What is a Ramadan fanoos?

A lantern of pierced metal and colored glass, hung at the start of Ramadan and lit each evening through the month. It is most strongly associated with Egypt, where tradition dates it to the Fatimid period, and children have carried small ones through the streets for centuries.

How do you explain Ramadan to a young child?

Focus on what the household does together rather than on going without: the lantern, the evening meal with neighbors, the giving. Children absorb the rhythm of the month long before they are old enough to fast.

What are iftar and suhoor?

Iftar is the meal breaking the fast at sunset, traditionally begun with dates. Suhoor is the meal before dawn, eaten in the dark before the fast starts again.

Ramadan Letter for Kids — Printable

The story

The fanoos is pierced brass and colored glass, and it is hung on the first night and lit every evening until the month is finished. It is not a decoration so much as a marker: while the lantern is lit, the month is running. Children in Cairo have carried small ones through the streets for centuries, singing, which is how most of them first learn what the month is.

Where it actually comes from

The Ramadan lantern is most strongly associated with Egypt, and tradition traces it to the Fatimid period — the usual story has Cairo lit by lanterns to welcome the Caliph al-Mu’izz into the city in 969 CE, after which lanterns became the mark of the month. Fanoos are now found across the Muslim world and the diaspora, in brass, glass, tin and increasingly as strung lights. Ramadan itself is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and one of the five pillars of Islam; adult Muslims fast from dawn to sunset, breaking the fast at maghrib with iftar, traditionally with dates, and rising before dawn for suhoor. The month is also marked by increased charity, night prayers, and recitation of the Qur’an.

What it does for a child

Ramadan asks children to live inside a whole month of collective effort, which is rare and valuable. The lantern gives them something concrete to attach it to at an age when thirty days is an abstraction. And naming the scratchy afternoons in advance — rather than pretending the month is effortless — lets a child understand that finding something hard is not the same as doing it badly.

The Littlest Fanous

A story to read aloud · about 4 minutes

In a narrow street in old Cairo, in a tinsmith’s shop full of hammering and sparkle, there hung a very small lantern. It had a tin roof shaped like a little dome, and sides of colored glass: one red, one green, one blue and one yellow. Its name was Nour, which means light.

Nour was the littlest lantern in the whole shop, and it had never once been lit.

All around it hung big lanterns, grand lanterns, lanterns taller than a cat. “When Ramadan comes,” they said proudly, “we will hang over the doorways and shine all night long. Everyone will see us.”

“What will I do?” asked Nour.

The big lanterns only jingled. “You are very small,” they said.

But an old copper lantern hanging in the corner had heard. It had been in the shop for a very long time, and its glass was a little cloudy, and it knew a great many stories.

“Little one,” it said, “let me tell you how the lanterns first came to Cairo. More than a thousand years ago, a new ruler came to this city, and he arrived at night, during Ramadan. The people wanted to welcome him, so they went out into the dark streets carrying lanterns. And the children came too, holding little lights and singing all the way. The streets glowed like a river of stars. People loved it so much that they have carried lanterns in Ramadan ever since.”

“Even little lanterns?” asked Nour.

“Especially little lanterns,” said the old copper lantern. “The big ones stay on their hooks. The little ones get to go out with the children.”

A few days later, the moon was sighted, and Ramadan began. And into the shop came a boy named Karim. He looked at all the grand lanterns, one by one. Then he looked up, and he saw Nour.

“That one,” said Karim. “The little one with the colors.”

That evening, when the sun went down and the families had broken their fast with dates and water and warm bread, a tiny flame was lit inside Nour for the very first time. The red glass glowed. The green glass glowed. The blue and the yellow glowed. Nour felt warm right down to the bottom of its tin feet.

Karim ran out into the street, and there were lanterns everywhere, dozens and dozens of them, held by dozens and dozens of children. They swung their lanterns and skipped and sang the old song that children in Cairo have sung for as long as anyone can remember: “Wahawi, ya wahawi!” Nobody is quite sure what the words mean. Some say they are about light. But everybody knows the tune.

Above them, the minarets shone against the night sky. And later, long after the children were in bed, a drummer walked through the sleeping streets, tapping his small drum to wake the town for the early meal before dawn. Karim set Nour on his windowsill, and its colors made little rainbows on the wall.

“Thank you,” whispered Nour, as the drum faded away down the street. “I didn’t know that being small could be so wonderful.”

Every night of Ramadan, Nour went out with Karim and the other children, and every night the streets glowed like a river of stars, just as they had long, long ago.

And the littlest lantern shone the brightest of them all.

An original Keepers story, grounded in recorded folk custom.