retaliation. Outside of the Qur'an, the offering is decreased to varying degrees. The 14th century religious scholar Ibn Kathir narrates, taking account from Isra'iliyyat, that Abel had offered a sheep whilst his brother Cain offered part of the crops of his land. The ordained procedure of God was that a fire would descend from the heavens and consume the accepted sacrifice. Accordingly, fire came down and enveloped the animal slaughtered by Abel thus accepting the sacrifice of Abel while Cain's sacrifice was rejected. This led to jealousy on the part of Cain resulting in the first human death when he murdered his brother Abel. Refusing to seek repentance for his actions, Cain was not forgiven by God and cursed. Abraham and Ishma'el The practice of qurban is entwined with the religious story of the patriarch Abraham (Ibrahim), who had a dream or vision of sacrificing his son Ishma'el (Ismail). In the Qur'anic narrative, his son willingly offers himself to be sacrificed to God. Eid al-Adha () honors the willingness and devotion of father and son to partake in the act as demonstration of ultimate obedience to God's command. Before the prophet could sacrifice his son, however, he was stopped and Allah provided a ram to sacrifice instead. In Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, a classical exegesis of the Qur'an, the ram itself is said to be the same one that Abel had sacrificed to God sent back from the garden of Eden. While not the only livestock acceptable, a narration in Sahih Muslim records that the Prophet Muhammad sought out horned, white rams to sacrifice during Eid al-Adha, as the ram of Abraham and Abel had been. In commemoration of the event, specific livestock animals are sacrificed ritually for consumption. One third of their meat is consumed by the family offering the sacrifice, while the rest is distributed to the poor and needy. Stipulations of qurban For the majority of Muslims, the qurban sacrifice during Eid al-Adha is highly stressed for its religious significance, but not () or compulsory by law save for in the Hanafi school of law. The sacrifice of an animal is legal from the morning of the 10th to the sunset of the 13th Dhu l-Hijjah, the 12th lunar month of the Islamic calendar. On these days Muslims all over the world offer qurban which means a sacrifice or slaughter of an animal on specific days. There are stipulations