407 – Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated: “When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah, the people there had two days on which they used to play. He said, ‘Allah has replaced them for you with something better: the Day of Sacrifice and the Day of Breaking the Fast.’” Recorded by Abu Dawud and al-Nasa’i with a sound chain ⦗1⦘.
Status of the ḥadīth
This report is authentic. Abu Dawud and al-Nasa’i transmitted it with a ṣaḥīḥ isnād. Al-Ḥākim also related it (1/434) and said, “This ḥadīth meets the conditions of Muslim,” and al-Dhahabī concurred. Imām Aḥmad narrated it through several chains, some of which are three-link isnāds of particularly high rank.
Vocabulary
• “They had two days on which they used to play”: The first was called al-Nayrūz (the New Day, in Persian), the first day on which the sun enters the constellation of Aries.
• The second was al-Mihrājān, a Persian loanword from Mihrakān, the first day on which the sun enters the constellation of Libra. The Arabs later copied them in observing these days.
Lessons drawn from the ḥadīth
- Islam abolished all pre-Islamic festivals, for they are not linked to any honorable meaning nor to a memory worthy of revival. In annulling those celebrations, however, it did not deprive the Muslims of permissible enjoyments and wholesome rejoicing; instead, it granted them noble Islamic holidays as a replacement.