slaughtering to be sanctioned at a time when eating is forbidden. They said: The prohibition on eating was then abrogated, while the period for slaughtering remained unchanged.

The answer to them (1) is: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited only (2) storing the meat for more than three days; he did not prohibit offering sacrifices after three days. What, then, has one to do with the other? There is no necessary connection between what he prohibited and restricting slaughter to three days, for two reasons:

First: Slaughtering is permissible (3) on the second and third days, so one may store the meat for a full three days from the day of slaughter. Your argument cannot stand unless you establish that slaughtering after the Day of Sacrifice was prohibited, and you have no way of establishing this.

Second: If someone slaughtered at the very end of the Day of Sacrifice, the hadith would permit him to store the meat for three days thereafter. ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib said: “The days of slaughter are the Day of Eid al-Adhā and the three days after it.” This is the position of the leading scholar of Basra, al-Hasan; the leading scholar of Mecca, ʿAtāʾ ibn Abī Rabāh (4); the leading scholar of Syria, al-Awzāʿī; and the leading jurist among the scholars of hadith, al-Shāfiʿī. Ibn al-Mundhir also adopted this position (5). Moreover, these three days are distinguished as the days of Minā, the days of stoning, and the days of Tashrīq, and fasting on them is forbidden. They are thus alike in these rulings; how, then, can they differ (6) regarding the permissibility of slaughtering without textual evidence or consensus? It has also been narrated through two routes of transmission