Daylight saving time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...

is not used in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, however it has been used several times in the past, most recently in 2014.

History

The British first instituted

summer time Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, summer time in Europe, European Union, and others), is the practice of adv ...

in Egypt in 1940, during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The practice was stopped after 1945, but resumed 12 years later, in 1957. Before the revolution in January 2011, the government was planning to take a decision to abolish summer time in 2011 before President

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in t ...

's term expired in September 2011. The

transitional government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or f ...

did so on 20 April 2011. Under the pretext that daylight saving time would save energy, the Egyptian government decided on 7 May 2014 to reinstate summer time with an exception for the holy month of

Ramadan , type = islam , longtype = Religious , image = Ramadan montage.jpg , caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...

. In April the next year, a poll was held on whether to apply summer time or not. Following the results, the government decided on 20 April to temporarily cancel summer time, to make the necessary amendment to the laws and asked the ministers to work on a study to determine the probability of applying DST in coming years or not. The ministry of electricity assured that the achieved electricity savings from applying summer time is not of any tangible effect. Summer time was expected to return in 2016, starting on 8 July (after

), but on 5 July, it was decided to again cancel it.

Dates and times

When used, Egypt observes summer time between the last Friday in April and the last Thursday in September. The clocks are changed from UTC+02:00 to UTC+03:00. The change occurs one second after 23:59:59 on Thursday to become 01:00:00 on the last Friday in April shortening the day to 23 hours. Summer time ends one second after 23:59:59 to become 23:00:00 on the last Thursday of September lengthening the day to 25 hours. The date does not change one second after the first 23:59:59 occurred; for all practical purposes, midnight does not occur until after the ''second'' 23:59:59.

Ramadan

The

lunar calendar A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon's phases (synodic months, lunations), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based only directly on the solar year. The most commonly used calendar, the Gre ...

used by Islam is about eleven days shorter than the solar year, so its months shift every year relative to the seasons. To avoid having longer days during the holy month of fasting,

, exceptions have been made to the DST schedule when the two overlap. Starting in 2006, the end of summer time has taken place on the Thursday before the start of Ramadan. This continued until 2010, when Ramadan was completely inside "summer". Since then, summer time has effectively been split into two periods: one before Ramadan, and one after.

References

{{Asia topic, Daylight saving time in Time in Egypt

History

Dates and times

Ramadan

See also

References