A Ram in Place of a Son, and Meat in Place of a Ram

Qurbani's narrative basis is the Quranic account, in surah al-Saffat, of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son at God's apparent command, and God's substitution of a ram at the last moment, a story shared in broad outline with the Genesis account of Abraham and Isaac though the Quran does not name which son is meant, a point classical commentators themselves discussed without reaching full agreement. Long standing custom, though not a fixed legal requirement in the way the sacrifice itself is, divides the resulting meat three ways, a portion for the household performing the sacrifice, a portion for friends and neighbors, and a portion for the poor, a distribution meant to embed the sacrifice in a wider circle of obligation rather than let it end as a private household meal.

The rite's practical form has shifted substantially in recent decades as the pilgrimage itself has grown to accommodate over a million people each year: rather than every pilgrim or household personally slaughtering an animal, many now purchase a share in an animal through organized abattoirs or charitable schemes that carry out the slaughter and distribute the meat, often to the poor in other countries entirely, a delegation of the physical act that some scholars and lay Muslims see as a practical necessity at modern scale and others regard as thinning the personal, willing character the original narrative gives the sacrifice.