He then said, “Messenger of Allah, I have a well-kept young she-goat at home; it is very precious to me and dearer to us than two sheep. If I offer it for Allah’s sake and sacrifice it, will it be sufficient for me?” He ﷺ replied, “Yes—but this concession is granted to you alone among the whole community. For everyone else, a kid of the goats does not suffice unless it has completed one year.”

Points derived from the ḥadith:

1- The prayer precedes the sermon in the Eid observance, and this is the Prophet’s ﷺ established sunnah.

2- Whoever attends the prayer and the remembrance, then performs the slaughter after the prayer, has followed the sunnah and attained the merit of true adherence.

3- Being present at the prayer is one of the signs that the sacrifice will be accepted, whereas anyone who slaughters before the prayer has an invalid and insufficient sacrifice.

4- The time for slaughter begins once the prayer is concluded. Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: “The obvious import of the wording is the act of praying itself; to interpret it merely as the time of prayer departs from the plain sense. The ḥadith explicitly makes the prayer a condition and does not mention the two sermons.” Hence, whoever slaughters before that does not fulfill the duty, even if, out of ignorance, he does so before its time has begun.

5- The day of Eid is a day of joy and happiness, of eating and drinking; when these acts are done to manifest the meaning of Eid, they are themselves acts of worship.

6- Neither the hady (pilgrimage offering) nor the uḍḥiyah (Eid sacrifice) is discharged with a goat unless it has completed one lunar year.

7- The Prophet’s ﷺ concession to Abū Burdah regarding the sufficiency of a young female goat applies to him alone, excluding the rest of the ummah.

8- Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: “This ḥadith shows that, in the case of commanded acts, ignorance does not excuse someone who performs them contrary to what has been prescribed, unlike prohibitions, where the scholars have drawn a distinction and excused violations committed out of forgetfulness or ignorance.” Al-Ṣanʿānī added: “The Prophet’s order for the man who prayed poorly to repeat his prayer—despite the man’s admission that he knew no better—and his command for the one who slaughtered before the prayer to redo the sacrifice both attest to this principle. It is a useful legal maxim.”