its place until the worshipper departs, for Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them) said: “The Prophet ﷺ went out on the day of Eid and performed two rakʿahs, offering no prayer before them nor after them.” Agreed upon. This is to prevent anyone from thinking that the Eid prayer has a regular sunnah either before or after it.

Imām Aḥmad said, “The people of Madinah did not perform supererogatory prayers before it or after it.”

Al-Zahrānī said, “I never heard any of our scholars mention that anyone from the earliest generations of this ummah ever prayed before that prayer or after it, and Ibn Masʿūd and Ḥudhayfah used to forbid the people to pray beforehand.”

When the worshipper returns home, however, there is no harm in praying there, for Aḥmad and others narrated that “whenever the Prophet ﷺ returned to his house he would pray two rakʿahs.”

It is recommended for anyone who missed the Eid prayer—or missed part of it—to make it up in the same manner: he should pray two rakʿahs with the additional takbīrs, for the make-up mirrors the original performance. This is also borne out by the general statement of the Prophet ﷺ: “Whatever you catch, pray; and whatever you miss, complete.” Thus, if he has missed one rakʿah with the imām, he should add another. If he arrives while the imām is delivering the sermon, he should sit and listen; when the sermon is finished, he prays it as a make-up. There is no objection to making it up alone or with a group.

On both Eids it is sunnah to pronounce the unrestricted takbīr—that is, the takbīr not bound to a specific time—raising the voice when doing so, except that a woman does not raise her voice. One utters it on the two nights preceding the Eids and in every