Eid al-Adha

When it falls

The tenth day of Dhū al-Ḥijjah, the last month of the Islamic year, the day after the pilgrims stand at ʿArafāt during the Hajj. The Islamic year is eleven days shorter than the solar one, so the day moves earlier each year and walks the whole calendar in thirty-three years.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Ibrāhīm (Abraham) dreamed that God asked him to sacrifice his son, Ismāʿīl in the Islamic telling, and both father and son submitted. At the moment of the sacrifice God replaced the boy with a ram. The festival keeps that submission and that mercy, and every family that can afford an animal sacrifices one and shares the meat in three parts: for the family, for relatives and friends, and for the poor.

It is the greater of the two Eids and the one that closes the Hajj: on the same morning the two million pilgrims at Minā stone the pillars, sacrifice, and cut their hair, and the whole Muslim world keeps the day with them.

In India it is Bakrīd, from the goat (bakrā) most families sacrifice; Delhi's Jāmaʿ Masjid and Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid hold the largest of the morning prayers.

How the day is kept

• The Eid prayer after sunrise in the open ground (eidgāh) or the mosque, in new clothes, with the sermon after; the takbīr is said aloud on the way.
• The sacrifice (qurbānī) after the prayer, over the three days of the festival, and the division of the meat in thirds.
• Visits to family and to the graves, gifts of money to children (eidī), and meals shared with neighbours of every faith.
• The three days that follow are the Days of Tashrīq; the fast is forbidden on them, and the celebration continues.

At the table

The sacrificed meat, cooked as biryānī, kormā, nihārī or kebab across the subcontinent; in Hyderabad, the haleem season's cousin, pāyā; sheer khurmā and sevaiyāṅ as at the other Eid.

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