Hijama Sunnah days
and the next dates

The next Sunnah dates

The next Sunnah date we are open is Sunday, November 1 — the 21st of Jumada al-Ula. Message and ask for it by date; a Sunnah day is booked like any other, at $10 a cup.

• 17th of Jumada al-UlaWednesday, October 28Closed
• 19th of Jumada al-UlaFriday, October 30Closed
• 21st of Jumada al-UlaSunday, November 1Open 9 AM – 7 PM

Dates follow the Umm al-Qura calendar — the Saudi civil calendar that most apps and many masjids use. Local moon-sighting can put any of them a day either side. If your masjid’s calendar disagrees with ours, follow your masjid.

Sunnah dates for the year ahead

Every 17th, 19th and 21st for the next twelve months. Days we are open are marked; on the others the practice is closed, and the nearest open date is the honest answer — none of the three is “more Sunnah” than the other two.

Table generated Saturday, September 19 from the Umm al-Qura calendar. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are our closed days; everything else is 9 AM to 7 PM — see where to find us.

Where the days come from

The days of the month rest on narrations in Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi, from Abu Hurayrah and Ibn ‘Abbas, that the Prophet ﷺ was cupped on the 17th, 19th and 21st, and that cupping on those days “is a cure for every disease”. Scholars have graded these hasan to sahih, which is why practices that keep the Sunnah build their calendars on them.

The days of the week are a separate matter. The narrations naming Monday, Tuesday and Thursday as favoured — and Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday as days to avoid — are in Ibn Majah and are graded weak by many of the scholars who examined them. That is why you will find practitioners who keep the weekdays strictly, others who treat them as a preference, and a few who do not observe them at all. We keep them as a preference: the practice happens to be open on all three favoured days and closed on three of the four avoided ones, so it costs nothing to follow.

On cupping itself the sources are stronger and better known. Al-Bukhari records that “healing is in three things,” cupping among them; that the Prophet ﷺ was cupped and paid the cupper his fee; and that he called cupping the best of what people treat themselves with. Al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah record the angels on the night of the Isra’ telling him to order his community to cup. Those are the narrations the phrase Sunnah cupping refers to; the calendar is the detail on top.

We are practitioners, not scholars. The gradings above are as reported by the collections’ own editors and the major commentaries; if your imam or your school reads a narration differently, that reading is the one to follow, and it changes nothing about how we treat you.

Days to avoid

Two different questions get asked this way. If you mean the weekdays, the narrations that name Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the weak ones above — many people avoid them anyway, and three of the four are our closed days regardless. There is no narration we know of that forbids a date of the month.

If you mean days it is medically better not to be cupped, that list is real and has nothing to do with the calendar: the day after a fast with nothing eaten, a day you are unwell or feverish, and, for women, during menstruation. Those are covered on who should wait and timing around your cycle.

The Sunnah points

The places the Prophet ﷺ is narrated to have been cupped. A full-body Sunnah session covers the main ones in a single sitting; a focused session takes one or two.

• Al-kahil

  Between the shoulder blades

  The point most often narrated and the one nearly every session includes — the upper back, over the seventh cervical vertebra.

• Al-akhda’ayn

  Either side of the neck

  The two points on the sides of the neck, below the ears. Always as a pair, never one alone.

• Al-ra’s

  The crown of the head

  Cupped for headaches and migraine in the narrations. The hair is parted, not shaved, for a small area.

• Al-warik

  The hip

  Narrated for pain in the hip and the leg; today it is the point people with sciatica ask for.

• Al-qadam

  The top of the foot

  Narrated for pain and swelling in the foot and lower leg.

A full-body Sunnah session is usually ten to twelve cups, so $100 to $120 at $10 a cup, with the consultation, massage cupping and red light included. How the points are chosen and what each is narrated for is in the guide’s section on the Sunnah points; the session itself is on services and prices.

Fasting and Ramadan

Whether cupping breaks a fast is a genuine difference between the schools: al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ being cupped while fasting, and Abu Dawud records him saying that the cupper and the cupped have both broken theirs. The Hanbali position is that it breaks the fast; the other three schools hold that it does not. Ask your imam, not us.

What we can tell you is practical. Wet cupping on an empty stomach and no water makes light-headedness far more likely, so during Ramadan we would rather see you on a day you are not fasting, or in the last hour before we close, once you have eaten. Say you are fasting when you book and the time is planned around it.

If you cannot make a Sunnah day

Come anyway. The dates are a recommendation, and a well-attested one, but nothing about the therapy stops working on the 3rd of the month. If you are in pain, the best day for hijama is the day you can get here. Book the Sunnah date when it suits and the ordinary Tuesday when it does not; the cups do not know the difference.