The 'Festival of Sacrifice', one of the most important days of the Islamic calendar, commemorates both the end of the Hajj pilgrimage and the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God.
This festival goes under many names throughout the Muslim world, but is most well-known as Eid al-Adha. It is also known as Eid ul-Kabir, or the 'Great Festival'. The only other festival to even remotely approach the spiritual significance of this feast of unconditional submission is the one which marks the end of Ramadan, the Eid al-Fitr festival.
There are regional variations in the observance of this festival, one key factor being the distance to Makkah and the likelihood of a sizeable portion of the population in the first place. In Ethiopia, for example, pilgrims make the journey to nearby Sheik Husein. Islamic doctrine provides for several alternatives to the Hajj. Seven journeys to the holy city of Kairouan in Tunisia, for example, add up to the equivalent of the obligatory once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Makkah.
In Azerbaijan and Turkey the festival is known as Qurban Bayram, and involves the ritual sacrifice of a goat, camel or similar animal to commemorate Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son but re-ordered at the last moment to replace his child with a ram as he showed his true faith in god. The glory of this willingness to sacrifice is justly celebrated in Islam, the religion whose name literally means 'submission to God'.
The meat of the sacrificed animal is then ritually divided amongst friends, family but mainly distributed amongst the poor, to uphold one of the five Islamic tenets, charity. The celebration is an opportunity for friends and family to visit each other.