Festivals of Light

The motif of religious illumination — the lighting of lamps, candles, lanterns, and bonfires — is a powerful and recurring theme across both the Islamic and Hindu calendar traditions. The Hindu Diwali — the Festival of Lights — is the most widely celebrated religious festival in the world centered on illumination, with hundreds of millions of households across India and the diaspora lighting clay diya lamps, oil lamps, candles, and electric light strings throughout the five days from Dhanteras through Bhai Dooj. The lights symbolically welcome the goddess Lakshmi into the home and dispel the darkness of ignorance. Karthikai Deepam — observed in Tamil Nadu on the full moon of Kartika — features the lighting of the world's largest single oil lamp at the summit of Tiruvannamalai's Annamalai hill, alongside hundreds of thousands of household and temple oil lamps across the state. The Islamic illumination tradition centers on Ramadan, particularly in Egypt where ornate fanous lanterns are hung from every balcony throughout the month, and in Turkey where the centuries-old tradition of mahya — calligraphic messages spelled in light bulbs strung between mosque minarets — continues at all major mosques in Istanbul. Mawlid al-Nabi processions across the Muslim world feature elaborate lantern displays. The Mecca and Medina Grand Mosques are illuminated throughout Ramadan and the Hajj season with millions of LED lights and traditional lanterns. The Persian and Indian Mughal Diwan-i-Khas tradition of pre-modern Islamic palace illumination during festivals merged with Hindu illumination traditions in northern India to create the synthesized cultural form still seen today.