Book of Sacrificial Offerings (Uḍḥiyah)
Chapter One: The Legal Status of the Sacrificial Offering and Those Addressed by It
This book, in its foundational structure, comprises four chapters:
- The ruling of the sacrificial offerings and the people to whom that ruling applies.
- The kinds of sacrificial animals, their qualities, required ages, and prescribed numbers.
- The rulings governing the act of slaughter.
- The rulings pertaining to the meat of the sacrificial offerings.
Chapter One: The ruling of the sacrificial offering and those addressed by it
The jurists disagreed over the uḍḥiyah: is it obligatory, or is it a Sunnah? Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī held that it is an emphatically recommended Sunnah. Mālik granted the pilgrim at Minā a concession to omit it, whereas al-Shāfiʿī made no distinction between the pilgrim and others.
Abū Ḥanīfah maintained that the uḍḥiyah is obligatory for affluent residents of the towns and not obligatory for travelers. His two associates, Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad, disagreed with him, declaring it non-obligatory; a similar report is transmitted from Mālik, concurring with Abū Ḥanīfah’s view.
Their divergence rests on two considerations:
- Whether the Prophet’s practice—peace and blessings be upon him—in this matter is to be understood as mandatory or merely recommended. It is related that he never neglected the uḍḥiyah at all, even while traveling, as comes in the ḥadīth of Thawbān, who said:
“The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—slaughtered his sacrificial animal, then said, ‘O Thawbān, prepare the meat of this offering.’ I continued to serve him from it until we reached Madinah.”
- Their differing readings of the aḥādīth concerning the rulings of sacrificial offerings. It is authentically reported that he—peace and blessings be upon him—said, in the ḥadīth of Umm Salamah:
“When the first ten days (of Dhul-Ḥijjah) begin and any one of you intends to offer a sacrifice, let him not remove anything from his hair or his nails.”
They argued that his words, “when any one of you intends to offer a sacrifice,” indicate that the uḍḥiyah is not obligatory. Moreover, when the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—ordered Abū Burdah to repeat his sacrifice because he had slaughtered before the prayer, some people took this as evidence of obligation. Ibn ʿAbbās, however, held that it is not