawling outdoor market of Khan el-Khalili, and most families have at least one of the nicer metal ones. Every year droves of the lanterns start appearing in the weeks before Ramadan, and everyone who knows the origin story reflects on the tale of children with the fiwanees, lighting the way into the holy month.