What does Eid al-Adha commemorate?

The story behind the feast

Eid al-Adha is Arabic for the festival of the sacrifice. Its story is the test of Abraham, Ibrahim in Arabic, which the Quran tells in its thirty-seventh surah. Ibrahim sees in a dream that he is sacrificing his son and tells the boy, who answers that his father should do as he is commanded. As Ibrahim lays him down, God calls out that he has already fulfilled the vision, and ransoms the son with a great sacrifice (37:102–107). The Quran does not name the son. Most Muslims hold that he was Ismail, Ishmael, while Genesis names Isaac, a difference explored in Was it Isaac or Ishmael?

Genesis tells the ending this way:

Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and saw that behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of his son.

So the feast holds two memories at once: a father ready to give up what he loved most, and a God who did not take it. Every animal offered at Eid stands for that ram.

When it falls

Eid al-Adha begins on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic year and the month of pilgrimage. The day before, pilgrims stand in prayer on the plain of Arafat, outside Mecca. The Islamic year follows the moon and runs about eleven days shorter than the solar year, so the feast arrives earlier each year and passes through every season in about 33 years. It lasts three or four days, and it is the greater of Islam’s two festivals; the other, Eid al-Fitr, ends the fast of Ramadan. Its names change with the map: Kurban Bayramı in Turkey, Tabaski in West Africa, Bakrid in South Asia.

The sacrifice and the meat

The day opens with a special prayer, often held outdoors. Then families who can afford it sacrifice a sheep, goat, cow or camel, an offering called udhiyah, or qurbani in much of Asia. The animal must be healthy and old enough. Tradition recommends dividing the meat into thirds: one for the household, one for relatives and neighbors, one for the poor. Many city families now pay a charity to carry out the sacrifice and send the meat to people in need. The Quran states the point plainly: neither the flesh nor the blood reaches God, only the devotion of the one who gives (22:37).

In the steps of Abraham’s family

Eid falls during the Hajj because Islamic tradition ties the pilgrimage to Abraham’s household. The Quran says Ibrahim and Ismail raised the foundations of the Kaaba together (2:127). Pilgrims walk seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwah, retracing Hajar’s search for water for her son. At Mina they throw pebbles at pillars where, tradition says, Satan tried to turn Ibrahim back, and on the day of Eid they sacrifice too, together with Muslims everywhere. None of these places appears in Genesis, which sets the test on a mountain in “the land of Moriah” (22:2), later identified with Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 3:1).

One story, three calendars

The same chapter runs through three faiths’ year. Jews read the binding of Isaac at Rosh Hashanah, the new year, when the shofar, a ram’s horn, is blown (why that reading). Catholics and many other Christians read Genesis 22 at the Easter Vigil, and see in Isaac carrying the wood a sign of the cross. Muslims gather for Eid al-Adha. Each tells the story in its own way. All three end with the knife stopped.