The end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, is marked by a three-day feast known as the Lesser or Sheker (sugar) Bayram, followed by an interval of about seventy days by the greater or Kurban Bayram. Kurban Bayram is a lunar feast, falling ten days to the minute after the appearance of the new moon.
And it is the duty of pious Moslems to report to the Quadi the instant the crescent has been discerned in the sky so that he may proclaim that the feast is at hand. Kurban Bayram commemorates Abraham’s unconsummated sacrifice, whose intended victim, according to Muslim belief, was not Isaak but Ishmael. In memory of this event, every Turkish family that can afford it should kill the kurban, the sacrificial sheep whose fleece has been dyed vermillion, for distribution to the household and to the poor.
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