1176 – Jundub ibn Sufyān (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “I witnessed the Day of Sacrifice with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. When he had concluded the prayer with the people, he noticed some sheep that had already been slaughtered and declared, ‘Whoever slaughtered before the prayer must slaughter another sheep in its place, and whoever has not yet slaughtered should do so now, mentioning the name of Allah.’” Agreed upon (1).

Points derived from the ḥadith

1 – The udḥiyah (Eid sacrifice) is a time-bound act of worship; it is invalid if performed outside its prescribed period.

2 – The report shows that the earliest permissible time for slaughter is after the ʿīd al-Aḍḥā prayer, even if that precedes the sermon. Slaughtering before the prayer does not fulfil the rite; the animal counts only as ordinary meat. Shaykh ʿAbd Allah ibn Buṭayn said: Whoever offers the sacrifice after the imam has prayed, his udḥiyah is valid even if he himself did not pray, because what matters is the imam’s prayer, not that of the individual.

3 – Sharḥ al-Iqnāʿ states: “The time for beginning the slaughter on the day of ʿīd is after the prayer, even if that is before the sermon, or—where no prayer is held, as with desert dwellers—after the lapse of a period equal to the length of the prayer once its time has come in.”

4 – The outward sense of the ḥadith is that slaughtering before the appointed time is never acceptable, whether done deliberately, out of ignorance, or by mistake, just like a prayer performed before its time.

5 – The jurists hold three views regarding when the time for slaughter starts:
a) According to Imām Mālik, it begins with the imam’s own slaughter.
b) According to the Shāfiʿī school, it begins when the time for the ʿīd prayer commences.