On the afternoon of Eid-ul-Azha, Thursday 28 May 2026, Qurbani meat was being sold by the kilo on the Chandnighat bridge in Moulvibazar town. Poor people who had collected meat from homes across the town sold part of it for Tk 400 to 500 a kg. According to a Jagonews24 report, this let people who could not afford a sacrifice of their own buy meat at a low price.
Makeshift stalls on the Chandnighat bridge
The meat was sold from makeshift stalls set up on the bridge, and crowds of buyers gathered. The report said meat sells at Tk 800 a kg through the rest of the year, while the collected Qurbani meat went for Tk 400 to 500. For low-income buyers it was a chance to have Eid meat at home.
What sellers and buyers said
Sellers Chan Mia and Raju Ahmed told Jagonews24 that they have five people in their family. On Eid day they collect meat from houses in the town, and each of them had received 10 to 15 kg. They kept what they needed to eat and sold the rest.
Buyer Shahin Ahmad, whose home is in Chandpur, lives in Moulvibazar for work. He said his salary is low, so he could not give Qurbani, and he had not gone home this year either. He bought 3 kg of meat on the bridge for Tk 1,500. In his view the trade was good for the sellers and for people like him, because without it they might not have eaten Qurbani meat at all.
How Qurbani meat is shared
The National Moon Sighting Committee announced that the Zilhajj crescent was sighted on the evening of 18 May 2026 and that Eid-ul-Azha would be celebrated in Bangladesh on 28 May, The Daily Star reported. Saudi Arabia marked Eid a day earlier, on 27 May. The festival commemorates Prophet Ibrahim's devotion to Allah and his willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail.
In Islamic practice the sacrifice may be made from the morning of the 10th to sunset on the 12th of Dhu al-Hijjah. The meat is generally divided into thirds, and one share goes to the poor. The sales in Moulvibazar grew out of that sharing: poor families turned the surplus of the meat they were given into cash, and buyers with little money got meat for less than the usual market price.
Moulvibazar, a town on the Manu River
Moulvibazar is a town in north-eastern Bangladesh, in Sylhet Division just south of Sylhet, on the banks of the Manu River. It is the administrative centre of Moulvibazar District and Moulvibazar Sadar Upazila, and had 68,303 residents at the 2022 census. Its story goes back to 1771, when Moulvi Syed Qudratullah set up a bazaar on his zamindari land here for trading food.
Photo: S.M.M.Musabbir Uddin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sources: Jagonews24, The Daily Star (18 May 2026), Wikipedia
Comments
(0)