Points derived from the ḥadith
1 – The Arabs held the sacrificial offering (hady) in great esteem and reverence even before Islam, and the religion only deepened that veneration.
2 – It is permissible to ride the animal or draw milk from it when there is a real need, provided that such use does not harm it. This represents the most balanced legal view and reconciles the various evidences.
3 – We restrict this permission to cases of need and absence of harm on the basis of the report recorded by Muslim from Jābir: “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘Ride it in a reasonable manner if you are forced to do so, until you find another mount.’”
4 – Imām al-Bukhārī (d. 256 AH) deduced from this ḥadith that the founder of a charitable endowment (waqf) may lawfully benefit from his own endowment.
Fourth Ḥadith
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (Allah be pleased with him) said: The Prophet ﷺ instructed me to supervise his sacrificial camels, to distribute their meat, hides, and saddle-cloths in charity, and not to give the butcher anything of them. He added, “We will pay him from our own resources.”
Glossary of terms
• Budn: plural of badanah; large-bodied sacrificial animals such as camels. In the plural, the word has two accepted pronunciations: (1) with the bāʾ and dāl both pronounced with ḍamma, and (2) with the bāʾ pronounced with ḍamma and the dāl silent.
• Ajillah: plural of jilāl, itself the plural of jil, meaning the cloth or rug thrown over a camel’s back.
• “Do not give the butcher anything of it”: that is, none of its meat is to be given to him as payment for his services. In early usage the term jazārah referred to the camel’s extremities—head, forelegs, and hind-legs—which butchers used to accept in lieu of wages; by extension it came to mean any compensation a butcher receives.
Overall meaning
The Prophet ﷺ arrived in Mecca for the Farewell Pilgrimage bringing his own sacrificial animals, and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (Allah be pleased with him) arrived from Yemen with additional offerings. The Prophet’s personal hady numbered one hundred camels; with his own blessed hand he slaughtered sixty-three of them,